Invincible Iron Man #34: Review

Dec 2008

Christos N. Gage, Sean Chen

::: click cover to ENLARGE it :::

Story Name:

War Machine weapon of SHIELD part 2

Review & Comments

Rating:

Invincible Iron Man #34 Review by Rob Johnson (August 31, 2016)

This issue occurs between Secret Invasion #3 and #4.

Winter Guard are the Russian superteam that superseded the Soviet Super-Soldiers after the breakup of the Soviet Union, debuting in Iron Man (1998) #9. Like the Avengers they have a varying membership, many of them ex Soviet Super-Soldiers.

Ursa Major is the only character who is the 1st to use the name. He joined the original Darkstar (Laynia Petrovna), Crimson Dynamo V (Dmitri Bukharin) Darkstar's twin brother Vanguard in a cameo in Hulk #250, and the 4 1st appeared under the SSS name in Hulk #258-259. (The other 3 had already worked together in earlier appearances.)

Unfortunately Darkstar I was killed in New X-Men #130, so this is her successor Sasha Roerich from Hulk (2008) #1.

Crimson Dynamo XII (Boris Vadim) also only previously appeared in Hu(2008)#1.

Red Guardian (just known as Anton) is the 7th to use that name, and also only comes from Hu(2008)#1.

This issue shows Black Panther and Storm fighting Skrulls in Wakanda. The Marvel Chronology Project Forum has this between BP(2005)#38 where Brother Voodoo is uncovered as a Skrull in Wakanda and #39 where invading Skrulls arrive to find many Skrull spies already killed. So this is presumably a fight with some of those spies.

From Our Blog:

Gwen Stacy, beauty queen of Standard High School, was Peter Parker's (alias Spider-Man) first great love.

Gwen Stacy: Classic Beauty

Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Invincible Iron Man #34 Synopsis by Rob Johnson

Last issue War Machine reached Tony Stark's secret satellite. Both are immune to the Skrull virus that has closed down much of Earth's technology, because neither contains StarkTech. But a fleet of Skrull warships followed him there. With his armour damaged and low on power, Suzi Endo showed him how to transform the satellite itself into a giant armoured robot.

Now he's attacking the Skrull ships. After some losses the remaining ships stop firing and put their shields on full power while they manoeuvre to hit the satellite all at once. But James Rhodes extends 'his' giant arms and grabs whole ships to smash them together. As the rest blast him (bits of) Rhodey's life flashes before his mental eyes.

He remembers being beaten up as a kid for straying into the wrong territory. He remembers being beaten up as a youth for not joining the gang of his own territory. He remembers training as a boxer, and more training in the Marines. He remembers flying Tony Stark's plane, and dodging bullets from Hydra planes. He remembers War Machine and Iron Man fighting Mandarin together. And in all these situations he never backed down.

This inspires him to lash out and destroy all the Skrull ships bar 1. That ship heads down to Earth where the satellite is not designed to operate. So Rhodey returns to his own armour which has been repaired and refuelled in the meantime. While Suzi reactivates the cloaking system and changes orbit to hide from any other Skrulls.

As War Machine follows the last warship to Earth Suzi sends him some images of what's been happening on Earth. He sees Skrulls attacking New York, Wakanda and London. WM catches up with the Skrull ship and blows it up. Then discovers he's over Russia.

Suzi sends him to the nuclear weapons depot at Tatischevo where the Winter Guard are holding off Super-Skrulls. (Rhodey agonises over the people who'll die in all the other places where he isn't, but he can only fight 1 place at a time.)

Crimson Dynamo leads Darkstar, Red Guardian and Ursa Major. War Machine joins in but CD tells him to leave. (His superiors tell him) Russia doesn't want American help. WM heads off to help in Wakanda instead, but then turns back. The nukes mustn't fall into Skrull hands. (What! The aliens don't have such powerful weapons?)

But this time WM doesn't seem to fare any better than the Russian superheroes. As Skrulls overwhelm him CD orders his fellows not to help him, but concentrate on helping the Russian military. And for Rhodey everything goes black.

When he awakes he's on a Skrull ship, and the aliens are removing his armour even though they've worked out his cyborg body needs it to survive.

Story #2