Just when I lost all faith in Bendis—after reading Ironheart: the Saga of Riri Williams— I read Infamous Iron Man, and faith has been reborn. Bendis can write an entertaining story!!!
Bendis is an absolute titan of the last couple decades, and it’s impossible to make any statement on him without pissing some number of people off. Say he ran out of gas around 2012? Gonna have some Uncanny X-men defenders bite you. Say he was underrated post-2015? I’ll remind you about Civil War II until you reread it in punishment and shame.
The reality is that he’s been inconsistent across the last decade or so. With one hand he puts out Batman Universe, the other Man of Steel. As I learned here, even two books that came out really close to each other were vastly different qualities, to a pretty incredible degree. For all the things I think Bendis did wrong in The Saga of Riri Williams, he did at least that many things right in Infamous Iron Man, though, there is still some mapping weirdness going on here that I have problems with.
First and foremost, what Carrie’s this book, maybe more than anything else, is Alex Maleev’s gorgeous work inside. He’s done amazing work with Bendis in the past, but this was a particularly great place for his art, which set and amplified the mood so well. The colors in particular are just perfect, and he designed the perfect look for this iteration of Doom, which elevated it from a cool concept to being a story that’s worth following.
Maleev is never caught sleeping throughout the run either. Just continually putting beautiful and sick art on the page, for hundreds of pages. This collection is absolutely worth picking up for his art alone. Fortunately, Bendis showed up for this too.
Now, there’s a clear line between the two halves of this book that make it a little weird to talk about coherently. The first half is the actual Infamous Iron Man book, then the back half is the ending of Bendis’ Invincible Iron Man which stars Doom, and Riri Williams, as they search for Tony Stark, along with a bunch of others. The back half is still divided into two stories, really—Riri’s and Doom’s—which creates a similar problem as the Saga of Riri Williams had, except this book is much more an Infamous Iron Man book than that was an Ironheart one. The other thing that sets this apart is that it’s actually a fairly good comic, all things considered.
Core to the front half of the book working is really just characterization, particularly with Doom and Benjamin J Grimm. The latter is a character that Bendis can write for the rest of his life and I’ll never get tired of, and bringing him in here to act as the book’s antagonist is just the most fun thing I can think of. His grief surrounding his missing friends, and the way he takes it out on Doom is great, and that aside, again, Bendis just knows how to write the Rocky guy.
Doom, on the other hand, is just a masterpiece by Bendis, the key of which is really just keeping things simple. His actions are so authentically Victor Von Doom, but by presenting him as the protagonist, it reframes everything, in ways both tragic and hilarious. Despite his own beliefs, Doom has always been a failure, and what is Brian Michael Bendis good at if not writing failure in the best way possible, in a way that makes you root for the character, and believe that they’re actually the greatest hero? This is where Infamous Iron Man excels.
The back half of the book is good in a completely different way though, and changes how the book reads by splitting the story between Riri and Doom. It introduces a cast to the book, which along with Casseli changes the energy of it. We go from this thoughtful attempt at redemption to a fight to find and save Tony Stark, and the genre shift is really effective, and entertaining. The pacing is great, and it’s impressive that the creative team found so much to do with every character.
Bendis is a polarizing writer, especially his more recent works. He definitely churned out some garbage, but this here is a real gem, and utilized one of Marvel’s best characters in a way that only really could have been done at that time. Just a great combination of creators, character, and time.
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