Invincible Iron Man #20

In this month's issue of Invincible Iron Man; Tony Stark is a vegetable, and his friends have to save him! But is this issue worth reading, or do we need to pull the plug on this series? Read our review to find out.

Invincible Iron Man is a book that I've had a love/hate relationship with as of late; while I've loved the general direction and redemption of Tony Stark's character this book is giving us, the last story arc was stretched way too thin for my tastes, even if the beginning and ending were able to satisfy my tastes. Still, the show must go on, even if the protagonist is a freaking vegetable. So is this issue actually worth your money, let alone your attention? Actually, it is; this is the best issue of this series so far, and sweet lord is it good.

The story here is almost like an Iron Man version of Captain America: Reborn; Cap, Thor's alter ego, Pepper, Maria Hill, and Black Widow are all by Tony's bedside receiving his final message to the world and deciding whether or not/how they are going to revive Tony from his current state. Tony's final message is about a 4-5 page hologram where he explains the fact that he knows he's been a dick over the past couple of year, but that he isn't going to apologize and that he'll come back if they can forgive him, and some stuff about how bad Osborn is going to mess up and ruin his own stuff. The scene is easily my favorite part of the issue, hands down. Meanwhile, in Tony's mind, Tony is stuck in a recurring dream where he keeps dying before he can do the thing that he obviously needs to do. There is also some stuff with Osborn and Madame Masque, and it seems that Madame Masque doesn't intend on giving up on Tony that easily. Like I said before, story wise, compared to the last arc's overly drawn out story it's nice to have something that looks like it may be moving a bit faster; it'll help that this arc is only going to be 5 issues long.

Art wise, I'll say what I've said time and again; Salvador Larroca's art just doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't necessarily look bad, but I just flat out hate it.Fortunately, or unfortunately, we have a Jonathan Hickman cover that is just fantastic. Really, this is a very, very pretty cover. It really makes me wish Marvel would have Hickman draw this series, because he needs to draw more for them. Still, what we get here is nice; it even has Hickman's trademark circle fetish worked in here. Seriously though, I've kept this thing at the top of my stack all week so that I could look at it's pretty art, and I never, ever do that; well, except for when I kept Amazing Spider-Man #600's JRJR cover out, but that too was a very sexy cover.

Anyway, great covers aside, this is a fantastic issue; if you're looking to jump onto this book, this'd be a great point to do so. If you thought about leaving or did leave during the last arc, jump the Hell back on, because this is really getting good again! I look forward to the next issue.