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This was absolutely brilliant. I loved how much humor there was in this, both in the artwork (giant monkey peeling a subway car like a banana!?) and in the fabulous writing. The overall plot was totally captivating and hysterical; the premise being that Japan’s giant monster problem has pretty much been eliminated by the proliferation of super heroes in the 20th century, so they’ve created a “Tokyo Giant Monster Museum and Expo Center” to commemorate. The Fantastic Four and Iron Man have been invited to the opening ceremonies, but wouldn’t you know it, their tour is interrupted by… you guessed it! …an attack by more giant monsters!

I have one other comic collection drawn by Seth Fisher (Green Lantern: Will World), and Big In Japan has now solidified my love for his cartoony surrealist style. I was extremely saddened to learn in the beginning pages of this comic that he died near the beginning of 2006. Apparently this was the last comic that he worked on. Look for my review of another of Seth Fisher’s creations, Batman: Snow in the near future.

I strongly recommend Big In Japan, as it more than transcends its silly superhero origins, and becomes a story of cosmic comic importance. The back of this trade paperback has like fifteen pages of artist notes, and a bunch of sketches and other cool stuff. (Including an entire issue of another Seth Fisher drawn comic called Fanboyz, which is sort of like Jackass meets spider man.) Good stuff.

At first, this seemed like a win-win read for me. It’s Orson Scott Card, who I genuinely think is a good writer (although I have less and less respect for him as a person), and it’s in one of those parallel universes so I don’t really have to know anything about Iron Man cannon to enjoy it. I also (mistakenly) assumed that a relatively thick, hardcover collection would contain a whole story… but no, this ends with a cliffhanger.

I did really enjoy about the first half of the book, as I dug the blue armor stuff, and got into seeing the young Tony Stark interact with a young James Rhodes at prep school, but I couldn’t believe how dark the story got when Obadiah was introduced. Right off the bat he’s killing other children and plotting against Tony. It was relatively disturbing. So by the time I got to the end of the book, I was ready to be done with it. But then the story doesn’t end. I haven’t decided if I’ll read the rest of the series. I’ve seen Ultimate Iron Man II on the shelves, and I’ll admit if this had been better, I’d be tempted, but based my level of enjoyment here, I’ll probably hold out for library copies of the whole series.

I’ll admit that the movie made me do it. I decided I wanted to read some Iron Man. I never have before, and I didn’t know if it made sense to start at the beginning, so I just decided to see what was at the library, and read some of that. There I found the collection The Many Armors of Iron Man, which starts with this comic, Iron Man #47.

Much to my surprise, when I cracked open the TPB, I discovered that this is the comic that tells the first part of the story from the movie! I looked for some sign that the trade was simply a movie tie in, but I didn’t see any. I’m sure I could probably dig online here and find some indication of whether this book was published before or after the script for the movie, but it probably doesn’t matter. It tells Iron Man’s “origin story”, so it’s a natural choice to base a movie after.

I quickly finished the comic, and now I’ll give you my impressions. (Note: SPOILERS AHEAD!)

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Join us for our third podcast in which we record from an AMC theater while waiting in line for a sneak preview of the new Iron Man film. At the end of the podcast, we also record our impressions after the film, but there are loud spoiler warnings ahead of that in case you don’t want to hear about it before you’ve seen it. (They are relatively minor spoilers, but we do end up discussing and giving our impressions of the final scene in the movie.)

We had a larger cast than usual as we discuss our limited knowledge of Iron Man, the sneak preview, various other movies, LifeLock (identity insurance), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, our final impressions of the movie, and try to answer the burning question: How many costumes has Iron Man worn?

Notes: The podcast also features some musical clips from “Iron Man” by Black Sabath, and what I believe to be a band called Giant Sand covering said classic track. (The latter via Cover Freak.) This is our first real editing job here at Read Comics, so we hope you enjoy it. The speaking portions of this comic were recorded on Marty’s iPhone, which was a gift from his lovely wife and fellow podcaster, Florence. Also, big thanks to everyone we interviewed (badly) in line for the movie. If you’re reading this, leave a comment, cause you were awesome!

Listen to ReadComics Podcast #3 - We Saw Iron Man! (35 min, 16 MB)

Also, go see Iron Man, it was absolutely brilliant!!! (SERIOUSLY!!!!)