Unsurprisingly, I was among them, as well as being crazy enough to demand a time machine (@Navarr helpfully provided a time loop machine, thus adding even more fandom to my already fandom full twitter feed).

So.

Yeah.

Trailer good Nikki happyyyy.  I mean, whoa, ‘splosions and War Machine and Pepper makin’ out with the helmet omg!  The last one on the list was surprisingly hot – I predict that the Tony/Pepper LJ comm is gunna explode with ficlets about that kiss and their exchange – “Go get ‘em boss” “You complete me!” – so deliciously shippy.  I’d hope that that would make the T/P die hards stop freaking out over potential Tony/Natasha but, well, that’d be a pipe dream and I’m not all that naive when it comes to fandom and shipping.

Honestly, a Tony/Natasha/Pepper triangle could be pretty fun!  Of course, I’m a die hard Sam/Jack shipper who thought that the Sam/Pete subplot of season eight of SG-1 was pretty damn awesome.  Will the fantards ever learn that the first ship, in mainstream entertainment, is always (to the best of my knowledge – obviously there are going to be exceptions, but those are too rare to be concerned about) the canon one?  So there’s a few hiccups on the road to true love – who cares?  It’s insanely entertaining!

Also, there are explosions and preeeeetty whips (even if Trav is right about the ground hitting != very exciting whip work) and Tony in a Formula 1 car and dancing Iron Girls and eeeeee!

Is it May 7th yet?!

On a non movie related note, I’ve finally got around to finishing the first season of Iron Man: Armoured Adventures.  Despite the iffy animation, the occasional omg that was SO BAD line (but that can be forgiven because all kids shows, no matter how good, have terrible lines like that.  Plus, they lampshade a lot of the cliche dialogue) and Tony & Co as sixteen year old kids, the show is actually really good.  It is very well written with nicely paced episodes and well rounded characters.  It’s actually quite fascinating that they decided to go the route of the Mandarin being one of Tony’s closest friends and making him a good, if misguided, guy.  All the main villains are like that, to tell you the truth.  The Living Laser ends up giving his life to save Tony’s (and it wasn’t done ham handedly), Madame Masque is one screwed up girl (she ends up clean slated to her pre-Masque days, however, so I suppose a lot of character development just went down the drain.  Y’know, just like what Fraction has probably done in IIM), Obadiah Stane didn’t kill Howard…

Yeah.

Good stuff.

And, to think, apart from the kid!Tony aspect, my most (mentally) complained about aspect of the show was the fact that the Mandarin was only after the five Makluan Rings not the ten there are in comic canon.  But the end of the season finale?  Ohhh yeah, it’s all about Gene realising that he only has half of the Rings, which has the unfortunate side effect of his power lust and poor self esteem tricking him into believing that he would have worth if he got the other half and, thus, abandoning thoughts of giving up the Rings and rebuilding his friendship with Tony.

But enough about the villains.

Tony is actually pretty Tony-ish for a kids show that wouldn’t approve of his boozing, womanising ways.  He’s still an impulsive, stubborn, arrogant git with a bit of a god complex.  It’s pretty easy to see his rage, guilt and lack of self worth leading him to the bottle in the near future and, while he’s mostly oblivious to women at the moment, they’re already beginning to fawn over him and it won’t be long until he starts using his charm on them.

Pepper is, quite frankly, annoying but with just enough moments of awesome to keep you from completely hating her.  She’s absolutely nothing like the controlled woman in the comics – she’s bouncy, hyper and gabs a mile a minute, quite possibly due to an overly large daily sugar intake.  Yet, those same traits are found in comic!Pepper – both think fast, are kinda bossy and are able to send a dozen texts in under a minute.  They’re also both intensely loyal with a strong moral integrity.

As for Rhodey… well, I haven’t been following War Machine and he doesn’t exactly show up in IIM all that often.  In the cartoon, he’s the calm, level headed one in charge of the base of operations.  He’s initially reluctant to fly the suit (and ends up crashing with enough velocity to create a massive crater), but he does eventually claim the War Machine armour as his own.  He’s a good problem solver and, while not as intuitive as Tony, can think his way out of problems in a clear and logical manner.  Pepper, on the other hand, is more manipulative and generally functions as crowd control and deals with the masses.

Happy?  Happy’s a total idiot with mad skills at piloting the suit.  He’s actually pretty damn funny for the dumb jock stereotype.

