Heroes Reborn: Iron Man

The Invincible Iron Man (1996) #1-12

by Scott Lobdell, Jeph Loeb, Jim Lee

Iron Man left two lives behind when he vanished, but can he avoid his former mistakes in his new one? The armored Avenger takes on Hydra, Heralds and the Hulk - and the eyes of the Marvel Universe are upon him in the form of Loki, the Watcher and Onslaught himself! Featuring Doc Samson and... or rather as ...the Abomination! Plus: Rebel O'Reilly, later of Thunderbolts fame! Collects Iron Man (Vol. 2) #1-12

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Graphic Novels Comics, Superheroes, Fiction, Comic Book

336 pages, Paperback

First published November 8, 2006

About the author

Scott Lobdell (born 1960) is an American comic book writer.

He is mostly known for his work throughout the 1990s on Marvel Comics' X-Men-related titles specifically Uncanny X-Men, the main title itself, and the spin-off series that he conceived with artist Chris Bachalo, Generation X. Generation X focused on a number of young mutant students who attempted to become superheroes in their own right at a separate school with the guidance of veteran X-related characters Banshee and Emma Frost. He also had writing stints on Marvel's Fantastic Four, Alpha Flight, and The Adventures of Cyclops and Phoenix mini-series with artist Gene Ha. He wrote the script to Stan Lee's Mosaic and an upcoming film from POW Entertainment featuring Ringo Starr. He also participated in the Marvel Comics and Image Comics (from Jim Lee's WildStorm) crossover mini-series WildC.A.T.s/X-Men.

Reviews

[David Dalton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read all these issues years ago and have them in my collection. Buried deep. Hard to get to. This was a great chance to read this saga once again. But oh my goodness, 24-25 years ago!?!?!
Just take a look at all the writers and artists involved. Wow! I zipped right thru what had to be something like 19 or 20 comics. 506 Kindle Fire pages!

After a while I will tackle the Avengers and Captain America collections of Heroes Reborn from my digital library.

[Justin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back in the mid 90's, Marvel handed control over their "flagship" titles (the ones that didn't start with X or Spider) to the hotshot artists from Image Comics for a year. The goal behind the "Heroes Reborn" project was that guys like Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld could somehow repeat the runaway success they enjoyed with Marvel earlier in the decade and boost sales for Captain America, The Avengers, Fantastic Four and Iron Man. The characters were removed from continuity for the duration of the project so that Lee, Liefeld & company could get creative without bothering with decades of convoluted continuity. You know, just like the Ultimate Marvel Universe, only with bad writers. Sales did in fact increase for the four titles, but they were all marred by poor writing, uneven artwork (did anybody really expect any of these artists to draw 12 consecutive issues of anything?), and a needlessly complex new continuity.

The Heroes Reborn reboot of Iron Man was the title I was most interested in. I'm a big fan of the character, but by the 90's I had pretty much given up on the series, and Marvel had all but ruined the Tony Stark character (making him a time-traveling super-villain and replacing him with his teenage self) before this relaunch. Jim Lee was overseeing Iron Man, so there was at least some chance it wouldn't totally suck. Captain America and the Avengers didn't have a prayer with Liefeld at the helm.

Iron Man was written by Lee, Scott Lobdell, and Jeph Loeb during the 13-issue run. They put together a decent "back to basics" storyline that soon spiraled out of control. Early issues included the birth of the Hulk and conflicts with Hydra, but the sporadic Avengers crossovers, time traveling, and indistinguishable supporting cast made the title too hard to keep up with.

The artwork was uneven as well. Whilce Portacio was the main artist for the series, and managed to draw nearly 5 full issues. He has a very unique and, well...ugly (seriously, it's all scrunched faces and hideous long hair) style that was all wrong for a shining streamlined character like Iron Man. Fortunately Ryan Benjamin, Ed Benes, and even Jim Lee were able to give the book a better look.

The Heroes Reborn: Iron Man trade paperback contains the first 12 issues of the series. Issue #13 is not included, since it prominently featured characters from Jim Lee's Wildstorm Universe, which is now owned by rival publisher DC Comics. The omission of issue #13 doesn't harm the overall story, because after a few issues the story is too intertwined with the other Heroes Reborn titles to make sense anyway. Marvel did a great job in terms of paper quality, coloring, and including all of the various covers and bonus material for the series.

This series was a failure in just about every way, but at the time it really shook up the status quo. And if nothing else, the interested it generated in the return of the "real" Iron Man to the Marvel Universe helped put the character back to "major league" status with Marvel. If you're a serious Iron Man fan, it's worth checking out. I can't give it a much higher recommendation than that though.

[Brad · Rating 2 out of 5]

Fun comic book series, sometimes felt more like a Hulk series than an Iron Man one. Not a fan of the art style but the story was interesting

[Brendan Mckillip · Rating 1 out of 5]

I remember when Marvel staged the Heroes Reborn stunt back in the 90s and let some of the kids from Image Comics re-imagine a bunch of Marvel’s non-mutant heroes. I read and collected Jim Lee’s take on the Fantastic Four and enjoyed it. I also read the first issue or two of Iron Man and found it perplexing and didn’t keep up with it. None the less, when I was able to pick up the collected Heroes Reborn Iron Man series dirt cheap I decided to get it a go.

Wow

Most of the writing credits are given to Jim Lee and Scott Lobdell. Jim Lee is known for his remarkable artwork and visual storytelling, not his writing. Scott Lobdell is a writer who runs hot or cold for me. Apparently the two of them together created an absolute train wreck of a book. They just kept throwing characters at us. Their “comic book” science was so bad that it didn’t even make sense in a comic book. I never understood why any of the characters were doing what they were doing, nor did I care. Certain issues seemed to be missing entire scenes. It was remarkable that the writing could be so bad for so many issues.

And the art. Whew.

I recall Whilce Portacio being a very hot and popular artist at the time he was tapped to for the art chores on this new Iron Man series. For the life of me I can’t figure out why anyone was a fan of his back then. He demonstrates no skill for visual storytelling. He leaves most of the page blank with just a few poorly designed panels sprinkled on the page. His doesn’t seem to be able to draw basic anatomy. His characters faces are absolutely hideous while perched atop grossly elongated necks. The only thing that he seems to have going for his art is that he could design a mean looking Iron Man suit and put together an eye catching cover. But that was it.

Thank heavens Ryan Benjamin and Terry Shoemaker dropped at different times to take over the penciling of the book.

[Kyle · Rating 2 out of 5]

This collection was a real struggle for me. I had a difficult time caring for Tony Stark in this reboot, the writing was fairly skeletal and the action clunked along at times. Not until the series crosses over with appearances by FF and Hulk does the story become a little bit interesting.

The artwork was standard, the dialogue flat... Just everything you would expect in your average, everyday reboot.

2.5/5

[Sineala · Rating 1 out of 5]

Heroes Reborn (also generally known as Volume 2 in some areas of fandom because it consists of Avengers, Cap, FF, and IM volume 2, the first time these comics had ever renumbered) is, as we all know, a disastrous Marvel event of 1996. Marvel was literally going bankrupt and farmed out their comics to creative teams from other companies for about a year. Results were Not Good. Even by the standards of mid-90s comics, results were really Not Good. Then Marvel was saved by... I don't know, I think maybe the X-Men movie deal? I'm not gonna look this up. Anyway. In 1998 they started putting out comics that were a lot better -- my very favorite runs for at least three different series are the 1998 runs, so, seriously, a lot better, and I still have some other 1998 runs I haven't read.

Anyway. We don't talk about Heroes Reborn.

I have never read any of the v2/Heroes Reborn comics before, other than seeing isolated panels. Because, you know, they're bad. Then someone asked me what I thought of Iron Man v2 specifically and I was about to tell them that it was bad. Then I thought, "No, you know what? I haven't actually read any of v2 and I should form my own opinion and Iron Man v2 is only 13 issues. So I'm just going to read it."

It's still bad.

(If you're reading this and you're like, "Hey, there are only 12 issues in the trade!" that's because issue #13 of all four v2 series was a crossover with Wildstorm and presumably cannot be reprinted for rights reasons. IM #13 featured Stormwatch, which is probably the series that's retained the most name recognition solely because The Authority spun out of it. You're not missing much if you don't read #13.)

It's not The Worst Comic Book Ever, because The Crossing is the worst comic book ever, but that doesn't mean that this is good. It's only medium bad.

The art is extremely 1990s and the design of Tony's armor is awful.

The plot of all the v2 issues is that the heroes were thrown onto a different world (Counter-Earth) after fighting Onslaught, and they were given new backstories and memories to match the new backstories. The way this is treated in the exposition is as if it were part of the existing backstory that you already knew, so all the characters will be talking about things that you have literally never heard of but without enough detail to tell you what they are. In this case it's that Tony is weirdly mean and heartless at first and there's a guy called Conner "Rebel" O'Reilly who was also Tony's old friend, and he used to be the first Iron Man until he died. Of course, he's not really dead. This is comics! No one stays dead in comics except-- actually, all three of those people are alive now. No one stays dead in comics!

