Iron Cat #4 // Review
Felicia and Tamara haven’t worked together in a while. They could run the “Bonjour Quebec,” but they’re not going to. Maybe the “Catalonian Vicar” or the “Time-Traveling Ombudsman.” Whatever it is they’re going to choose, Tony Stark will keep his distance. He’s got a plan, too. It plays out in Iron Cat #4. Writer Jed MacKay continues his walk with Black Cat, Tony Stark, an old friend, and an old enemy, with the aid of artist Pere Pérez and colorist Frank D’Armata. The clanging metal might feel a bit repetitious as the story reaches for rising action in its penultimate issue, but MacKay’s brisk humor keeps the action running straight towards its final issue next month.
Iron Man is accompanied by a couple of Iron Cats. Felicia and Tamara have been working as thieves and con artists for a very, very long time. Now they’re up against a powerful AI that’s looking to make Stark’s life a living hell and possibly kill the both of them in the process. The AI in question knows Stark all too well. He will have to trust the strategy of a couple of thieves to get him out of a very dangerous situation.
MacKay’s story reaches a kind of pre-climax in a chapter that features a hell of a lot of flying around in sleek suits of powered armor. It’s pretty cool for the first couple of pages, but as cool as it looks, it gets pretty murky pretty quickly. Sleek Iron Man armor flies through the night with a beautiful metropolitan skyline in the background. It’s cool. But it lacks a whole lot of deeper engagement beyond the dialogue, which does manage some very clever moments of comic action. In the larger run of the five-issue series, it’s going to be an impressive moment leading up to the big conclusion, but as a standalone, it lacks the balance it needs to feel satisfying.
For their part, Pérez and D’Armata do a good job of maintaining the forward momentum of everything. There’s a grand sense of motion in the action which looks absolutely beautiful in the midst of the city at night. D’Armata’s vividly immersive color does wonderful things for the action. The gleam of the color signatures of three different heroic suits of armor looks really cool amidst the lights of the skyline, but after a while, it just looks like a really long commercial for a luxury car or something. It all blurs together and feels sort of indistinct, which doesn’t exactly do any favors for the big-action nature of the battle that MacKay is trying to bring to the page.
MacKay and company toss around three heroes in powered armor fighting amidst a whole bunch of villains in similar powered armor, and it becomes apparent why dogfights are so difficult to bring to the page or screen in a way that feels dynamic. There are only so many angles that aerial combat can manage before it starts to look kind of dull and disinteresting. MacKay has four really intriguing characters to work with. It’s fun stuff, but it seems to stall a bit in its fourth chapter.
