If you’ve been following my ongoing, very public love affair with Marvel’s Epic Collection line, you probably know the format of the series: It collects “the best characters and stories from Marvel’s vast history,” and that it does so by releasing books out of sequence, hitting high water marks of any given book, rather than worrying about chronologic completionism.
Fun fact: Tony’s suit charges on ungrounded outlets!. Courtesy of Marvel Comics.
One of the key features of the series is that they leave room for that eventual completism by way of volume numbering; John Byrne’s complete 1990-1992 run on Iron Man (released as War Games) was numbered as volume 16 and debuted several months before volume one, The Golden Avenger, which covers Iron Man’s 1962 debut in Tales of Suspense. This numbering means that major fan-favorite stories can land in fan hands without them having to wait for 30 years of comics to be released first; the past can be filled in as they go.
George Tuska’s pencils are the volume’s biggest draw. Courtesy of Marvel Comics.
This week’s Battle Royal, volume five of Iron Man Epic Collection, is a collection that accomplishes that rather lofty goal of filling in. This isn’t a book that captures a major storyline, that encapsulates a specific era, or sees any major development for our title character. Rather, it provides the 20 issues to bridge the gap between volumes four and the (yet-to-be-released) sixth volume — not to mention series’ eventual completion.
I’m mad Moondragon changed her name. Courtesy of Marvel Comics.
Certainly, there are some iconic covers here, and plenty of Shellhead’s classic villains make appearances, but on the whole the 20 issues of this collection feel formulaic and weightless. They use the “baddy of the month” format without making any major narrative moves (beyond bleakly swapping out Tony Stark’s girlfriends by way of…institutionalizing one and accidentally killing another’s father).
Of course, that was essentially the holding pattern laid over most of Marvel’s books in the ’70s, holding up Stan Lee’s famous “illusion of change: edict, but knowing that it does little to drive a reader forward through the slog of interchangeable conflicts.
Happy, I’m gonna need you to calm it down a bit. Courtesy of Marvel Comics.
Beyond a seeming distrust of youth- and counter-culture (and a rather alarming, ongoing display of Happy Hogan’s anti-women’s liberation/anti-Pepper Potts tantrums), there are a few notable things included in Battle Royal. The first is, of course, the first appearances of Thanos, Drax, and several titans in Iron Man #55. With Jim Starlin pulling most of the weight and planting seeds for his eventual cosmos work, it’s an issue that stands alone in the volume — its events have no lingering effects in series regular writer Mike Friedrich’s following stories. It’s a quick blip of historic gravity, there and then gone.
The best issue of the collection, for its worth, is issue #56; after his cosmic filler issue, Starlin is joined by Steve Gerber in a mode not far removed from what he’d later be doing upon introducing Howard the Duck in Adventure Into Fear soon after. Nearly a full parody of itself, the issue might not quite be Kurtzman’s Mad Magazine, but a look at that issue’s villain, Rasputin, makes one wonder if Gerber and Starlin didn’t have EC’s Crypt Keeper in mind. In the issue, our ex-grammar school teaching occultist imbues his homemade staff with supernatural powers by…bumping into a television camera — and then using it to give life to a statue named “Fangor.”
I’m way more invested in this guy than Tony. Courtesy of Marvel Comics.
This is all very normal Steve Gerber stuff.
All that said, Battle Royal is not a particularly engaging era of the book. Most of it feels static, moveless, and cold, and few of the creators seem to exhibit any great love for the character. That doesn’t make its inclusion in the Epic Collection any less important than its peers — it still offers incredible insight into the development of the Marvel Universe and its history. Still, that does make it a volume likely to come down off the shelf much less often.
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