Iron Man Vol. 1: Extremis
It’s the beginning of a new era for Iron Man as renowned scribe Warren Ellis joins forces with artist Adi Granov to redefine the armored Avenger’s world for the 21st century - a landscape of terrifying new technologies that threaten to overwhelm fragile mankind! What is Extremis, who has unleashed it, and what does its emergence portend for the world? Collects Iron Man #1-6.
User Ratings and Reviews
5 Stars Great Art and Story
The art is amazing. The best I’ve seen in comics. The story is pretty good too.
3 Stars Long-Time IM fan…good, not great
After going a while not reading superhero comics (been reading back issues of The Losers, Queen & Country, etc.) the movie hype for the IM film piqued my interest in this old favorite. After reading those other books, with deep complex stories, I found this too light. The art was top notch but I felt pretty unfulfilled afterward. My next superhero titles will probably be going back to The Ultimates and the like. Better writing.
3 Stars Iron Man - Definitely Doable
Iron Man Definitely Doable
Iron Man is among the most practical of condensed symbols because he is definitely doable.
Iron Man connects imagination with real-world technologies like those described by D’Souza in “The Virtue of Prosperity.”
Iron Man as a symbol also connects real-world cloak-and-dagger-type intrigue, described by Ann Coulter’s tales of the hero Joe McCarthy in her surprise bestseller, “Treason,” (there really were/are communists in the government.)
Further, Coulter sheds more light onto these possibilities and intrigue with her descriptions of the Intelligent Design debate in another one of her surprise bestsellers, “Godless.”
However, Ellis’ “Iron Man” loses its connection to reality (Iron Man’s preeminent virtue as a symbol) when he tries to pull a symbolic bait-and-switch by using as the nemesis, the nebulous concept of “white supremacist” instead of symbolizing real-world villains such as O.J., Ayers and the beltway snipers; or real-world terrorists such as Muslim extremists.
But this politically correct impurity is smelted and hammered out of Iron Man’s refined and tempered armor in the 2008 movie,where Rhodey’s role and dialog symbolizes the vacuous and preferential treatment concept of affirmative “dumbing down.”
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5 Stars Extremisly Awesome. (Yes, I know that sounds corny)
Okay, I really started getting into Iron Man after the blockbuster film came out. So I didn’t really know where to start comic-wise, after reading reviews about “Extremis” I decided to give it a shot, the shot was definitely worth it! It follows his origin great. It’s just a really fun read if you like Iron Man. I’m not too crazy about the art though, that’s just me. I tend to like the more comic-book looking comics, than the more realistic art. But this still gets 5 stars because I enjoyed it A-LOT!
3 Stars Not quite the classic it’s made out to be but a great book.
This often delayed Iron Man restart does a good job of upgrading the Golden Avenger for the 21st century but trips up in a few places. I’m not a big fan of Ellis’s compressed storytelling style and the dialog that is present in the book isn’t really that incredible. The story reboots Iron Man’s origin story to bring him up to date and gives him some updated abilities to boot even though the current Marvel stories has him in the process of losing them already.
The characterization of Tony Stark feels a little off to me and I don’t dig the Tom Cruise look (Cruise was still the front runner for the movie role of Tony Stark when Extremis was published). The story is dark and broody and the villain isn’t terribly interesting or inspiring. The Extremis concept itself and how it’s implemented is classic Warren Ellis sci-fi and it’s really interesting but Tony Stark with super powers such as a healing factor just kind of seems wrong.
Adi Granov’s amazing digital artwork is what really carries the book and it’s also what caused all of the delays in the initial printing of the issues. Though the realistic, almost painted looking art is fantastic it sometimes feels a little dull when it’s used to tell a super hero story. It’s just too static and I found the muted colors throughout the entire comic to be a bit drab and depressing. The art really serves to cover up what I feel isn’t a very impressive story underneath however and I think Granov deserves the credit for the success of Extremis far more than Ellis does despite the flack I’ll take from Ellis fans for saying so.
Though a lot of people are hailing this as the greatest Iron Man story in years, I personally don’t feel that this is one of Iron Man’s better story arcs though I will admit it is an important one if you want to get into reading modern Iron Man books.
Filed under: Top Iron Man Comics