After some of the biggest artistic talent at Marvel jumped ship to start Image, and the speculator boom began to fade from the comic scene, publishers started to look for sensational ways to keep their books flying off shelves. You’d be hard-pressed to find a major comic character who didn’t die or get an edgy rebranding at some point in the ’90s, and Iron Man was not immune to this frenzy. While the Death and Rebirth of Superman and the breaking of Batman resulted in popular events that reenergized interest in those characters, there were more than a few major flops that tried to capitalize on this same premise. Unfortunately, Iron Man’s “The Crossing” arc is one most fans would rather forget for a multiplicity of reasons, but this new Epic printing of the storyline is fascinating as an incongruous footnote in the character’s history.
Published in 1995-96, “The Crossing” is a time-traveling adventure that moved between the monthly Iron Man (#319-324), Avengers (#390-394), War-Machine (#20-22), and Force Works (#16-20) books from that period. Tony Stark appears to be acting odd, with large lapses in memory, resulting in Iron Man killing two characters early in the storyline. Eventually, it is revealed that the new baddies hunting these superheroes are just different versions of Kang from separate moments on the timeline, and that the villain has been controlling Tony for decades. Tony is pulled to the future to aide Kang, and the Avengers work to defeat him.
At least, I think that’s what is happening in this story. Time travel-based narratives are never an easy story to tell, and “The Crossing” feels like an editorial mess with too many cooks in the kitchen and lacking a clear throughline to unify the various books. They all know what they are supposed to achieve at the arc’s end, but not a lot of finesse went into making this a pleasant read.
The art is definitely of its time, and if you don’t care for the excess of the ’90s, you likely won’t appreciate the visuals. The costume redesigns for this era are overwrought with vehemence and angst, and thankfully Marvel dropped most of them a few years later. I do appreciate Heitor Oliveira and Marcos Tetelli’s line-work, and their contributions are competent and engaging, even though their issues feel like Image clones. Everything about the art style in “The Crossing” looks like it’s screaming at the audience to take these books seriously, but comes across as comical in its execution and desire to be edgy and titillating.
It’s impossible to review this arc without some major spoilers to “The Crossing” event. At its core, this story was meant to kill-off an aging alcoholic in Tony Stark and replace him with a younger version of himself from a separate timeline. Masque, one of Kang’s minions, aids the Avengers in going back in time to get an idealist, young version of Tony Stark to combat the corrupted Iron Man.
Understandably, this decision was a controversial one, and it’s basically been ignored by subsequent continuity. In many ways, this Iron Man event reminds me of what happened to Hal Jordan in “Emerald Twilight,” where a young Kyle Rayner replaced the ostensible Green Lantern and took up the book’s mantle. Rayner had some popularity however, even though Jordan would eventually return to his role as Green Lantern. Teen Tony Stark would not get the same accolades, as most of the Avengers books would be cancelled and reimagined a year later with Heroes Reborn. Kurt Busiek made sure that when these characters returned to the mainstream Marvel Universe, the original Tony Stark was the man wearing the iron suit.
I remember being excited when this storyline was originally published, but I can’t say it was an enjoyable tread down memory lane. At its best, it provides some big, flashy visuals and provides a case study in how not to reboot a beloved character for a younger audience. Having said that, I am happy to see Marvel reprint an arc of this nature, seeing how it was basically forgotten within a year of its release. It’s unfortunate that Marvel didn’t lean more into the “what the heck happened?” angle of this run, as they should have included editor’s notes or post-mortem reflections from its creators. Sadly, we are given no supplementals to “The Crossing,” leaving only the difficult storyline within its pages.
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