Marvel has begun to shed light on what's coming after Secret Wars and what shape the "All-New, All-Different" Marvel Universe will take. Last week we learned that writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist David Marquez will be helming a relaunched Invincible Iron Man comic. While Tony Stark will still be Iron Man, he'll be given a new armor, a new supporting cast, new villains and a new status quo.
Marvel Announces New Invincible Iron Man Comic
Building on what was revealed at Special Edition NYCC this past weekend, Marvel held another "Next Big Thing" press call this afternoon that focused on the upcoming series. Both Bendis and Marquez were present, along with Executive Editor Tom Brevoort and Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso. Marvel also revealed new concept art from Marquez, which we've included in the article below.
Alonso kicked things off by talking about Marvel's desire to put Tony at the forefront of the All-New All-Different Marvel, as shown by his prominent placement in both ANAD Marvel teasers released last week. He said, "We've done it for a reason. We're all-in on Iron Man now. It speaks to the talent we've coerced into working on the book."
Brevoort acknowledged that this is the first time he'll be editing an Iron Man comic since the Marvel NOW relaunch in 2012. "As Brian will tell you, I've been trying to talk him into doing Iron Man for a long time, really going back to the earliest days on Avengers. It wasn't even Avengers really that put the big in my head. It was his Daredevil run." Brevoort continued, "He took that character and pushed him into new territory and found new things to say about him and new ways to express him and the world he lived in. He was great on that run about constantly being able to surprise me, just as a reader, issue after issue after issue with what the character would do and how he would react to situations. I thought that these were all traits that would be useful in the world of Tony Stark."
Brevoort noted that, while Iron Man has been a major focus in recent years, he doesn't necessarily have the iconic back catalog of Daredevil. "I had the instinct that Brian could pick up the ball and do something special with it."
As for Marquez, Brevoort said it was his work on the graphic novel Fantastic Four: Season One that made Marquez the right fit for Iron Man. "I think he's got a great, super-slick, super-clean style. Terrific storyteller. Terrific page layouts and character composition. You can see it in the design of the new Iron Man armor. You can immediately tell it's Iron Man, yet all the lines of it are completely different from any Iron Man armor you've seen before. That combination is going to bring a lot of fresh thinking to this character, thinking that he needs. We want to see new villains, new supporting cast, new players -- I want to let Brian push Tony Stark into places we haven't been before." At which point Bendis blithely interrupted, "I'm not going to be doing any of that!"
The conversation shifted to the design of this new armor, which is distinguished both by its sleek form factor and the capability to transform into dozens of previous Iron Man suits. Marquez said, "We wanted it to be something that's new and fresh and kind of move the armor forward, design-wise... As far as slimming down the armor, the big idea there that Brian and I talked a whole lot about is that over time technology tends to get smaller and slimmer and lighter as opposed to bulkier and bigger. That was something that went into the design process - making sure it was very sleek and not too horribly busy with too much detail." Marquez later joked that it was a chance to get away from Ultimate Spider-Man and the tedious process of drawing Miles' webbing.
Bendis said, "You think about how not only does technology get slicker, but it does a lot more. Like, wow, look at what your phone does, right? So this is the armor version of that. he has all these armors that do all these cool things, but it's not hard to imagine a design that does all of those things. It transforms for the missions it needs to do and still has the roller skates."
Bendis continued, "Years ago, we were going through all the characters at a Marvel retreat and asking, 'Beyond the fact that Marvel owns them, what are they about?' Let's break this down to the basic idea of what this character is. Someone had written down 'Tony is a boy with his toy.' A teen and his hot rod. There's something to that, with tony always building the coolest toy he can build."
The new series will be building on one particular loose thread from Kieron Gillen's Iron Man comic - the revelation that Tony was adopted by Howard and Maria Stark. Bendis discussed how his own experience with adopting children is influencing his story. "In my personal life, two of my four children are adopted and adoption is a very large part of my non-comic book life. Even over the years I've been offered to write graphic novels about adoption and the process, because people are interested in it and the new family dynamics that are overtaking our culture. I always kind of shy away from it because of the weird idea of writing a story about your kids. It's just a line I didn't want to cross. But this? Kieron set me up beautifully here. Now, we have adult Tony Stark who has a lot of confidence in the world but has always had other things he wasn't confident about. There will be a quest here to find out who he is and where he came from. That's very interesting and exciting. We have this cool new armor and almost a new man in Tony Stark who is going to try to figure out what he's really made of. What drives him, and what makes him so unique?"
Like all of Marvel's post-Secret Wars comics, Invincible Iron Man #1 will pick up eight months after Secret Wars and offer a new status quo for Tony Stark. As Bendis explained, that allowed him to overhaul the Iron Man franchise and address the areas that need work. "What does Tony have, and what doesn't he have? The mythology has a lot of very cool things, but the villains bench is not as deep as some of his peers. That's not to say he doesn't have some cool supervillains that are specific to him, one of which will be showing up in the very first issue. But it's not as deep a bench as, let's say, Spider-Man."
Bendis later revealed that his goal is to give Iron Man his own Magneto-esque nemesis. "There are people with a different idea of what the future should be. Tony is fighting for a futurist ideal, and someone else is fighting for a different one, so they'll have different opinions about what the world will be. Tony needs his Magneto. It's not that they believe in something different, it's that they have a different way to go about it."
Fans of previous Iron Man runs can take heart that Bendis is looking to past series for inspiration, including recent books like Gillen's Iron Man and Tom Taylor's recently concluded Superior Iron Man and older stories like Matt Fraction's Invincible Iron Man, Warren Ellis' Extremis storyline and even Bob Layton's lengthy Iron Man run. Bendis confirmed that the events of Superior Iron Man will directly play into the new series. "Everything in that run will be touched upon. Things in our book will happen because of that one. Nothing from Tony's life in terms of continuity will be ignored." Brevoort elaborated that the ties to Superior will be made clear in the early panels of Invincible Iron Man #1. "Where Tony is now, it's all result of where he's been over the last few years, from Tom and Kieron and Matt."
Bendis also confirmed that Iron Man's fellow Avengers will be appearing in the book, with special emphasis placed on Steve Rogers, who was last seen fighting Tony while the world ended in The Avengers #44. Bendis said of Steve and Tony, "I think they challenge each other in ways others do not. With Steve's status quo being what it is, there are new layers to explore."
However, expect the focus to remain on Tony and his new status quo. "One reason I'm excited about doing Tony's book is that every time I've written him, it's been part of a big event or a big team," said Bendis. "The idea here is to really get under Tony's skin and examine Tony. You will feel his place in the Marvel Universe but I want these storylines to stand on their own. I think that's what fans of Tony want out of this book." Bendis also said that there are no immediate plans for a crossover with other ANAD Marvel books.
Interestingly, Bendis revealed that he was inspired by one of the final scenes from Iron Man 3, where Tony picks up a screwdriver from the wreckage of his Malibu home and smirks. "There's no Iron Man 4 coming in the next couple years because there's all these other movie things coming, so this is my Iron Man 4. This is what I would do with Tony and that screwdriver. You see that screwdriver in the first issue as an Easter egg.
Invincible Iron Man #1 is slated to ship in October 2015. Sta tuned to IGN Comics as Marvel reveals more about their post-Secret Wars plans.
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