Ultimate Iron Man Review

[Reviews on this site will mostly be fairly informal]

This comic, when first announced, was a hot-button topic. It was supposed to be a major coup by Marvel comics: award winning, best selling sci-fi author Orson Scott Card has agreed to write a superhero comic book! But, Rich Johnston's weekly column Lying in the Gutters over at Comic Book Resources started the debate by pointing out some of Orson Scott Card's more "reactionary" views on homosexuality. Many fans declared that OSC should not be writing a comic, since his views were apparently too out of the mainstream. Others expressed fears that he would use his position as an author to write a story bashing gays or something.

[It should be noted that OSC is a practicing and orthodox Mormon (a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints), so his views on homosexuality reflect his faith].

Anyway - the actual first issue of the series is here, and it is a great comic. OSC's roots as a sci-fi author really show, as the pseudo-science used in many comic books is given a more plausible explanation than most comic book science has. In fact, the science behind Ultimate Iron Man functions as just as much of a character as the main characters.

And the main characters are well-drawn, vital and whole. Going beyond most comic characterization, OSC shows off his flair for dialogue and allows the characters to be unique, individual and as fully developed as any character in his novels.

As for the homosexuality issue? Never comes up. In fact, the vision of heterosexual marriage shown in this comic is far from ideal. There's plenty of unfaithfulness and adultery going around, plus a bit of tragic true love. There is no attempt by OSC to push and agenda here (except he obviously has a dim view of the extremely rich - but I don't see activists complaining about the poor treatment of the upper class in literature).

But anyone who has bothered to read any of OSC's work would realize he saves his condemnation of homosexuals for his non-fiction. In his fiction, homosexual men have appeared only twice - in Songmaster and the Homecoming series - and in both cases, the men were portrayed sympathetically and treated with respect.

In any case, I doubt sexual politics will show up at all. Heck, Tony Stark (Iron Man) didn't even appear in this issue, except as a fetus and this was his comic!