Iron Man: Hypervelocity #1: Review

Comments: First appearance of Tony Stark 2.0, Major Tom Aramaki, and Absynthe. The new Iron Man armor is called Model 28.

Review: Cyberpunk Iron Man? Lead me to it. I was around when the science fiction sub-genre was introduced in 1984 with Neuromancer by William Gibson. And I ate it up. And now, er, a quarter century or so later, Marvel hires a writer to bring the same sensibility to the techiest of their properties, Iron Man. Now I know a lot of people don’t like this miniseries, calling it a confusing bunch of scientific jargon and profiles of high tech toys. And on a superficial reading, I may have agreed as I’m not the most technologically literate of readers. But having to read it multiple times to write these synopses, I’ve come to see the complexity of the story underlying all the high-tech mayhem and I’ve become all the more impressed. And so the epic gets off to a quick start with SHIELD chasing Iron Man and it’s not until the final pages that we learn this is a different sort of Iron Man in a different sort of Iron Man story. Rogue armor is a familiar trope as is SHIELD pursuing Shellhead for some reason or another. But this is not that story. Didn’t the hero being decapitated give it away? This issue in retrospect just lays the groundwork for a creative new take on the hero.