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Invincible Iron Man #8: Review

Dec 2008
Matt Fraction, Salvador Larroca

Story Name:

World's Most Wanted Part 1: Shipbreaking

Review & Comments

Rating:
4 stars

Invincible Iron Man #8 Review by (May 15, 2012)
We are now in the post-Secret Invasion world, with Norman Osborn starting his Dark Reign. One aspect of the Skrull Invasion caused all Stark technology to fail worldwide. (I thought that had already just happened in #6.) This included the Extremis tech in Tony Stark's brain and body, which now made it difficult to fully control Iron Man's Extremis armour. However the Extremis in his brain must still be working to a large extent because a central premise of the story arc is that he has the Registration database stored on an Extremis 'hard drive' in his brain.

There are no Iron Man issues set in Secret Invasion featuring Iron Man. But the last issues of Iron Man Director of SHIELD #33-35 describe War Machine's involvement in that war.

Because the failure of Stark-tech crippled many of Earth's defences, Tony accepted the blame for a lot of what happened in the invasion. His control of SHIELD, the Avengers and the 50-State Initiative was handed over to Osborn, who ended the Invasion by killing the Skrull queen. Osborn has replaced SHIELD with HAMMER.

Since Secret Invasion, Stark has appeared in Mighty Avengers with his Extremis armour crippled, as part of the Dark Reign era. He attended Wasp's funeral in MAv#20, and got involved in an expedition to Wundagore in MAv#21-23 to fight Chthon. He doesn't make any more appearances in Dark Reign outside of his own title until the Siege crossover.

But Norman Osborn has been very busy in the interval (according to the Marvel Chronology Project). He formed a Cabal of major villains in Secret Invasion: Dark Reign, recruited his own Dark Avengers team in DAv#1 (and took on the role Of Iron Patriot), and took over the Shadow Initiative team in Avengers: Initiative #23. He sent HAMMER troops against the FF in Dark Reign: Fantastic Four limited series. He had dealings with the New Avengers in NAv#48-49 which ended in a battle between New and Dark Avengers in NAv#50. And he led his Dark Avengers as Iron Patriot to help fellow Cabal member Dr Doom in DAv#2-4. Plus many other appearances.
He was in MAv#21,23 above. Since then he and his DAv, along with the NAv, were in Agents Of Atlas v2#1-5 where the Agents pretended to create weapons for Osborn. And he was on hand when Ms Marvel (Carol Danvers) appeared to be killed in her #37, and his own DAv MsM (Moonstone/Karla Sofen) took over the comic.

Many SHIELD operatives stayed on to work for HAMMER. But Maria Hill was too close to Stark to be trusted (even if she wanted to stay). Since Secret Invasion she was at the funeral in MAv#20, and she was actually fired from SHIELD at the start of DAv#1 - so the opening of this issue classes as a flashback.

Tony's thoughts about recent events make it seem as if the Stane attacks in the earlier part of this series happened after Secret Invasion. But he was still Director of SHIELD there, and still had working Extremis armour.

Pepper's implant was based on Rand technology not Stark-tech, and so presumably wasn't disabled by the Skrull computer virus.

Osborn's assistant is Victoria Hand. She will play a significant role in his regime, and move on to working with the New Avengers after his fall. In publication order this is her 1st appearance. But the chronological analysis above would give her several preceding appearance, including MAv#20 and DAv#1-4. And most recently in AOATLAS#1.

The Registration database was created during Civil War to hold details of all super-beings who registered and joined Iron Man's (and the government's) side. And maybe stuff about non-registered heroes too, as it has often appeared that SHIELD actually knew who most of them are.

Just like everyone else, Norman Osborn has forgotten that he knew Spider-Man's identity, as a side-effect of Spidey's Brand New Day. Even though Norman had known his identity for a long time. And of course Peter Parker's details wouldn't be on there anyway, since Brand New Day wiped it out, along with every other way in which his identity was known.

