Feb 1998

Special Thanks given to Alex Ross and and Allen Bujak for their armour design contributions.

Summary:
Having returned from the Heroes Reborn universe, Stark has managed to get his legal status cleared up (he's not dead, dammit!) and he has also bought a skyscraper in the heart of New York to serve as his NY headquarters (which would later become the HQ of the New Avengers). But he is faced with a problem - during his absence, Stark Enterprises was acquired by Fujikawa, Inc. Can Tony get it back? Does he even want to?

The Avalon Trading Company is attacked, and it's Iron Man to the rescue! We then see Tony Stark's 'rechristening/resurrection party' at Stark Tower, with such notable guests as J. Jonah Jameson and wife and Mr. & Mrs. Reed Richards. After mingling with his many guests, Tony is confronted by his cousin, Morgan. Morgan asks Tony not to try to reacquire his companies from Fujikawa, as they've made Morgan head of the North American Stark company operations.

Stark goes for a walk and visits a construction site, where the Maria Stark Foundation is building a community building of some sort. There, he is attacked by Airborne, Boobytrap, Firefight, Rocket-Launcher and Smokescreen - aka. Death Squad. Stark retreats and dons the armour, then returns and makes short work of the Death Squad. The Death Squad retreats, and Stark realises the building site has been destroyed.

Stark holds a press conference, where he announces that he will not try to reacquire Stark Enterprises. Instead, he is forming a new company - Stark Solutions.

Characters:
Airborne
Avalon, George "Georgie"
Bain, Sunset
"Bill"
Boobytrap
"Cokie"
Denton, Ms. ?
Firefight
Frost, Whitney
Jameson, J. Jonah
Madison, Dr. Marla
Mandarin
MODOK
Nelson, "Foggy"
Osborn, Norman
Potts, Pepper
Rhodes, James
Richards, Reed
Richards, Sue
Roberts, Chess
Rocket-Launcher
Sharpe, Rosalind
Sheffield, Leah
Silvani, Vittorio
Smokescreen
Stark, Morgan
Stark, Tony / Iron Man

Quick note: There are two characters on the last page that I could not recognise from their silhouettes alone when I read this issue. As such, they are not in the characters list.

Review:
Great, great, great. The artwork was a great blend of pre-Onslaught 'scratchiness' and post-Onslaught smoothness. Awesome. The dialogue was spot-on for every character, especially Stark, whose dialogue really reflected his strange feelings re: returning to a universe he'd always belonged to but that had changed a lot.

Something really bothered me when I read the issue, but by the time I had finished I had forgotten what it was - and a quick flick through failed to draw it out, so it can't have been too important.

Iron Man Vol.3 #1 contains everything a new Iron Man reader needs to jump onto the iron bandwagon plus a whole lot more. It's cool. 9/10

-- Adrian J. Watts
bella1@netspace.net.au