Iron Man 2.0 #12

We'll stick with Marvel and take a look at the final issue of the Iron Man 2.0 series. I was hopeful that not naming this series War Machine and calling it Iron Man would have given it a longer shelf life, but alas, that was not to be... Oh well, let's see how Nick Spencer wraps up the long running Palmer Addley storyline.

Iron Man 2.0 #12:

What Happened: War Machine sends Suzi Endo to the Baxter Building with the hope being that Mr. Fantastic and Suzi could figure out a way to free everybody from the Palmer Addley infection. Since the two geniuses need time, War Machine is forced to combat Iron Man, who has been taken over by the Addley infection. War Machine has more experience using the Iron Man tech than the Addley infection, but he is unwilling to really lay into Iron Man, since he didn't want to seriously hurt Tony Stark. The battle eventually crashes into the Baxter Building, but luckily for War Machine, Reed and Suzi had deduced that they needed to enter the minds of the people affected by the Addley infection to shock them back to themselves. Luckily, Reed Richards has just a device on hand(huh?!) and Suzi manages to use the device and the program she developed with Reed to save everybody, including Iron Man, thanks mainly to War Machine keeping Iron Man at bay. With a cure for the Addley infection finally created, War Machine and Iron Man head out to disperse it to the other spots in the world Addley had gotten to.

The Good: I enjoyed this storyline for the most part. The art, again, for the most part, was good. Spencer did a great job capturing War Machine and Iron Man's relationship throughout this series, but especially in this issue.

The Bad: This issue felt REALLY rushed. But being the last issue of the series I guess that makes sense... Still, the final battle between War Machine and the Addley possessed Iron Man never had the epic feeling you may have gotten with an extra issue. There were a lot of different artists working on this issue, so we'd occasionally get a few lackluster pages along with some good ones. The series is canceled! I'd consider that bad!

The Verdict: Eh, this was a storyline that probably could have used an extra issue or so to really close out the series. I mean this issue was okay and all, but, to me at least, it was hurt by how rushed the final battle was. Having Reed Richards suddenly be so instrumental in defeating the Addley infection was also kind of weird since he had no part in the series prior to this issue... Ah well. It was a good run while it lasted.

Score: 6 1/2 out of 10.So long, Rhodey. It's been fun.