IRON MAN #5: Inside The Issue

This cover-to-cover fight scene was the hardest thing I've ever had to write in my short comics career. Spoilers for everything, including how I escaped my certain fate

Edited by Sam Thielman

SO I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE EASY: A fight issue. 

A cover-to-cover, start-to-finish, 20-page fight scene. Effectively one location. A fixed set of characters. Any and all B- and C-plots both brief and unfolding exclusively within the cover-to-cover fight. Characterization to occur exclusively within the cover-to-cover fight. Rising and falling action within the cover-to-cover fight. How hard could it be? 

I'd written fight scenes in every single one of my (eight) previous comics, hadn't I? Even the nonstop heads-and-speech bubbles of WALLER VS. WILDSTORM #2 get broken up by corresponding flashback fight scenes. (Evan Narcisse's idea, not mine.) And wasn't WALLER VS. WILDSTORM #3 a cover-to-cover fight, mostly? Hadn't I done this already?

How quickly—and, before that, how embarrassingly slowly—I came to appreciate that I had more than a year to write the prestige-format WVW #3. And, considering other commitments, I had ten days out of the relevant month that I could commit to writing IRON MAN #5, an issue I had conceived of as the place where I would just figure out how to cash all the checks I wrote in IRON MAN #4, and an issue written on a similar professional timeline. Uh oh.

IRON MAN #5 was the hardest comic book I've ever written. There were times when it was so hard to figure out that my despair grew great enough and my productivity bad enough that I went back to writing my forthcoming book about torture. I'm several more issues down the line and I still have not had difficulty with a script like I did the one in which it's one big fight. And looking back, I love the chaotic energy of IRON MAN #5. It was truly a sink-or-swim moment for my time writing monthly comics, and however much I flailed around, I refused to drown. 

How did I pull it off? Did I pull it off? Only subscribers can be the judge! Of my explanations, that is. Anyone who reads IRON MAN #5—which I recommend; which should be you—can be the judge. But the point is that everything after here is paywalled and you should subscribe.  

Oh, and if you're looking for my journalism this week, you can check out The New Abnormal and Security Dilemma podcasts. I'm writing this before either specific episode is available, but by the time you read this, episodes with me talking about my recent work (and REIGN) should be out.