Adventures West Coast #2: Iron Man: War Machine

Adventures West Coast #2: Iron Man: War Machine

Welcome back to AWC, as I take on the classic story, Iron Man: War Machine.

Last time, I discussed Demon In A Bottle, the story where Tony Stark had to hit rock bottom in order to build himself back up. This story’s slightly different, however, as this is the story of Tony’s DEATH (*cue spooky minor chord*). Don’t get your Underoos in a knot! The story’s 15 years old, and they’re still publishing Iron Man, so you know he survives. The importance of the story lies in the fact that it introduces us to the War Machine armor, which has come to be known as the badass, heavy artillery armor worn by Tony’s pilot, Jim “Rhodey” Rhodes (Terrence Howard’s character, for y’all who saw the movie). What I found to be most interesting about this storyline, though, was the fact that many of the ideas presented are actually being used in the current Iron Man Storyline, “Stark: Disassembled” (more on that later).

As the collection opens, Tony has just returned from the latest Avengers mega battle, “Operation: Galactic Storm”. The fight took a lot out of him, and he’s suffering from the fact that his central nervous system is failing due to a techno-organic virus he has contracted. Man, does Marvel love them some techno-organic viruses! I’ll bet that sounded real cutting edge back in 1993, as all of their books seemed to have a major T-O threat. Long story short, Tony’s dying, and there doesn’t seem to be a cure. He knows he’s in his final days, but just as he’s wallowing in his pity party, he finds himself zapped to the 28th century. There, he meets The Stark: a race of aliens who worship Tony Stark as a god, due to the fact that one of his spaceships will eventually crash on their world (which is their past; stupid time travel!). In any case, the Stark’s world is on the brink of collapse, as they didn’t take good care of it. Basically, it’s an eco parable. Since Tony’s their god, they brought him to their time to solve their problems. He doesn’t want their destruction to be his legacy, he uses the rest of his days to solve their problems. There’s a final attack, and he’s sent back to his time, with no memory of the trip, plus he’s now closer to death.

Next, we see a shadowy cabinet doing what shadowy cabinets always do in this book: plotting a takeover of Stark Enterprises. They create a Chernobyl-like event, and then frame Stark Enterprises for the accident. Again, dying Tony doesn’t want this as his legacy, so he uses a remote-controlled Iron Man suit to go clear his name. He ends up fighting the Masters of Silence, a trio of techno samurai, who’ve been hired by the Yakuza to kill Stark for causing the nuclear accident. Tony convinces them that the Yakuza lied, and he and the Masters take the fight back to the Yakuza. It’s at this point that he unveils the War Machine armor: sleek and silver, with more firepower than any prior Iron Man suit.

While Tony’s fighting, he makes a very important operational change: he needs info on who may have framed him, so he charges Rhodes with using their intelligence connections to get information. When Rhodes reminds him that nobody’s gonna share secrets with a helicopter pilot, Tony promotes him to VP of Operations. With his new position, Rhodes finds out that the person behind all of this is Justin Hammer (from Demon In A Bottle) DUN DUN DUNNNN! Turns out Hammer was trying to defraud Stark Enterprises so that he, along with 5 other organizations, could split up the company for themselves. Anyway, Tony and the Masters of Silence strong-arm him into surrendering, at which point Tony gets back Stane Industries (formerly known as Stark Industries, his old company). So, it’s like Tony put right a very big wrong from his past. And then he dies.

Rhodes grieves along with the rest of the world, as word breaks that Tony Stark has passed away. As an interesting aside, the news even reports a rumor that Tony may have succumbed to the AIDS virus. Yeah, really. Anyway, remember that seemingly impulsive promotion that Tony gave Rhodes? Well, guess who’s now the head of Stark Enterprises! Yeah, Tony left a holo-will (SO futuristic!), leaving Rhodey as the head of the company but, more importantly, asking him to take over for him as War Machine. It seems that the armor was actually developed with Rhodey’s specs in mind, and the world still needs an Iron Man. Rhodey’s pissed that Tony put him in that position, but he eventually agrees. But what’s this we see, as the issue ends? Turns out Tony’s not DEAD dead. Sure, he’s got no vitals, but he’s been cryogenically frozen by his med team, for reasons unknown.

