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Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle
So, a by-product of my looooong flight back from Bali to Germany via Singapore was that I came into possession of "Demon in a Bottle", the trade volume collecting those issues containing what was arguably the most famous storyline involving Tony Stark pre-Civil War. Indeed, if there was one thing vaguely comic-knowledgable people who weren't actually reading his stories were aware of about Iron Man/Tony Stark before Civil War (and of course before the more recent movie), it probably was that he's an alcoholic. Me, I was familiar with flashbacks in later stories, and excerpts via pic spams, but I hadn't read the complete storyarc, written by David Michelinie and Bob Layton. I must say, bad late 70s hair and purple prose ("Namor shrugs - a motion made sensuously graceful by its quietly controlled power") not withstanding, it still holds up very well and accomplishes the very tricky feat of telling a credible story about a well-established character descending into an addiction in a genre that demands regular action scenes while doing so in an emotionally credible way. (I'm looking at you, Willow Rosenberg.) (Or rather, at you, Mutant Enemy team in s6.)
Which I had been curious about before and which brief flashbacks and depictions of individual panels could not tell me. Incidentally, ever since seeing the movie, I'm wondering a similar thing, i.e. whether or not they're going to do this particular storyline in one of the sequels. There are some signs they might - when Tony first is introduced, he's depicted drinking (in fact, he keeps drinking through the film, but switches to coffee post-Afghanistan while working on the armor), for example - but how to sell the crowd drawn to a fast paced popcorn movie on something as inherently dark and not-metaphorical or otherwise removed from reality as alcoholism is indeed the question. Well, Demon in the Bottle provides one possible solution. The storyarc offers an external foe, Justin Hammer (yes, that last name is impossible to take serious ever again, thanks, Joss), whose minions keep Tony busy with action scenes for about two third of the volume, while the drinking increases and increases until it takes over completely at the end. Mind you, the abrupt ending is about the only thing which really wouldn't work in a film. It doesn't work in the comics if you take Demon in a Bottle as a standalone but if you read it with the awareness that Tony's resolution to recover will be broken again, sending him into another spiral that ends in the gutter until he gets on the wagon again on which he has been staying ever since, that is not a problem. False first time recovery attempt optimism is pretty usual in such cases.
As villains go, Justin Hammer isn't really interesting, nor are his minions, but everyone else is, plus as the storyarc itself points out, Hammer never was the real problem. Tony's girlfriend du jour, Bethany Cabe, is a credible (and rare) attempt at a non-superpowered female action heroine (she heads a security service and is a bodyguard herself) and immediately wins by pointing out how much Iron Man sucks as a personal body guard. (Seriously, that cover story was one of the lamest in the Marvelverse. Which is why I have no problem with Tony having outed himself for good in both comicverse nad movieverse alike.) Since he's, you know, never actually around when Tony is in any danger. She's also organizing a rescue attempt with Rhodey and later staging an intervention with Jarvis, both of which she does with flair. I approve of Bethany, though of course I know that relationship was dooooomed.
Jarvis gets one of the most painful character scenes when a drunken Tony lashes out at him and Jarvis hands over his letter of resignation the next morning. (Someone better versed in Batman lore than me will have to say whether or not Alfred ever did that to provide Bruce with a highly necessary emotional slap.) It's to the credit of the writers that they didn't shy away from any of the ugly sides of alcoholism, whether it's the insults and blame of friends, the self-pity, or the increasing loss of any kind of temper control. In terms of character continuity beyond this particular story arc, there is a scene just about summing up something that can be observed in many an Iron Man storyline, particularily current day ones - he loves being Iron Man, it's being Tony Stark he has a problem with, and the armor is definitely a secondary addiction/escape from that. (Though of course this stops working when you're so drunk you can't control any of your high tech.) Speaking of long term continuity, two things immediately made me grin: a) Namor and Tony fight on sight. Again. Of course they do. Namor is that kind of guy. (And now I'm having fond flashbacks to Henry Hellrung pwning Namor in The Order.) and b) we get what seems to be the original Steve-trains-Tony-in-martial-arts scene. You know, the one Tony Stark keeps having flashbacks to in just about every big emotional crisis ever afterwards, whether it's his jealous armor kidnapping him (don't ask - or rather, do, this is why I can't hate Joe Quesada, he wrote actual Tony/Sentient Armor canon, proving yet again there is no crack like Marvel) or, well, that Civil War thing. (In which while beating each other up for real Tony and Steve have fond flash backs of beating each other up for fun in Christos Cage' Casualties of War.) Unfortunately, the original inspirational training lessons, as opposed to Tony's flashbacks to same, are not slashy at all (which tells you something about Tony's way of remembering things, I suppose), but they do contain the priceless "You're in surprisingly good shape for a desk jockey"/ "I play a lot of tennis"/ "Uh huh" exchange.
