This one slipped by me: In January, along with my one-shot special SPIDER-MAN: FEAR ITSELF, Marvel will collect my recent Iron Man storyline into the one-volume trade paperback WITH IRON HANDS. Two threats -- one from Tony Stark's past, the other stemming directly out of his present role as Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. -- converge on Iron Man as he leads his elite Alpha Team on a mission to stop an Eastern European nuclear terrorist.
This will, sadly, be the final volume of DIRECTOR OF S.H.I.E.L.D. When regular writers Daniel and Charles Knauf were unable to return to the book, Marvel decided to end the title, replacing it with the upcoming WAR MACHINE book and allowing the new INVINCIBLE IRON MAN series to carry on the red and gold tradition. In any case, I loved this story -- I tried to give S.H.I.E.L.D. its own military protocols and jargon, while keeping Iron Man himself in constant motion. The way I see the character, if he's not using both his brain and his technological strength every waking moment, he gets antsy. He needs to be doing good, as he sees it...even though things don't always work out as planned.
IRON MAN: DIRECTOR OF S.H.I.E.L.D. - WITH IRON HANDS is scheduled for release the week of January 18, 2009. Here are the first two pages of the story, as published this past year in IRON MAN: DoS #29.
7 comments:
Nice looking. I've said this before, even though it wasn't intended as one, it was a fitting finale to the series and addressed, in some ways better than the Knaufs had done, what Tony's emotional state had been over the past year of the book.
Thanks, Dan. I just emailed Marvel and suggested that, if there are extra pages to fill, they reprint the Lee/Kirby/Steranko S.H.I.E.L.D. stories that introduced the Overkill Horn. So I'm not sure yet, but there might be some goodies in the back of the book.
Well, the page listing for the book seems to be 112, so I guess they'll just fill out the rest with penciled pages, instead of an actual story.
You gonna be at NYCC this year?
Yes. Don't know my schedule yet, but it's a local con, so I'll be around. I'll post details here.
Nice! I'm looking forward to this collection. I just saw that it was coming out on marvel.com. That reminded me that I hadn't been here for a bit, so I'm here to repent.
I'm glad to see that you're staying out of trouble, Stuart. Take care!
-Matt O
Matt! Great to hear from you. Yeah, I'm either staying out of trouble or getting into more than I can handle, depending on how you look at it. Hope you're good.
Now it turns out Marvel's putting a Chuck Dixon/Paul Ryan fill-in, #36 from the last series, in the back of the book.
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