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!