***** The rest of the comments after this are an old copy of parts of this comment.

We are now in the post-Secret Invasion world, with Norman Osborn starting his Dark Reign. One aspect of the Skrull Invasion caused all Stark technology to fail worldwide. (I thought that had already just happened in #6.) This included the Extremis tech in Tony Stark's brain and body, which now made it difficult to fully control Iron Man's Extremis armour. However the Extremis in his brain must still be working to a large extent because a central premise of the story arc is that he has the Registration database stored on an Extremis 'hard drive' in his brain.

There are no Iron Man issues set in Secret Invasion featuring Iron Man. But the last issues of Iron Man Director of SHIELD #33-35 describe War Machine's involvement in that war.

Because the failure of Stark-tech crippled many of Earth's defences, Tony accepted the blame for a lot of what happened in the invasion. His control of SHIELD, the Avengers and the 50-State Initiative was handed over to Osborn, who ended the Invasion by killing the Skrull queen. Osborn has replaced SHIELD with HAMMER.

Since Secret Invasion, Stark has appeared in Mighty Avengers with his Extremis armour crippled, as part of the Dark Reign era. He attended Wasp's funeral in MAv#20, and got involved in an expedition to Wundagore in MAv#21-23 to fight Chthon. He doesn't make any more appearances in Dark Reign outside of his own title until the Siege crossover.

But Norman Osborn has been very busy in the interval (according to the Marvel Chronology Project). He formed a Cabal of major villains in Secret Invasion: Dark Reign, recruited his own Dark Avengers team in DAv#1 (and took on the role Of Iron Patriot), and took over the Shadow Initiative team in Avengers: Initiative #23. He sent HAMMER troops against the FF in Dark Reign: Fantastic Four limited series. He had dealings with the New Avengers in NAv#48-49 which ended in a battle between New and Dark Avengers in NAv#50. And he led his Dark Avengers as Iron Patriot to help fellow Cabal member Dr Doom in DAv#2-4. Plus many other appearances.
He was in MAv#21,23 above. Since then he and his DAv, along with the NAv, were in Agents Of Atlas v2#1-5 where the Agents pretended to create weapons for Osborn. And he was on hand when Ms Marvel (Carol Danvers) appeared to be killed in her #37, and his own DAv MsM (Moonstone/Karla Sofen) took over the comic.




 

Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Invincible Iron Man #8 Synopsis by Rob Johnson
Maria Hill, Tony Stark's deputy Director of SHIELD, is fired from Norman Osborn's new HAMMER regime.

Iron Man helps with the heavy lifting in the ongoing clean-up of the mess made when the SHIELD helicarrier crashed on New York during Secret Invasion. His help is accepted grudgingly because everyone blames him for allowing the Skrulls to invade so easily. He lost the Extremis control of his armour during the invasion, and now handling his Iron Man suit is difficult, so he gets thrown off the site as a danger to others.

With Stark Industries crippled, Tony no longer has the facilities to build a new Iron Man armour. But he can upgrade Pepper Potts' repulsor-tech chest implant to give her enhanced abilities.

Stark hands over the last bit of control of what was SHIELD to Osborn. But he warns Norman that he can't use the Superhero Registration Database without legal approval. As he leaves he meets up with Maria Hill.

Osborn tries to access the Registration database anyway, to find out the identities of Spider-Man and other heroes. But he finds it's a dummy, and it triggers a virus that spreads to other HAMMER (ex-SHIELD) systems, crashing everything apart from life-support.

Osborn's fragile mental state begins to show.

Tony, Pepper and Maria hold a council of war. Tony tells them the only remaining copy of the database is in his brain, put there by the Extremis software.



Salvador Larroca
Salvador Larroca
Frank D'Armata
Salvador Larroca (Cover Penciler)
Salvador Larroca (Cover Inker)


Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Iron Man
Iron Man

(Tony Stark)
Pepper Potts
Pepper Potts

(Pepper Hogan)
Spider-Man
Spider-Man

(Peter Parker)

Plus: Christopher Walsh, H.A.M.M.E.R., Ms. Hand, Norman Osborn.

> Invincible Iron Man: Book info and issue index

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