I hadn't read this
Iron Man Annual before, but maybe I had seen it referenced, by or maybe with another book that came out a week later! From 1986,
Iron Man Annual #8, "When Innocence Dies!" Written by Bob Harras, pencils by Paul Neary, inks by Ian Akin and Brian Garvey. Cover by Walt Simonson!
This was set during the earliest version of X-Factor, where the original five X-Men had a front as mutant hunters. They get involved in the search for Willie Evans, a young mutant with reality-altering powers, who had a little frog in a suit named Grunt encouraging him to act out. Willie had gotten abducted by the government, and taken to Project: Pegasus to be experimented on. Current Pegasus security head Michael "Guardsman" O'Brien isn't keen on that, and neither is Iron Man when he sees some of that on a visit to drop off a new project. When the inevitable superhero fight happens, there are of course hurt feelings on both sides: while Willie was dangerous and had accidentally-on-purpose hurt some people, that didn't mean he was now a lab rat, he still had rights...I'm sorry, I can't even finish that sentence. Even good soldier Michael is sick of this, and thinks they've stretched the definition of "national security" too far. I have bad news for him, about every year since then.
Nick Fury and Reed Richards get marginally involved in the search for Willie later; neither of them happy about it but not seeing how to de-escalate the situation, either. (Willie had appeared in an earlier issue of
Fantastic Four.) Anyway, Grunt turns out to be a manifestation of Willie's own anger, a way for him to vent the guilt he felt over killing his mother. Willie turns on Grunt, killing it and himself; although a sad Grunt spends the end of the issue on Willie's grave, promising to make them pay...He hasn't yet, to the best of my knowledge, but I'm more worried about how this reminded me of another book: from a week later,
Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #118, "Ashes to Ashes" Written by Peter David, pencils by Mike Zeck, inks by Bob McLeod.
Because this was a Peter David book, there were more jokes here, starting with the Foreigner, disguised as a bum, stopping by to visit the Kingpin. They have a bit of lunch, and sniping with each other, as they discuss recent events in this title and
Daredevil. ("Born Again" had just wrapped, I think.) They also hear an explosion downtown, which annoys the Kingpin, since he didn't have any scheduled: it was "orchids," to the Foreigner's ex-wife. I remain 100% convinced that was supposed to just be a throwaway joke, but later stories indicated his ex was
Silver Sable!
But, the main point this issue, was young Alex Woolcot: his teacher catches up with Peter at the
Daily Bugle. They had seen the boy was abused, and the boy's father had threatened them when confronted; and both had since disappeared. The teacher asks Peter to contact Spider-Man; snarkily, Peter asks, how? Signal-watch? This was 100% not his problem, he was trying to quit being Spider-Man, of course he's going to get involved. What they didn't know, though, was that Alex was right outside, and oh yeah, his dad was dead as hell. Monkeying around with his dad's weird science experiment ("
What is your fascination with my forbidden closet of mystery?") Alex now had occasionally glowy-hands and disentegration powers. He gets spotted by the cops, who think he's a truant they can scare back to school, which of course leads to a blowed-up cop car. The cops call it in, with one suggesting X-Factor get involved, but someone else fields this one: some S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, who seem to be looking for glory while Fury was away.
Following the explosion, Spidey finds Alex, and quickly gets a sinking feeling what happened to his dad. There is another fun bit, as Spidey perches on a building he thinks was "abandoned" and scheduled for demolition; a common cliche then; only to find the building packed! S.H.I.E.L.D. shows up on the scene, with a helicopter full of Mandroids: Alex stands his ground, and fries one of those "dumb robots" before realizing there was a guy in there. (The bacon scent would be a clue! Ah, he'll live.) Lethal force is authorized, and Spidey has to help Alex escape, even though he doesn't think he can control him. Spidey's a bit of a scold, too; telling Alex he shouldn't have run; but Alex tells him he almost got sent to jail when he was six for stealing a superball, and last week he disentegrated his dad; what would they do to him for that? (Thank you, Scared Straight.) After getting the Mandroids to shoot each other, Spidey nearly has Alex calmed down, just in time for a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to empty his gun into Alex's back.
His Spidey-sense went off a little late there, but should it have gone off at all? He wasn't in danger! The agent driving is heard to say, Fury would have their heads; which feels like backpedaling: just a couple bad apples, right? And if you told me there was another comic that same month with another kid killed, I kinda wouldn't be surprised? Maybe at the scheduling, more than anything? I was thinking Fury might mention S.H.I.E.L.D.'s track record versus little kids, but that wasn't here, anyway. These were probably tapping into the times, the fear that kids were becoming killers; but Marvel maybe wasn't quite ready for that story with guns. Or, maybe kid death is a cheap and easy way to make your heroes feel bad, and not winning in the end was so adult, right? Ugh, I have to stop, before I find a
Power Pack issue from that month with a double-digit body count...
Jesus, that is some suspect timing.
ReplyDeleteReally helping make the case of the 80's being the "Deadliest Decade" according to a television series of the same name.
I would really like to know who hurt Peter David so badly back then for his run on Spider-Man to be so damn dark & depressing? Sure there was a couple bright spots that weren't so dark, but overall, you'd think David was sorely in need of seeing a therapist during that time period.