Iron Man = How To Blow Up A Pipeline + Succession

Edited by Sam Thielman

AS YOU SAW IN THE DEK, I'M WRITING THE NEXT IRON MAN SERIES FOR MARVEL. IF YOU PREORDER IT, I'LL SEND YOU FREE STUFF! EMAIL ANY FORM OF EVIDENCE THAT YOU'VE PREORDERED IT TO FOREVERWARS.BULLPEN@GMAIL.COM WITH A MAILING ADDRESS! THANK YOU TO EVERYONE WHO'S MAKING ME A REGULAR AT THE POST OFFICE! 

IT'S FINALLY TIME to reveal a little bit of where we're taking Tony Stark when my and Julius Ohta's run on Iron Man begins in October. 

David Brooke at AIPT had me on his podcast to unveil a few of the themes you'll see in the book. Surreal as it is to do an AIPT interview—do I get to think of myself as a Legit Comics Creator now?—it gave me the opportunity to reveal the tag line for the book's first arc that I wrote when pitching it. We're starting out doing How To Blow Up A Pipeline meets Succession. 

What exactly I mean by that is something you'll have to read the comics to understand. But as I tell David, the first arc is about an act of corporate warfare between two energy companies—the renewables one Iron Man owns and a villain-coded one called Roxxon—with a crucial assist from a supervillain science think tank called A.I.M. Some acts of corporate warfare proceed in a boardroom. Others require a more tactical approach. 

David asked me to sum the arc up in five words. I counted quickly on my fingers before asking for a sixth, so I could answer, "Iron Man versus a hostile acquisition." The morning after we recorded, I realized that "Tony versus a hostile acquisition" is five words and I wanted to throw up. But I hope between those descriptions you'll get the flavors I'm hoping to infuse from How To Blow Up A Pipeline and Succession.

The aroma those flavors produce will perfume the rest of the series, but they might not specifically appear in subsequent arcs. The second arc, which begins with the fourth issue, results from the experience of a journalistic investigation I conducted and published years ago, and with which I have unfinished business. I'll say more about that when the time comes. But once I was encouraged to spotlight a specific member of the Iron Man Cast, it was the only choice I could make. 

And speaking of: if you've come here because you're an Iron Man fan, welcome! Can I interest you in subscribing to FOREVER WARS? I think I'll do some Writer's Commentary on Iron Man in this newsletter as a regular feature for paying subscribers once the issues drop. Don't miss out on Iron Man Discourse – and special surprises! – direct from the writer himself!

The next one of these will be behind a paywall! 

Finally, when David asked me if there was a song I was writing Iron Man to, I referenced this one, the un-Spotifyable epic "Murderers" by From The Depths. I have now gotten anarchist crust metal before a comic-book audience. You should expect more of this sort of juxtaposition from me in Iron Man. 

RIGHT BEFORE THIS INTERVIEW CAME OUT, Marvel released the solicitation for the second issue of the run. Here's the description for IRON MAN #2, whose Taurin Clarke-drawn variant cover (!) is the illustration for this FOREVER WARS edition: 

MAN VS. MONGER! The return of the Iron Monger! Roxxon's revealed their latest C-suite recruit. Who's in the suit? And does the appearance of the new armor have anything to do with the absolute destruction of every. Single. One. Of Tony's own suits? Forced back to basics in an offline clunker, Iron Man's reduced to raw firepower and sheer force of will. And now…A.I.M. is going to strip that away too. Another familiar face wields the knife that'll take Tony down. Iron Man is no longer invincible. Part Two of "The Stark-Roxxon War" by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Spencer Ackerman and extraordinary artist Julius Ohta!

That's right: the Iron Man armors have been taken off the board, and we have a mystery to solve. We have a lot of guest stars in the second issue. All of them were ridiculous levels of fun to write. There will be many more to follow in subsequent issues. So won't you ask your comic shop to reserve each issue of Iron Man for you as we publish them? As you saw above, if you send me receipts that you've preordered the series, I'll send you a sticker set at my own expense. Get those orders in by September 9, which is two weeks from today, because that's the deadline for retailers to order copies of issue #1! 

IN A LIT HUB ESSAY ON MONDAY about the visual landscape of gentrification-era New York, the novelist Jonathan Lethem comments that graffiti is "language you meet with your body, just as a kid leafs through a Marvel comic not quite bothering to read the captions and word balloons, letting the figures speak instead." 

As someone who's now contractually obligated to produce on a monthly basis such captions, balloons and the plots animating them—and who now knows, viscerally, what a grind that is!—I might feel a certain way about that description. But that doesn't make Lethem wrong. When my collaborator Julius Ohta came aboard the book, I bought issues of Alien he recently drew and leafed through them without regard to any text on the page, precisely as Lethem identifies. I did that to get a sense of how Julius tells a story.

Anyway, good Lethem stuff here. I am moved to observe that his editors didn't do him any favors with the dek's reference to a "rapidly gentrifying New York City," since we haven't been "rapidly gentrifying" since Motherless Brooklyn was new to the shelves. We've been gentrified. While gentrification is never quite complete and there's always more of the city to culturally desecrate and render unaffordable, the dek could have more accurately referred to a "gentrified New York City" and said what it needed to say. 

WHY ISN'T THERE JOURNALISM IN THIS EDITION? Because I need a break. I've reached a crucial point in THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN, a milestone I didn't think I'd reach this early in the drafting process, and need to spend this week massaging it before I have a catch-up with my book editor after Labor Day. I also need to start writing the issue of IRON MAN that's due in September.

Finally, you may have noticed that we have been publishing two or more editions of FOREVER WARS pretty much every week despite me saying in late January that my pace of bookwriting probably couldn't allow me to maintain that schedule. And I wrote that before I had any idea I'd be working on an ongoing Marvel series. I'm tired and need to do other stuff for a little bit. I know I'm tempting the News Gods by saying that, but it's true.

WALLER VS. WILDSTORM, the superhero spy thriller I co-wrote with my friend Evan Narcisse and which the masterful Jesús Merino illustrated, is available for purchase in a hardcover edition! If you don't have single issues of WVW and you want a four-issue set signed by me, they're going fast at Bulletproof Comics! 

No one is prouder of WVW than her older sibling, REIGN OF TERROR: HOW THE 9/11 ERA DESTABILIZED AMERICA AND PRODUCED TRUMP, which is available now in hardcover, softcover, audiobook and Kindle edition. And on the way is a new addition to the family: THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN.