Iron Man 2.0 #4
Publisher: Marvel
Writer: Nick Spencer
Artist: Ariel Olivetti
Cover: Salvador Larroca & Frank D’Armata
“Palmer Addley Is Dead pt 4”: For anyone hoping to get a glimpse of War Machine’s new armor in action, you will have to just be satisfied with the cover. This issue doesn’t have a single shot of Rhodey. Instead we finally get a peek into the type of man Palmer Addley was/is. Extreme methods were taken to keep this guy’s real life and files hidden, but when you have Tony Stark in your corner I guess the impossible becomes very possible. So Rhodey sends one of his intelligence consultants in to get as much info as she can about the mysterious guy who shot himself in the head, but is still somehow managing to carry out terrorist attacks on a global scale.
Spencer tells this part of the story by having Kaylie reading a bunch of transcripts, and as boring as it was for her to sit there all day and read those, I felt the same way while reading this issue. I wasn’t able to see anywhere during this story that would help to reinforce the excellent set up by Spencer in the earlier issues about Palmer Addley. The various individuals give recounts of what they remember about Addley, and most of it is par for the course. A cute little kid, then the troubled teenage years with a few tragic events thrown in, but nothing that makes me think this file was that important to bury the way it had been. We do get a new interior artist for this issue, and Olivetti does pretty well since his characters look really good. The only issue I’ve had is the photo shopped look of the some of the backgrounds or the lack thereof at times.
Though some of what Spencer reveals about Addley was nice, most of what happened in this issue could have been summed up in a few pages and the story moved on to something better. Considering that next issue is crossing over into Fear Itself, I’m wondering if this tale was stretched out just to make it to next issue. A thought reinforced when I look at the splash pages that held nothing too exciting, but took up quite a bit of room this issue. It’s a slap in the face to the fans when an event causes the story before a tie-in to just be sub par. The next issue features Iron Fist and the Immortal Weapons, so I’m expecting something fun and worth my hard earned money.
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