Random Happenstance

Since shrinking Iron Man seems to have just pissed him off and made him a smaller target, Pym tries a trick I love: enlarging pocket change to the size (and presumably, weight) of manhole covers as he throws them. I have no idea, even in the terms of comics, how the physics works on that one. I just think it's neat.

Jim's almost beat, when Spymaster's team attacks the Avengers...because they had so much success fighting Iron Man. They don't get off to a great start, as even a six-inch Iron Man gives them a hard time...yet another completely innocent sentence that sounds utterly wrong there. Wasp is stunned and going down, giving Jim the opportunity to save her, and prove himself. Wasp is able to bring Iron Man back to normal size. Good lord, those sentences were even worse.

Meanwhile, Hank's down, Hawkeye's about to get shot in the head, and the Living Lightning, who could probably just electrocute everyone there and sort them out later, is chasing the Beetle. I'm surprised Hawkeye didn't make him wear a "Trainee" name tag after this.

Once again, Spymaster talks when he should shoot, and Jim clocks him again. The fight is then brought to a halt as Kathy Dare shoots herself. She was a pretty hated character, but killing yourself in the middle of a superhero fight seems like the biggest cry for attention in the world, and sad. Jim wonders if this is somehow is fault. In the meantime, Hank shrinks and polybags the villains.

Later, back at his office at Stark Industries, Rae LaCoste asks Jim out to dinner; the doctors wonder what the hell is going on with Stark's brainwaves in the cryofreeze, Tony has another flashback to his childhood and building proto-Iron Men out of erector sets, and Tony's cousin Morgan Stark plots his revenge. All this on the next episode of Soap...

Seriously, I love this run. Jim would eventually taking up the name War Machine, and get his own series. Not as good. Towards the end of it, as Iron Man was entering "The Crossing" (shudder), he would get a new alien suit of "Eidolan Warwear," or somesuch. A busy, busy costume. It didn't just violate the Ron Frenz Rule of Costume Design, it should have had to tell the neighbors it had moved into the area after its second strike. (See http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/category/comic-book-dictionary/for details!)

He would lose the armor shortly after that, then much later get a black and white series. That I believe came out on 091101. Written by Chuck Austen. Damn, Marvel, don't stack the deck against Jim too much. (To be fair, his first run had it's moments, the second three-issue series is a hopeless muddle.)

Currently, Jim is occasionally seen in Iron Man, and was in Christopher Priest's The Crew, which was interesting but tried way too hard to set up an increasingly complicated plot. And he was in Marvel vs. Capcom. Yeah. And we'll always have Force Works...