coffee & ink

I love how the cover recasts the iconic Tony Stark at Captain America's corpse image, which itself recast the iconic image of the Avengers discovering Captain America in ice.

The two-tone issue covers were also marvelously striking.

That said, the parts of this storyline that dealt with Tony wandering around his inner landscape were disappointing. I felt like there were a few good images drowned in a lot of repetition, and I wanted a lot more depth about Tony's current relationships and friendships, particularly the fallout of the civil war.

The storylines in the waking world were much more interesting, though I am still hopelessly confused about what Tony's former friends think of him, and I wanted a hell of a lot more emo porn in his encounters with Captain America and Thor. Perhaps when he's awake.

The emotional climax -- Tony needs to be able to ask for help -- and the killer machines show up again in later arcs, although I hope the machine arc isn't done. I don't feel like we really get a satisfactory answer to why Tony went so far to creating world-destroying machines. (Or why he needs to, when the world already has nuclear bombs, but I try not to ask these questions about comics.)