The only interesting thing to come out of Secret Wars’ finale was the question of what Doctor Doom would do next: where do you go after being God Emperor Doom of Battleworld? Brian Bendis provides an answer: become Iron Man! And it turns out to be a shit answer as Infamous Iron Man is a disappointingly crummy title.
Like too many Bendis comics, there’s no story here. Victor fights some random villains because that’s what heroes do. He macks on Tony Stark’s girl, Amara, because Tony’s now “dead” apparently – but “dead” in superhero comics just means taking a nap so Tony’ll be back in no time. Just look at Victor’s dead mother who’s suddenly alive again! She wants to mess with her son because (insert arbitrary reason here). Ben Grimm/The Thing is now an Agent of SHIELD because no-one wants to read Fantastic Four comics anymore – he’s after Victor because that’s what the FF do. By fixing Victor’s scarred face, Marvel have taken away his personality. And if Victor’s now wearing an Iron Man armor, who’s the dude in the classic Doom outfit at the start?! God, it’s awful!
Victor’s motivation for being a hero is unsatisfying, the series has no direction or anything beyond the gimmick of putting Doom into an Iron Man suit and playing on the novelty of him being a hero, and Alex Maleev’s art looks rushed, flat and totally underwhelming. I think that after the success of Superior Spider-Man Marvel are trying to do similar role reversals with their other characters and it completely fails with Doom as Iron Man.
Infamous Iron Man, Volume 1: Infamous (the imagination of that subtitle!) is, like most current Marvel titles, tedious garbage across the board – don’t bother.
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