Iron Man: Legacy #2: Review

May 2010

Fred Van Lente, Steve Kurth

Story Name:

War of the Iron Men Part Two

Review & Comments

Rating:

Iron Man: Legacy #2 Review by T Vernon (January 8, 2022)

Comments: The Romani used to be called Gypsies but that term is no longer considered appropriate.

Review: Tony’s mad game continues, trying to stop a major atrocity of the modern world singlehandedly while trying to ignore the political repercussions. There’s a massive battle of Iron Man versus Iron Men, armed with various Stark weapons, ending with Tony facing a god from Slavic myth. About now, he should be realizing he is in over his head and maybe he should have listened to Rhodey, if not Henry Peter Gyrich. The one man who stands up to the Iron Men is the true hero here as he is fighting for himself and his people even though there is nothing he can do to his enemies, who, it turns out, are all drones without minds or consciences. So about this god….

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Iron Man: Legacy #2 Synopsis by T Vernon

Seeing the news of Iron Man’s invasion of Transia and fight with the Transian air force, Henry Peter Gyrich pushes past Pepper Potts to confront Tony Stark directly. Tony denies having any hand in Iron Man’s actions and mocks Gyrich who gives him one news cycle to bring his employee back under control. Then we learn that this Tony Stark is an LMD (Life Model Decoy) and the real Tony, of course, is inhabiting the armor in Transia. Tony has a mobile lab hidden in a farmwoman’s barn. Nina is Muslim Romani, the group marked for ethnic cleansing by the Slavic majority. She explains how the Slavs and the Romani had lived in harmony until the paramilitary force called the Zmaj came for them, then their longtime friend Darko turned against them and all the Romani men were murdered. She demands that Iron Man slaughter all of the Zmaj but he refuses. She is bitterly disappointed in his style of justice. He uses his new subterranean armor to burrow into the ground….

Nearby, the Zmaj Iron Men are using a Stark sonic projector to torture a village of Romani before killing them; one man stands up to them just as Iron Man bursts up through the ground. As the Romani flee to the Latverian border, Shellhead battles the enemy who are using Stark weaponry against him. Tony discovers that they are all drones before he is cut down by microwaves penetrating his armor; he uses his drill to wreck the enemy with the device. He sees a panicking boy fleeing and he follows only to discover the boy is a projected illusion and a bomb goes off, demolishing the armor….

Tony awakens in a cave where he is questioned by Darko of the Zmaj; he gives his name as Howard Jarvis. Darko denies having stolen Stark’s inventions, merely his legend. They have a legend of Svarog, the smith of the gods having enslaved his enemies and he shows Tony the graves of Romani scientists who have died creating this tech for them. Then Svarog himself approaches and exposes Tony’s real identity and announces he has come to lead his people to glory….