One more thing: we also get a flashack to the original origin story, in which our hero is kidnapped in Vietnam. I must say, the updated Afghanistan version (as told in Warren Ellis' Extremis, which is what the movie used) works better for me, though the Vietnam original at least doesn't make you wonder about Yinsen's name. Oh, and the colourists really fail sometimes, the narrative prose waxes on about Bethany's "emerald eyes" while the panel showes them blue now and then.
Which I had been curious about before and which brief flashbacks and depictions of individual panels could not tell me. Incidentally, ever since seeing the movie, I'm wondering a similar thing, i.e. whether or not they're going to do this particular storyline in one of the sequels. There are some signs they might - when Tony first is introduced, he's depicted drinking (in fact, he keeps drinking through the film, but switches to coffee post-Afghanistan while working on the armor), for example - but how to sell the crowd drawn to a fast paced popcorn movie on something as inherently dark and not-metaphorical or otherwise removed from reality as alcoholism is indeed the question. Well, Demon in the Bottle provides one possible solution. The storyarc offers an external foe, Justin Hammer (yes, that last name is impossible to take serious ever again, thanks, Joss), whose minions keep Tony busy with action scenes for about two third of the volume, while the drinking increases and increases until it takes over completely at the end. Mind you, the abrupt ending is about the only thing which really wouldn't work in a film. It doesn't work in the comics if you take Demon in a Bottle as a standalone but if you read it with the awareness that Tony's resolution to recover will be broken again, sending him into another spiral that ends in the gutter until he gets on the wagon again on which he has been staying ever since, that is not a problem. False first time recovery attempt optimism is pretty usual in such cases.
As villains go, Justin Hammer isn't really interesting, nor are his minions, but everyone else is, plus as the storyarc itself points out, Hammer never was the real problem. Tony's girlfriend du jour, Bethany Cabe, is a credible (and rare) attempt at a non-superpowered female action heroine (she heads a security service and is a bodyguard herself) and immediately wins by pointing out how much Iron Man sucks as a personal body guard. (Seriously, that cover story was one of the lamest in the Marvelverse. Which is why I have no problem with Tony having outed himself for good in both comicverse nad movieverse alike.) Since he's, you know, never actually around when Tony is in any danger. She's also organizing a rescue attempt with Rhodey and later staging an intervention with Jarvis, both of which she does with flair. I approve of Bethany, though of course I know that relationship was dooooomed.
Jarvis gets one of the most painful character scenes when a drunken Tony lashes out at him and Jarvis hands over his letter of resignation the next morning. (Someone better versed in Batman lore than me will have to say whether or not Alfred ever did that to provide Bruce with a highly necessary emotional slap.) It's to the credit of the writers that they didn't shy away from any of the ugly sides of alcoholism, whether it's the insults and blame of friends, the self-pity, or the increasing loss of any kind of temper control. In terms of character continuity beyond this particular story arc, there is a scene just about summing up something that can be observed in many an Iron Man storyline, particularily current day ones - he loves being Iron Man, it's being Tony Stark he has a problem with, and the armor is definitely a secondary addiction/escape from that. (Though of course this stops working when you're so drunk you can't control any of your high tech.) Speaking of long term continuity, two things immediately made me grin: a) Namor and Tony fight on sight. Again. Of course they do. Namor is that kind of guy. (And now I'm having fond flashbacks to Henry Hellrung pwning Namor in The Order.) and b) we get what seems to be the original Steve-trains-Tony-in-martial-arts scene. You know, the one Tony Stark keeps having flashbacks to in just about every big emotional crisis ever afterwards, whether it's his jealous armor kidnapping him (don't ask - or rather, do, this is why I can't hate Joe Quesada, he wrote actual Tony/Sentient Armor canon, proving yet again there is no crack like Marvel) or, well, that Civil War thing. (In which while beating each other up for real Tony and Steve have fond flash backs of beating each other up for fun in Christos Cage' Casualties of War.) Unfortunately, the original inspirational training lessons, as opposed to Tony's flashbacks to same, are not slashy at all (which tells you something about Tony's way of remembering things, I suppose), but they do contain the priceless "You're in surprisingly good shape for a desk jockey"/ "I play a lot of tennis"/ "Uh huh" exchange.
One more thing: we also get a flashack to the original origin story, in which our hero is kidnapped in Vietnam. I must say, the updated Afghanistan version (as told in Warren Ellis' Extremis, which is what the movie used) works better for me, though the Vietnam original at least doesn't make you wonder about Yinsen's name. Oh, and the colourists really fail sometimes, the narrative prose waxes on about Bethany's "emerald eyes" while the panel showes them blue now and then.
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This needs to be remedied.
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