Three of these 13 issues are three separate crossovers across the line of the Heroes Reborn comics, the kind where it's four parts spread out across all the issues, so that doesn't really help it make more sense. I could also have read Avengers, Cap, and FF, but I have suffered enough today.

Also, they don't actually tell you how they get home in this series -- that happens in Heroes Reborn: The Return, which is a separate miniseries. (Please note this is different from Heroes Return.)

Is any of this good? Honestly, it was kind of interesting and surprising to me to see that elements of this series had ended up in the MCU. It makes sense, both because I know they did this with Ults and also because this and Ults are series trying to reimagine comics without requiring you to know existing continuity. I just hadn't realized they'd taken anything from IM v2.

IM v2 contains canonical Tony/Pepper (this is actually in The Return, but close enough) as well as a backstory where Tony and Bruce Banner are BFFs, and neither of these things were true of 616 before the MCU happened. But here we've got Tony and Pepper sleeping together, and Tony and Bruce are great friends who were roommates in college. A sizable portion of the plot is Hulk-related and features Tony trying to help Bruce out because he's his friend. Which was a little weird. And I'm not just saying that because Hulk is among my least favorite Avengers, but that didn't really make me like this more.

So, yeah. There are a couple of interesting elements, but ideally I don't want to read this again.

[Marko Perisic · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have been fascinated by this tumultuous time of Marvel's history so much that despite all the commons criticisms I have decided to read Jim Lee's Fantastic Four reboot. Albeit not great, I can say it was surprisingly enjoyable as this late 90s experiment. The experience encouraged me to read the only other Heroes Reborn title I had any interest in.

Oh boy, it was exactly a soulless as I expected Fantastic Four to be. There really is no much coherent story to be found in these twelve collected issues; a discouraging fact when even your characters are paper thin. If somebody believed this was supposed to be the new origin of Iron Man, I would throw a fit. Tony Stark's character development carries no weight and you are merely reminded that he is supposed to have gone through one. Genius-billionaire-playboy-philanthropist ends up being just an ordinary heroic schmuck.

The art was also a disappointment. I liked Jim Lee's art on his Heroes Reborn Fantastic Four, and he has done a little work here as well with the help of some others like Whilce Portacio. Sadly, the art is not the reason why anyone should buy this comic. It is mostly average and rarely is it amazing. The backgrounds are so minimalist and the shadows are sometimes so thick that I wonder if I am looking at an unfinished work. From the covers I was even looking forward to seeing the new, 90s extreme, armor design, which looks much worse on the inside.

When it comes to good stuff, I like the concept of Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner and Dr Doom all knowing each other in college even though you could argue it makes the world seem smaller. It's a neat idea of old friends finding each other after they have all taken different paths to satisfy their own ambitions.
The scene of Tony witnessing the death of his friend through the recordings of his helmet is also conceptually great, as is the scene of Tony and DOOM fighting whilst they travel through time.

All conceptually great, but not in execution. I would pass this Iron Man here, and you shouldn't even care.

[Kirby Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Heroes Reborn series reprints a good attempt one-year effort to re-imagine essential characters in the Marvel Comics universe. This represents the first time Marvel attempted to restart and modernize storylines launched by Stan Lee in the '60s. The storyline weaves through three other Heroes Reborn titles (Iron Man, Captain America, and The Avengers), so readers must have access to all four to keep pace with and appreciate the scope of these titles. Demands to introduce more and more characters rushes the action at times, but readers familiar these longtime fan favorites will enjoy the experience.

[Lillian Francis · Rating 2 out of 5]

So I read the first six issues because apparently #6 had some bearing on Onslaught (it didn't really, Onslaught appeared in a panel).
Nasty artwork, and I mean proper nasty, ugly lines, and a confusing mess of a storyline. The art is better in #6 but that's about all.
I can't bring myself to read any further especially as it now crosses over with the Avengers titles which were written by Leifield.

[Quentin Wallace · Rating 3 out of 5]

This title suffered from the same thing the others in the series did: inconsistency in the creative team. Whilce Portacio was only around a few issues before the artist changed. The story didn't seem really cohesive either. I think the writers were trying to put too much into the number of issues they were working with. It was still a decent read, but didn't live up to expectations.

[Jdetrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are a few interesting ideas here, but there's not enough room to really explore them. The writing is ok, but the art is uniformly ugly, and the characterizations are way off, without being interesting. A waste of a year.

