War Machine #3: Review

Jun 1994

Scott Benson, Gabriel Hardman

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Story Name:

Contents under pressure

Review & Comments

Rating:

War Machine #3 Review by Rob Johnson (January 2, 2019)

Scott Benson shares the scripting with Len Kaminski again.

While War Machine is playing havoc in Imaya Nick Fury calls Tony Stark in Iron Man #306 asking him to call Rhodey off. Tony has to admit that Jim doesn't listen to him any more.

Deathlok is now series-less and wanders off further into guest-star land. He'll pop in to revisit Silver Sable & the Wild Pack for their #30. He'll be recruited into a Secret Defenders team for the final #22-25 issues of their magazine. And so on. (He'll eventually sort-of have another series as a supporting character in the 2014 series of *another* Deathlok, Henry Hayes.)

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

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

War Machine #3 Synopsis by Rob Johnson

War Machine and Deathlok have come separately to Imaya in Africa to rescue Vincent Cetewayo who's been captured by dictator Eda Arul. But Cetewayo has vanished and our pair are about to be arrested by a S.H.I.E.L.D. team led by Major Sheva Joseph.

As they exit the palace Arul can't help winding them up and Deathlok loses it. In the confusion James Rhodes passes him an escape plan. DL grabs onto WM who jets them into the sky. But Agent Joseph follows them in a SHIELD craft and jams his navigation system. So Rhodey just flies his armour by the seat of his pants to outmanoeuvre a bevy of SHIELD craft until Michael Collins manages to corrupt *their* flight computers. And Sheva isn't exactly unhappy to let the pair go. Angry Arul sends out all his army to find them and Cetewayo.

War Machine appears to get a message from Vincent telling them where to find him. The trail leads to a rebel camp in the desert led by a man named Cimbuka, and Cetewayo is indeed there. It turns out that Cable actually rescued VC last issue and dropped him off here before zipping off on his own business. Cetewayo intends to help Cimbuka overthrow the dictator. War Machine is happy to help but Deathlok isn't in favour of civil wars. So he leaves and takes wounded rebels with him (in his Dragonfly plane).

The Imayan army attacks the rebel camp. War Machine attacks the army and the rebels follow him. Cetewayo looks for a gun to join the fight but instead finds Arul's mysterious Advisor aiming 1 at him. The man explains that *he* sent the message that brought WM here. The dictator's reign was bound to fall, and it suits the mystery man's purpose to have it end violently. He's about to explain more but ...

... we cut back to the war. The government's army is routed but War Machine has run out of ammo. So he bolts on some heavy weapons and loads himself up with bandoleers of bullets. They're going to storm the palace.

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