Next, a gang of villains attacks Tony’s memorial service, slamming an exploding chopper into Stark HQ. Rhodey makes his debut as War Machine and saves the day. However, the Avengers West Coast (of which Tony was a member at the time of his death) end up returning to Earth at just that moment, and they realize the Iron Man they see isn’t any Iron Man they know about. So, a fight breaks out between War Machine and the AWC, as these misunderstandings are prone to occur. Both sides iron things out (hey, that’s a pun!) and realize they’re both on the side of angels. It’s at this point that we start to learn more about Rhodey.

The most interesting part about Rhodes is the focus on his interpersonal relationships. I think it’s always hard writing a romantic interest for a black character in comics. Do you give him a black girlfriend, or do you go off the grid with something “kooky”? God forbid you make her white! On twitter today, I was comparing the token blacks of the Big 2: Rhodey vs. GL John Stewart. When it came to relationships for Stewart, DC took the easy way out: he got to marry an alien. A pink alien, at that, so she’s still “colored”. Oh, and the Justice League cartoon? Another alien: Hawkgirl. She’s white, but she’s got wings; it’s like dating a sexy can of Red Bull. Rhodey, however, hasn’t had it easy, and it shows. I think, due to his position as Tony’s pilot, he felt that people may have seen him as a bit of an Uncle Tom. The character, himself, is cool as a cucumber, but whenever another black character shows up, it’s like they make a point of making him feel uncomfortable about his subservience to Tony. Even when he had his black girlfriend, Marcy, she kinda made him feel like shit ’cause she was a cutthroat executive at Stark, while he was an air chauffeur. During this storyline, he cuts her loose, due to the fact that she wants his job, but he quickly rebounds with Tony’s blond friend, Rae LaCoste. To say that Ms. LaCoste is “aggressive” would be an understatement, but let’s just say that he’s fucking her within an issue. In fact, she gets so close to him so quickly that I was SURE she’d turn out to be working for Justin Hammer or something (if that was the case, it’s not revealed in this collection). You can tell he’s uneasy about this, though, as he reminds her “this complexion doesn’t come from Coppertone”. She tells him she likes it and doesn’t care, and Mandingo Fuck Party 23 resumes where it left off.

In any case, Rhodey does a great job both running Stark and as War Machine, but something’s going on in the background that he doesn’t know about. You see, Tony’s not dead, and only his med team knows. He’s been in cryogenic stasis, and sort of reliving old memories. His central nervous system is gone, but they think they can reprogram the T-O virus to replicate his CNS into something even better than what he had before. Then, his body will reboot itself just like an operating system. Sound familiar? It should, if you’ve been reading Marvel for the past year. If not, here’s the long and short of it: Tony Stark hid the identities of most of the Marvel heroes in his head (longer story), and Norman Osborn became the most powerful man in Homeland Security (even longer story) and wanted that information. To keep it out of enemy hands, Tony wiped his mind, like a hard drive. He was near death, but left a plan for his friends to reboot him like an operating system. In the meantime, he’s kinda reliving his life in his subconscious. Oh, and he asked Rhodes to carry on the fight for him, as War Machine. Yup, “everything old is new again”. Anyway, back to War Machine.

Once Rhodes finds out about Tony, he feels betrayed and quits angrily. Tony kinda feels bad, but feels justified because he thought that the ignorance would serve to protect Rhodey in the long run. He, then, debuts his NEW armor (back in this day, Tony seemed to go through armor like clean underwear. There were only subtle changes each time), which resembled his classic red & gold suit, but allowed him to control it remotely from his hospital bed, as he hadn’t regained motor functions. Tony, again, apologizes to Rhodes and tells him that he wants him to keep the War Machine suit. As the storyline ends, Rhodey’s making a call to the Avengers West Coast, implying that he’s going to join up.

Unlike Demon In A Bottle, I felt that this collection provided a satisfying beginning, middle, and end. For a book called War Machine, the armor was appropriately featured in most issues, and not just at the end. In some ways, I feel that I missed out by reading this in collected form. I can only imagine how big of a deal it was to read this back when it was originally published in sequential form. This was the early 90s, and everyone was trying to one-up the next guy. If comics weren’t featuring deaths, they were featuring new armor and trading card inserts. Tony had been in deep shit before, but he hadn’t quite DIED. For a full year, Rhodes took his place. In a pre-Internet society, this must’ve driven fandom apeshit! I remember how I felt when the “Age of Apocalypse” replaced the X books, and I’ll bet this was the same for Iron Man loyalists. In all, it’s a good read, and a great resource for anyone looking to get some insight on the only man Tony Stark trusts to carry on his legacy.