[Pedro Espada · Rating 5 out of 5]

Le pongo 5 por el sabor a los 90! Para compensar tanta crítica, porque fue una apuesta valiente y novedosa por reinventar, por los dibujos steampunk y personajes ciclados y poderosos,lo dicho puros 90! Me lo he pasado genial leyéndolo.

[Doc Pastor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Lo mejor que puede decirse de la etapa de Heroes Reborn, es que puedes leerla muy rápido. Una época que no volverá, por suerte.

Y con todo, tiene su encanto.

[Sherri · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow. This was truly terrible.

[allowableman2 · Rating 1 out of 5]

This may be one of the worst Iron Man books ever.

[Emily Green · Rating 3 out of 5]

Human beings crave movie sequels. We want characters from one story to meet characters from another story. We love when the imaginary world that a writer created in one book ties into the world created in another book. Even when we fly into a town we have never been before, we seek out connections: do you know my cousin, professor, mechanic? We hate the idea that a story might be finite or that a character quits breathing on the last page. Marvel Universe often satisfies our desires. Their serials, like soap operas, allow characters to continue on through plots as long as they remain beloved to readers. They can die and come back to life, be redefined by a new writer or artist, unite with a character we did not even know that they knew. They spawn spinoffs and new friends and villains that can continue on until there is no longer a printed medium, and will probably continue in digital format.

And again, it is the Marvel Universe who often does this with great triumph. However, Iron Man: Heroes Reborn does not come together as successfully as other compiled issues of comic books. Heroes Reborn, written by Scott Lodbell and Jeph Loeb, collects issues 1-12 of Iron Man, and includes origin stories for Iron Man, Hulk, She Hulk, and Dr. Samson, among others. Dr. Doom, the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and the Hulkbusters all make an appearance, in addition to Iron Man’s usual cast of characters. In the case of this collection, the collected ensemble proves to be too much.

Hydra, a terrorist cell out to get Tony Stark (the true identity of Iron Man), first presents itself in the first issue, and then reappears among the other plot lines. By the time this plot line concludes, it has not only becomes lost among other stories, but it also reaches an anticlimax. True, Rebel is reborn, which allows for interesting emotional work for Tony Stark, but the conclusion of the story is a complete letdown.

Understandably, Marvel wants to sell comics, and they know that we crave the connections that are created in the fantastical Marvel Universe, but when characters appear merely to make an appearance, it seems a bit much. Surely, the story could have done without the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four would have sufficed.

Overall, Heroes Reborn was entertaining, but it did not reach its full potential.

[Megan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll start off by saying that I'm a huge Iron Man fan. When it comes to Marvel, he's one of my favorite super heroes. With that being said, this anthology is just sort of average. The anthology itself chronicles the new start to the Iron Man mythos in the 90s when Marvel briefly outsourced the Iron Man title along with several other popular titles to previous Marvel employees over at Image Comics.

This reboot starts out fairly clunky and it took me awhile to really start caring for our beloved Tony Stark and his co-horts Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan. The biggest negative about this anthology is that it is missing several issues in between story arcs as it contains solely Iron Man titles. Therefore, a four part story towards the end of the anthology only has one issue. Readers are left to try and pull the story together from the facts contained in that one title.

The anthology is also a bit slow at getting into the groove of things, but it picks up towards the end with the entrance of characters like the Fantastic Four, The Hulk, She-Hulk, Doc Samson and Victor Von Doom. I can imagine that later volumes would be much better paced and interesting.

The positive side to this anthology is that unlike other titles, this one really seems to connect issue to issue. Each one can be stand alone if a reader wants it to be, but at the same time it blends seamlessly into the next issue, which is far different than a lot of the episodic X-Men issues from their early anthologies.

[Adam Fisher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read all 4 Heroes Reborn graphic novels at the same time, in continuity order.

This Volume of Iron Man felt very much like older Iron Man comics. It was lacking the current day Iron Man flair and thus my opinion of it was lower. Overall, it was pretty good as well, and the origin of the armor was very interesting.

Recommend.

[Sans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Arguably the best of of the pocket universe AUs I read over the weekend, but that's not really saying much. Tony was Tony and he became a real boy. That's...pretty much it. Though I was surprised by how much of this series was dedicated to Hulk. Meh. Whatever.

[Little Timmy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was not impressed with Marvel's attempt at a relaunch of many of it's main titles. The art was Ok and the stories were not horrible but I just couldn't seem to get into the flow of the new series. I will give it a Recommended as it's a good read just not to my taste.