Invincible Iron Man #2: Nuff Said!

It's a new era for Tony Stark. If by new you mean he's got another new suit of armor and he's making yet another attempt to be less of an arrogant prick. By that standard, it's a new era for Tony Stark every other week. But this time, he really, really means it. Sure, he's ditched Pepper Potts and alienated damn near every friend he's ever had. He can still cry himself to sleep on top of a pile of money while banging supermodels.

But Brian Michael Bendis is doing his best to make this version of Tony Stark as charismatic and likable as Robert Downey Jr. is in real life. It's a tall, if not impossible order. He laid the foundation in Invincible Iron Man #1. He tries to build on that foundation in Invincible Iron Man #2. Does anything he build last longer than freshly painted wall in Downtown Detroit? That's what I hope to determine and I hope to do so without sobering up.

So now Dr. Doom is no longer a god. He’s no longer wearing that badass armor and cape. He now looks like a model for Jos. A Bank. And what’s Iron Man’s first instinct? Shoot him. Can’t say I blame him. Can’t say I’m surprised that Doom blocked it without breaking a sweat, courtesy of magic. He may look like an extra on Law and Order, but he’s still Doom. And he’s remarkably calm about it. He’s gone from looking evil and imposing to looking refined and well-dressed, but still evil as fuck. I say it’s an upgrade.

Tony Starks’ next instinct…attack with the Hulk Buster. All he does is ruffle up Doom’s die. Now, Tony just looks foolish and it’s entertaining as fuck. Sure, he doesn’t shoot a cosmic entity with a giant gun, but he might as well be that kid in gym class who pissed his gym shorts one day. Not gonna lie. I enjoyed this.

There’s still the matter of why the fuck Tony came to Latveria in the first place. Short of an orgy involving Emma Frost clones, there’s not much that could draw him to Latveria. But Madam Masque apparently is kicking up some shit and Doom doesn’t want to get any stains on his fancy new suit. Can’t say I blame him.

We don’t really learn much. And Tony retains what’s left of his dignity by not attacking Doom again. He opts to follow him into the ruins of his castle. I guess Doom takes pity on those who make an ass of themselves. He says Madam Masque is after some dangerous artifacts. They’re the kind that can tear the world a new asshole and on a planet that routinely attracts cosmic forces, alien invasions, and Thanos, it already has enough as it stands. So he’s going to help Iron Man. I guess if anyone is going to tear new assholes into this world at this point, it’s going to be Doom and he’s doing to do it in a nice suit, damn it.

Enter the Wand of Watoomb. It sounds the Voodoo name I would give to my penis. It’s a painfully generic mystical artifact. So of course Doom has one and being the nice sociopath he is, he lends it to Tony. But there’s another and that’s the one Madam Masque is after. And he trusts Tony to take care of it. That or he’s just expecting Tony to make an ass of himself again. Either way, Doom wins.

There’s a lot more talking. We don’t learn much else other than Madam Masque stole a fake wand and Dr. Doom isn’t in a hurry to rule over Latveria again. Hell, he was a god for a while. After that, ruling over a country would be like going from drinking imported vodka to expired light beer. We really have no fucking clue what Doom is going to do now other than look good in overpriced suits. He seems content to let his country fuck itself while he watches Tony Stark make an ass of himself.

Whatever his reasons, he makes sure Tony Stark leaves with a deflated scrotum. When Tony gets all cranky and paranoid around Doom, as most reasonable people in the Marvel universe are one to do, Doom just shrugs his shoulders and teleports him across the world and in a fucking zoo no less. And he does it without breaking a sweat and with more swag than three Kanye West albums.

Not gonna lie. I enjoyed that too. And now I kind of want to read a comic about this new Dr. Doom. Marvel, if you’re reading this, get on it before Fox makes another shitty movie about it!

Finally, we get to Madam Masque. So far, she’s done nothing we haven’t seen in a shitty Robert De Niro movie, stealing fancy shit and shooting people along the way. She finds the woman who gave her the location of the Wand of Watoomb, says his info was bullshit, and she shoots her and the guy who thought he would be getting his dick wet tonight. I feel bad for the guy’s dick, but not much else.

Since there are no more people left to kill, Madam Masque decides to shower. It’s barely as sexy as it sounds. Then, being the kind of guy who sneaks up on naked women, Iron Man shows up in the room. He’s not in his armor. He’s just there to ask questions. Madam Masque is understandably pissed and wearing just a robe no less. I’m sure Tony has confronted many pissed off, minimally clothed women in his life so there’s really nothing special about this scene. Angry, half-naked women as common as hangovers, minus the fun of being drunk.

They barely talk about the people she just shot. Tony tries to ask questions as calmly as he can in front of a half-naked women. Madam Masque responds with generic bitchiness. She claims to know nothing about what’s going on with Dr. Doom. For some reason, Tony thinks this is terrifying because it means Doom might actually have told him the truth. And that’s more horrifying than Thanos on crystal meth. Can’t say I disagree. But beyond the bitching and confusion, there’s nothing all that exciting other than a beautiful woman in a bathrobe.

Eventually, Madam Masque gets pissed off enough to attack. It doesn’t work. Turns out Tony’s new armor has stealth mode because of course he does. He’s Tony fucking Stark. If he can build a giant gun to shoot the Phoenix Force, he can build a stealth suit to protect him from a pissed off, half-naked woman.

The problem is this pissed off half-naked woman has another trick. After failing to land her first punch, she does…something. It could be magic. It could be some fancy new weapon. I really have no fucking clue other than it big, flashy, and not in a Transformer movie. It’s just a generic spectacle, which pretty much sums up this comic in a nutshell…well, that and Dr. Doom looks damn good in a suit.

So...is it awesome?

Well, the new, less menacing version of Dr. Doom is pretty damn awesome. That's for sure. Everything else? Well, I'd need a more than a few joints to answer that question fully. For the sake of my lungs, I'll offer a partial answer. Yes, there is a fair amount of awesome in Invincible Iron Man #2. Granted, not a whole lot happens other than Tony Stark making an ass of himself and while he's sober no less. But there's still a story worth telling here involving Madam Masque. There are still too many blanks and nobody's going to get a raging boner waiting for the next issue. But still, it's Tony Stark making an ass of himself. Like the Indianapolis Colts special teams fuck-up last Sunday Night, some shit never gets old.

Final Score: 6 out of 10