Ultimate Iron Man #1 Orson Scott Card and Andy Kubert

I've read several novels by Orson Scott Card and enjoyed many of them. If I hadn't enjoyed them I would not have gone back for more. He's the writer of the Ender series which has a wide and slightly fanatical following. I tired of his work after a while though. He only has a few things to say so he says them over and over again and mostly in the same way. So it wasn't a surprise that Ultimate Iron Man felt familiar. It was something of a surprise that it sucks so bad. I mean it could show a West Hollywood tranny a thing or two.

The cliche ridden story is filled with inept stupid people doing inept stupid things. Card obviously has a distorted idea of what a comicbook is and what you can get away with when writing one.

There are so many things wrong with this book and it hinges on so many people acting so moronically that I hardly know where to start.

How about biologists working with virus ridden monkeys wearing glass bowl helmets that can break so one of them can be infected with a genetically engineered virus and pass it on to her unborn son who will grow up to be super genius Tony Stark. It's the virus that makes his a genius you see.

How about a multi billionaire (Tony Stark's father) who has built and runs the biggest arms manufacturer in the United States unaware that his biggest rival is buying up stock in the company and colluding with Stark's soon to be ex-wife to use her stocks from the divorce settlement to take over the company. Howard Stark is a moron. He deserves to have his company stripped from him. He deserves to have his life's work destroyed.

Speaking of the life's work, the value of Stark stock goes down when it's announced that the company is developing a revolutionary form of armor for soldiers? And then the bad guy announces that he's going to destroy the research when he takes over the company?

This is just plain bad, stupid, horrible, incompetent writing.

The art doesn't thrill me either. Andy Kubert is a decent artist, but every other Marvel book looks the same these days. Isn't it time to stop raping the long dead corpse of The Authority. Ellis and Hitch finished their reconstruction of the modern superhero team over 5 years ago. Ellis started the process in Stormwatch almost ten years ago. Let's move on, shall we, please?

I'm just ranting uncontrollably now. Can you tell I'm angry? I'll stop now and leave you with just one more thought. I spent three bucks on this piece of crap and I WANT MY MONEY BACK!