Customer Reviews

Iron Man: Extremis

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Ever since I started reading comics, Iron Man has been my favorite Marvel character. Unfortunately, since the 1980s, good Iron Man stories have been few and far between. Joe Quesada's Iron Man: The Mask in the Iron Man tale was the last Iron Man storyline that I really enjoyed, and that one is already several years gone.

Enter Warren Ellis, Adi Granov, and Extremis - the volume you're checking out right now. Extremis is the best Iron Man story to come along in ages. Essentially, this story was as close to a big budget Iron Man movie as I ever thought we'd see (before the excellent Iron Man (Single-Disc Edition) movie with Robert Downey Jr. of course). It's absolutely breathtaking.

Warren Ellis, whose work on Stormwatch, the Authority, and Planetary I credit with changing the way I look at comic books, delivers the perfect Iron Man story. Marvel continuity has not been kind to Iron Man, so Ellis takes this opportunity to reintroduce the character and start almost from scratch. We're introduced to a Tony Stark who is haunted by the harm his military inventions have caused and is trying to make amends in the only way he knows how - by donning the Iron Man suit. There's a nice recap of his origin, adapted slightly to modernize the character, an interesting look at Tony's fellow "mad scientists", and confrontation with an extremely powerful villain who forces Tony to make a drastic decision. I won't give it away here, but it had major implications for the character in future storylines. Ellis was firing on all cylinders here. The plot, characters, dialogue, and pacing are all flawless. This is what the Ultimate Iron Man Volume 1 TPB story should have been.

Adi Granov's painted artwork is nothing short of phenomenal. It is stylized while at the same time extremely realistic. He captures an incredible amount of emotion on each character's face, and his action scenes almost (but not quite) match Bryan Hitch's for sheer cinematic quality. And if he didn't intentionally use Tom Cruise as the model for Tony Stark, the coincidence is just too eerie. Granov's painted work is the perfect complement to Ellis's story, and helps make Extremis that much more effective. It's no surprise that Granov was selected to provide armor design for the Iron Man film.

The end result is a near perfect Iron Man story, and one that should rank alongside Iron Man: Armor Wars and Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle (Marvel Premiere Classic) as one of the best Iron Man tales ever. I highly recommend this volume, especially in Marvel's high quality hardcover format, which is perfect for a story of this caliber.

Edition Notes: Iron Man: Extremis has been out for a few years now, but is being reissued to coincide with the release of the Iron Man 2 movie. If you missed it in hardcover the first time around, this is a great time to remedy that.

This book is especially wonderful for everybody who loves the Iron Man films since some of the events from this book were used as inspirations for the first movie.

The quality of Adi Granovs drawings that he himself also colored is outstanding.

On top of that the story is also very well written.

So this book reads good: writing wise, and art wise.
A must have for all Iron Man fans!

Overall I enjoyed this book. I'm not really an Iron Man fan but upon reading other reviews about this item I decided to check it out (plus it was on sale). It's worth a read in my opinion and also the artwork was good.

A destructive new chemical compound called Extremis that gives the user superhuman powers is set loose onto a domestic terrorist with an agenda to bring down Washington. Cue Tony Stark, flying in to save the day! But even Iron Man isn't able to deal with this threat and must make a life altering choice. We also get the Iron Man origin story here that was used in the Iron Man film (with a few subtle tweaks).

I love Warren Ellis' writing whether it's his weird, original material or more mainstream projects like this book with Marvel. He always writes a very interesting, very fun script and "Extremis" is no exception. Tony Stark's intelligent, humourous nature is put across nicely as are moral arguments for scientists whose work can be used for both good and evil. Much was made of Adi Granov's art but I found it to be a bit bland. Iron Man looks good but the colours are very muted and the humans all look computer generated rather than natural. It wasn't terrible artwork but it was a long way from the brilliance I had been led to expect with this book.

"Extremis" was a great jumping off point for the Iron Man movie series and I think the producers would have done better if they'd chosen the hyper-powerful Timothy-McVey-type in this book than Jeff Bridges' giant robot-suited villain. It just seems like Ellis' villain is more edgy and interesting. The origin story here was also well handled, with Stark visiting Afghanistan and being taken prisoner by the Taliban. There's also a great throwback to the first issue of Iron Man, design-wise.

Overall, a very satisfying, well written superhero comic that I definitely recommend to fans both of the genre but also to those who aren't so that they can see why people enjoy these stories.

I always kinda liked Iron man, but never really got into him untill I gave this comic a chance. I was hooked and I ended up reading everything I could get my hands onto to current Iron Man comics comming out now. If you already like Iron Man this book is a must. If you kinda like Iron Man you will probbaly end up loving him and then this book becomes a must. If you don't like Iron Man then I am not sure why your reading this review.

I've got this and the fine art, hardcover are incredible. Great stories about Tony Stark after lost Stark industries. I really recommend this book for whom are Iron man fans.

It has been a very, very long time since I took the time to enjoy anything comic, outside of the movies being made about them. If you are wondering if you should make the purchase, please hesitate no longer. My interest in Iron Man: Extremis came as a result of seeing the motion comic on Itunes.What you see in the motion comic comes directly from these pages, and the story and artwork are undoubtedly a powerful combination I have rarely witnessed. Certainly, I cannot recall where I enjoyed a storyline and artwork together more.

I was extreemly disappointed to find that this hardcover was not printed on glossy stock. The brilliant detail of the art of Adi Granov is simply lost in the matte paper. For that reason alone, I am reselling my copy of this and I will be looking for the older paperback edition of this story, it's out of print, but it looks so much better. Also, for some reason they decided to make this hardcover smaller than the regular comic size. The format of this edition is such a let down, it cannot make up for the fact that this Iron Man story is fantastic and excellent.

Iron Man Extremis was a little disappointing the good things is the character stuff of Tony Stark, Warren Ellis has got a good voice for Tony stark especially in parts where in the first issue he's talking to the documentary guy and flashback scenes with him and Yinsen and when he visits the man in the house. It also has some great action but that's the best stuff in this book. I didn't think the villain was that interesting he just has the Extremis formula and wants to destroy Americas government thats not that interesting to me. The story is good but I don't like it when Tony gets the Extremis formula he basically gets superpowers he can Create his under armor organically and control see technology beyond sight and levitate his armor and enhanced abilities. I really don't like that I like the he can Create the organic under armor but not everything else one thing I really like about Iron Man is that he's all technology based and this kinda ruins that. The art is okay it looks to like realistic in a sense that They can make an animation movie or something which I heard there is but haven't seen it. The art looks to much like a video game cutscene but it's really good looking at times like on iron man and stark. Overall it's worth the read but not the purchase. Until Later if your a collector. Read Matt Fractions run on iron man and Classics such as Demon in the bottle and Armor Wars.

I'm not a fan of the non-glossy pages. The print quality suffers too greatly to justify this hardback edition. I love the fact it comes with the motion comic and the extra material in back is nice but WHY did they make the art quality suffer so greatly! The colors are not as rich me thinks.