Invincible Iron Man #9: Review

Jul 1997

Jeph Loeb, Ryan Benjamin

Story Name:

Rebel Without a Cause

Review & Comments

Rating:

Invincible Iron Man #9 Review by T Vernon (August 12, 2019)

Review: A race against the clock to save Rebel's life! While Tony interfaces with his psyche for some emotional flashbacks. The biggest flaw with this subplot so far is that we didn't really know Rebel: he died in IM #1 and that was that; we were supposed to imagine Tony Stark's close friendship with a character who was new to this series and had never appeared in the previous three decades of Marvel history; fake sentiment doesn't work. So now Jeph Loeb fills it in for us as Tony risks his own life to keep Rebel alive, we see a bit of what these two guys meant to each other. It still lacks the solid pathos that it would have had if Rebel had been, y'know, an actual running character but it also doesn't leave all the heavy lifting of imagining this dude was Tony's best pal up to us. The action scenes are quite nice; why are all flashbacks in sepia? This isn't THE WIZARD OF OZ, we're not in Depression-era Kansas, but sepia = past so we'll learn to live with it.

Comments: First appearance of Victor von Doom and Titanium Man in this series, both in flashback. And is that Superman in the Russian newspaper? Oh, and Conner is back to being Connor a time or two.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Invincible Iron Man #9 Synopsis by Kevin Hollander

Stark brings Rebel to the Baxter Building and enlists the help of Reed Richards to learn who resurrected him. With Rebel's armor running out of power, Stark takes a desperate gamble and links his suit with Rebel's. He accesses Rebel's memories through his psionic interface in the hopes that he can uncover the truth.

He looks back during their college years when they learned that the Russians had created a fully-functional exo-suit before they completed their prototype. This "Titanium Man" armor makes world news. Victor Von Doom stops by to rub this in their face. Stark promises that his will be better.

Stark works tirelessly to perfect his armor. One night after passing out due to sheer exhaustion, Rebel puts on the armor and flies to Russia to challenge the Titanium Man to a fight. Rebel - and the untested armor - receive a severe beating, but was allowed to return in shame. Nobody but Rebel knew of this preliminary encounter. The extensive damage led to the malfunction that ultimately caused his death.

They fast forward to the point where he was resurrected by Hydra, but Richards disconnects him before they can learn of the true mastermind. Initially furious, Iron Man calms down when Richards tells him that Rebel's conditioned has stabilized for the moment. He's living on borrowed time.

Rebel speaks up and says since that is the case, let him die like a hero.