Iron Man #3: Inside The Issue
It's the conclusion of the Stark-Roxxon War, our first arc. That's not a lot of runway to land a plane. Did we make it? Spoilers for the whole comic follow
Edited by Sam Thielman
AS YOU SURELY GUESSED FROM THE HEADLINE, I'M WRITING IRON MAN FOR MARVEL COMICS! IF YOU PUT IT ON YOUR PULL LIST AT A COMIC STORE (AN ONGOING SUBSCRIPTION WHERE THE STORE RESERVES EACH ISSUE FOR YOU), I'LL SEND YOU FREE STUFF! EMAIL SOME KIND OF RECEIPT TO FOREVERWARS.BULLPEN@GMAIL.COM AND THE SWAG WILL BE YOURS!
LIKE I SAID WHEN ISSUE #2 CAME OUT, FOREVER WARS will do a behind-the-scenes edition whenever a new IRON MAN issue drops. I will spoil everything and talk informally, with an eye toward letting interested readers see how the sausage gets made. All this will be strictly from my perspective—none of my collaborators are responsible for what I write here, and I won't speak for them, let alone for Marvel Comics. But these Inside The Issue editions are for paid subscribers only.
I'll be honest: Issue #3 worried me.
For reasons I'll talk about in… three months, the first arc of IRON MAN had to be three issues. Before I knew what this arc was, I knew I had three issues—and only three issues—to tell it. That's not a complaint. Three issues turned out to be the right amount of space for this story. It's just that you don't see a lot of three-issue comic book arcs anymore, because the second and far longer publication life of an arc is the collected edition. Three issues is generally too few to be collected on their own and justify a cover price that makes sense for a publisher.
In any event, "The Stark-Roxxon War" had to operate as a thesis statement for the series, and it had only 65 pages to work with. We have one issue to take the baton from the prior run and set up our new story; one issue of development; and one issue of climax/denouement/reset. IRON MAN is a lean operation. If you're looking for decompressed storytelling, I have bad news.
By the time I knew how I was going to get from the first page of #1 to the last page of #3 I knew that the climax would unfold in a manner unlike the typical superhero/supervillain boss-battle/melee. That meant asking the audience's indulgence—and asking for it sooner than current superhero comics readers are accustomed to, myself included. Ending a story in three issues could be exciting. Or it could prove to be a jumping-off point. We'll see.
The plan was to turn the brevity of the arc into a virtue. The climactic scene would happen quickly—it's five story pages, and then a single one to reset and throw to the fourth issue. How'd we do it?