Decompression at its absolute worst
It's bad enough that Iron Man, one of Marvel's biggest heroes, appears more in Amazing Spider-Man than in his own title. It's bad enough that this book, which one assumes is supposed to be monthly1, is on its fifth issue in nearly a year. It's bad enough that the previous four issues which got us here are so explosively decompressed that really, they've all been lead-up into this issue, without any other purpose I can fathom.
But why, when we've waited months for this, to see the results of Tony's undergoing the extremis process, is half the goddamn book wasted on an origin retelling? 15 of 23 pages are back in that old terrorist/POW camp, 5 of those have no words whatsoever. You want a spoiler-free review of EVERYTHING that actually happens to forward the plot in this issue? Here it is:
Tony stands up and puts on the new, improved armor.
If this book was on an actual monthly schedule, this might not make me so angry. But we've been waiting for this for three months! What's going to happen next month, perhaps "Tony stops in the bathroom before leaving the building"? Or "Tony find the bad guy, look forward to the confrontation two issues from now"?
This is where decompression gets absolutely batshit insane. Oh sure, it's pretty, but you could do the whole book in colored macaroni and I'd pick it up if it got it back to a regular schedule and finally just told a story.
1 - Yes, according to the indica on page 1, this is a book Marvel publishes MONTHLY.