BUT, yes, long story short?  Good characters, good long term story arc and good individual episodes.  omg, I can’t wait for the next season!  Gene is unveiled as the Mandarin after Tony and Rhodey reveal themselves as Iron Man and the newly created superhero, War Machine so, yes, angst overload!  Oh, and Gene’s step dad blew up Tony’s lab so they’re down to two suits – the backpack suit (yes, the show puts in as many references to the comics as possible) and the War Machine armour.

Also, Fin Fang Foom was there.  Yay dragons!

*fangirly flail*

I am, however, resisting the temptation to read the other comics I bought by writing this blog entry.  So far, it is working.

But back to Iron Man.

Wow, is it possible to have two storylines that are more different than the current one in Invincible Iron Man and Iron Man: Armor Wars?  IIM’s has been running for god-knows-how-long now, is angstytastic, vaguely melodramatic and, all and all, a rather heavy storyline.  Don’t get me wrong – I love it to pieces.  I’m always one for some drama, especially the relationship-heavy drama of IIM #16.  Armor Wars, on the other hand, is light, cheerful story – funny, happy and full of the necessary buttwhoopage.  (Even if it is Tony’s butt getting whooped, or almost whooped, a lot.)

Allow me one obnoxious fangirl moment about IIM #16 (yes, I tricked you into seeing this under a cut or by permalink) – eeee Tony chooses death over betraying Pepper!  Shipper me is happy!  Of course, shipper me was happy when Tony slept with Maria a few issues back (and with Maya however long ago that was) – with Tony, I pretty much ship anything.  But I especially ship Tony/Pepper.

Okay, fluff aside, let’s get into the good stuff.  I like how they’re doing the concurrent storylines here.  Very well balanced – whenever they switch between Maria and Tony (or between Maria, Tony and Pepper a few issues ago), I’m pissed because I want to see more but, at the same time, happy at whatever is going on on the page now.  Very nice – I’m usually completely annoyed by concurrent storylines and always tend to skim one so that I can get to the good stuff.  I think, in this case, it’s because 64% of the book is for Tony, Pepper and Whitney, 32% for Natasha and Maria and Osborn gets himself a single page of unhappiness.  Sucker.

And now I’m going to complain about stuff because that’s what I do best.  In this case, I’m going to bitch about Tony’s ‘proprietary’ Western Digital Caviar hard drive.  Last I checked, Tony didn’t own that company.  And WD is one of the bigger hard drive manufacturers – in fact, all the hard drives in the computer-I’m-building-as-soon-as-I-get-home are WD drives.  (And one of them is even a Caviar.  The other is a VelociRaptor but that’s aside the point.)  The point is, any bloody computer out there can read a SATA drive.  Unless, of course, it’s bloody ancient and all.

Okay, okay, so the sticker may have been slapped on there to disguise the fact that it’s a super awesome Stark tech drive and maybe it isn’t SATA.  But then, pray tell, would the crazy guy in a itty bitty room be able to tell Natasha that from a picture of the label on her iPhone?

Apparently nobody working on this title knows anything about computers.

And now for Armor Wars.

Oh man, this miniseries is win!  I think Pepper threatening a reporter with her bright green stiletto sealed the deal for me.  I’m all for Pepper kicking ass.  And Tony’s little thwack on Trump’s head was great too and, well, the entire comic.  (A stapler?  Seriously?)  For complaints… well, I haven’t got any.  That’s new.

I also thought it would be interesting to point out the similarities between the two titles – both of them involve the Crimson Dynamo in some way, shape or form, both involve Pepper kicking ass and both have an incapacitated Tony – IIM has Tony with suits but not the brainpower to use them, Armor Wars has Tony with the brains but no suits.

Interestingly enough, both stories have allusions to the movieverse – the preview of IIM #17′s cover is a pretty obvious reference to the movie what with the suit laying in pieces in the Afghanistan (I assume) desert and Tony walking off in a wife beater.  For Armor Wars, it seems to be more of a blend of the movieverse and the comicverse – Tony’s living in LA (in a mansion on a cliff overlooking the ocean with similar architecture as the movie’s mansion) and has recently stopped the production of weapons.  There’s no Stane in sight and Tony referenced how his weapons were sold to people with bad intentions.  It’s not movieverse entirely, however.  Rhodey’s not AF, Tony has a whole slew of suits and he’s operating under the “Iron Man is my bodyguard” facade.

Anyway, I think I’ve rambled on about Iron Man enough for this week.  Time to read Wednesday Comics!