“Art thou sure this race is a good idea?” “Superman and Flash do it every few years.”
Free Comic Book Day 2010 (Iron Man/Thor)
Marvel Comics (May, 2010)
“Fair Weather”
PENCILER: John Romita, Jr
INKER: Klaus Janson
COLORIST: Dean White
LETTERER: Joe Sabino
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Alejandro Arbona
EDITOR: Ralph Macchio
To fund a machine that could create weather to terraform a planet, a younger Tony Stark foolishly agreed to make a weaponized version. In the present a smarter Tony has to deal with someone stealing the plans of the weaponized version trying to reverse engineer it for the terraforming version, only they want to terraform the moon, which is causing crazy weather on Earth that even Thor is having trouble with. So the two travel to the moon to shut the project down, “allowing” the crazy rich colonists to “stay” on one of Tony’s satellite homes.
What they got right: It’s an original story for Free Comic Book Day. And it’s actually not a bad one. We see younger Tony’s invention from his weapons manufacturer days that also had peaceful purposes (terraforming Mars), the two characters work well together, and overall it was an enjoyable story.
What they got wrong: In my original review I was annoyed by the bad guys being a bunch of self-important rich @#$holes who thinks they’re above everyone even before they’re…above everyone not because it’s an overdone cliché (which it is) but because the last time I had seen Matt Fraction’s Iron Man it was a story where a man turns people into suicide bombs using stolen repulsor technology telling cigarette manufacturers that they were somehow even worse. (And of course the tobacco company wanted to purposefully make their cigarette’s more addictive and claim it caused weight loss.) Thus this comes off as more of his doing heavy-handed commentary. Also “I’m not from around here” doesn’t explain how Thor can talk in space when there’s no atmosphere. They aren’t even in the “blue area” of the moon used by Uatu that has an air pocket.
Recommendation: An admittedly fun team-up for Free Comic Book Day. It’s a bit smaller than a regular comic if you go to look for it and it is worth reading if you find it.
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