Iron Man is Invincible, the Story not so Much

Book: Iron Man: Extremis
Pen: Warren Ellis
Pencils: Adi Granov

We have all heard about how Marvel took a bet on a second-string superhero and made a movie that set them on the path to recovery from bankruptcy and established them as a major player in Hollywood.  Well, everyone has seen the Iron Man movies, but few knew him before he became Robert Downey Jr. (No, I didn't mean to write “before Robert Downey Jr. became Iron Man”.) In comics, Iron Man is a major player in the Avengers, but his own comics are known only to ardent fans.

In 2005 Warren Ellis (he who brought us Transmetropolitan) sat down with artist Adi Granov for a small six-issue limited series. In the early comics, before the whole “I am Iron Man” declaration, Iron Man was not known as a superhero with a secret identity, but rather a suit wore by an employee of Tony Stark. 

In such a scenario Tony Stark gets a call from an old friend Maya Hansen. Maya’s boss at Futurepharm Coorporation, Dr Killian, commits suicide leaving a suicide note in which he takes responsibility for the loss of the Extremis serum that the company was developing. Extremis turns out to be another copycat of the Super-soldier serum that created Captain America. It is now in the hands of a man named Mallen who is wreaking havoc and proving unstoppable.

Iron Man tries to stop Mallen, but is unable to do so and is seriously injured. He gets back to Maya and they embark on a dangerous experiment in an attempt to stop Mallen. Will he be successful? Clue: Have you heard of a super-anything called Mallen? 

Extremis was actually the first Iron Man comic that I read. Afterwards, I found that it is one of the most popular and famous standalone Iron Man titles. That is a dampener, because, you see, Extremis is not very good. There is a plot that is worthy of development and the decision to stick to just six issues is admirable, but it feels like a patch-up job. 

Part of the blame should lie with the artist. Remember the initial days of motion capture in animated cinema where the faces were wooden and eyes were scary? Well, Adi Granov’s art is a bit like that. It is moved away from the kitschy comic style, but has not reached the stylized photo realist style. I am the first to admit my knowledge of art is zilch. But as a common reader, I think it neither felt neither realistic nor stylistic.

Ellis also has to shoulder some blame for not developing either Mallen or Iron Man. There is an obligatory reference to Iron Man’s origins, a part philosophical part political rambling with Stark and Maya’s guru, a bit of contrived introspection by Stark, all of which could have been avoided. While there are enough action sequences, there is not much happening plot-wise. A good editor could have condensed the whole story into one issue and made it more interesting.

What was supposed to be a definitive milestone in Iron Man’s continuity instead reads like a manufactured event.  Which is sad because Extremis was a premise with potential. Unfortunately, like the movie that took its theme, Extremis remains half-baked.