As such, it's kind of a sad day when the state of the nation vis-à-vis a favorite comic character is such that you can look at the row of trade paperbacks at Borders and think, ... Well, what the hell, the Adam Warren thing is probably out-of-continuity, at least, so he's not contractually obligated to make Tony Stark a fascist douchebag like these other guys. Might as well.

So, thanks to that and a couple of recommendations in my circle, I sighed inwardly and bought it. Having now read it, I don't regret that. If the cover price had been $20 instead of $15, maybe, but that's hairsplitting.

Spoilers follow, if you care.

Might as well start with the negative part:

The Main Thing I Didn't Like

Yes, It's the Usual Adam Warren Schtick. It can, at least, be argued that Warren's usual Information Age Posthumanity Crap has something of a niche in a modern Iron Man story, I'll give you that, but I still find it irritating, if only because he's always so obvious about it. Still, there are places in Hypervelocity where it feels like he's kind of making fun of his own schtick (Tony 2.0's musing about observing the mecha-cult idiots and their pretentious flamewars online, for instance, and the fact that most of those people are, indeed, idiots), which takes some of the edge off. Plus, there's the fact that Hypervelocity is roughly contemporaneous with Extremis, which features Warren Ellis's even more irritating techno-fetishism front and center, like a really tall dude in the front of the movie theater who won't sit down. After enduring that, Adam Warren's cyberpunk lite is positively refreshing. But anyway.

(As an aside, I find myself wondering if the bald, insanely drugged SHIELD officer is a reference to Spider Jerusalem, or leapfrogs over him and references Hunter S. Thompson directly. :)

Then there's the fact that the central conceit of the story - not the plot, per se, but the gimmick that makes the plot go - isn't new. This is a bit ironic, given that the whole thrust of the piece (as is often the case with Warren) is novelty and the consequences thereof. In fact, the "Iron Man's armor develops sentience of its own" thing has been done twice before that I know of. You thought Joey Cheese came up with it during his run on Invincible Iron Man just before being handed the keys to the T-bird? Mais non, ma petite. The man you want to look to for the first (that I know of) telling of that little story is a chap named Mike Saenz, creator if 1988's Iron Man: Crash, the first CG graphic novel.

(Also, why are they always pierced, PVC-clad bondage chicks in Warren's stories? And why does that do anything for Tony? He always struck me as the Hot Librarian type, personally. Maybe that's just me.)

Now, there was a time when I would've let that keep me at bay, as it were. The fact that the whole piece is framed with The Usual Adam Warren Schtick would've been enough to make me take a pass on it, under what evidence lawyers call the "fruit of the poison tree" doctrine. (As an aside, this same attitude would also, not that long ago, have prevented me from enjoying the new Blue Beetle series because that series would never have come about without the egregious bullshit of Infinite Crisis, which is itself dependent on the even more egregious bullshit of Identity Crisis, and... well, you see where I'm going with this.)

Fortunately, that's no longer the case, so I found myself finding quite a lot of things in Hypervelocity to like in spite of the overarching lameness of the premise.

Things I Did Like

The real saving grace about Hypervelocity to me is the fact that the whole thing is hugely tongue-in-cheek, and occasionally wickedly funny. The repeated "I need a drink" thing, for instance, and the running joke with iTunes. The splash page headed "Tony Stark 2.0's Top 5 Positives About No Longer Possessing an Organic Human Body", and the comedic usage of the big-text panel notes in general. The revelation that Iron Man is painted in Tony Stark's elementary school colors (and mine, as it happens!). Iron Man stealing (and destroying) Johnny Storm's Honda. These are all great moments, whoever wrote them.

(And when did Johnny become a riceboi? He was into classic hot rods last time I paid any attention to Fantastic Four. I suppose that's part of the whole We Must Keep Our Heroes Contemporary thing.)

Best line of dialogue (and it's a close contest): "Fortunately me for me, my uploaded persona is running at only 79% cognitive integrity, so I'm very likely too stupid to fully grasp the degree to which I'm nontrivially screwed. Lucky me." A couple of Major Tom's lines are up there too, especially the one about adjusting his combat drug load.

The endgame's pretty good, too. It's always a satisfying Iron Man story when there are at least three reversals, all of them involving the enemies thinking they're ahead, only to learn at the very end that Tony's had them outflanked the whole time. (The ambiguous ending's kind of annoying, but less so than if he'd come right out and said "and then Tony 2.0 gets blown to hydrogen." Since the story appears to be out-of-continuity, one can choose to believe that he made it.) And I didn't miss, and quite appreciated, Warren taking a moment there at the end to tweak his old Studio Proteus partner Toren Smith's nose (that bit about vinyl LPs being better than CD? Smith's a hardcore, asshole-caliber audio twink).

Also: Warren didn't draw it! Yay! I don't know this Brian Denham guy, but his artwork mainly failed to annoy me (not entirely sure about this particular Iron Man design, but), and he carried off the frantic-action-pace thing (kind of critical to a book called Hypervelocity) quite well.

Overall: worth the price of admission. Doesn't really show me anything about Adam Warren I didn't already know (or at least suspect), but the repartee level is high and the action is satisfying. The rest is forgivable to me and would probably be considered positive by a lot of readers who aren't me, so there you go.

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

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Geoff Depew - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lord of Sith Tech Support.
"And Remember! Google is your Friend!!"

Now, I look back and think: WTF, Over? The guy comes off as a grade-A douche because no matter _what_ he's writing, he turns it into "Standard Warren Schtick" (SWS from here out).

I actually liked his "Grand Mal" BGC story (continuity issues aside of course) because it seemed to me that he was forced, to a degree, to respect the universe he was given a playground in. I do actually enjoy his artwork (mostly) but his entire catalog consists of the same story, over and over again, with just the props and pieces moved around. That, and his tone like a lot of artists from the early '90s seems to drip with contempt for his subject.

That doesn't mean that I don't think he created some interesting characters, or provided some good comedy along the way (the scene with Kei and Yuri singing Faith No More's "Epic" in karaoke comes to mind..it fits), or that he didn't have some interesting points about technology, futurism and such, but man, it gets old after the third or fourth time around.

In short, the perfect artist for the angsty late teen/early twenty-something who "hasn't go it figured out yet" ;) (that's pretty much how I feel about Michael Moorcock's work too, but that's a whole 'nother conversation...)

"A good plan executed now is better than a perfect plan next week" - Gen George S. Patton, Jr.

And hey... he tossed in a "blink and you'll miss it" tribute to GitS....