“You can’t just wish the future into being”, Stark notes at one point, “it has to be paid for”, and the cost is terrifying. It’s a bio-electronic package intended to create super soldiers, developed, but untested until stolen and provided to domestic terrorists. While not obvious at first, these discussions cleverly feed into the fundamental problem of the technology supplying the title. In the early stages Ellis challenges the limitations of Stark’s conceptual mind, first via a crusading journalist (a very thinly disguised John Pilger), then via a technological engineer less inclined to work for the establishment. This remains Ellis’ only Iron Man material, and if some of what he introduced has been absorbed and recycled into common currency, and some surpassed by technological progress, there’s more than enough remaining residue of thought, consideration and innovation. The resulting Extremis, is considered among the finest Iron Man graphic novels, and also generated a prose novel. When Marvel needed to re-boot their ailing Iron Man title in 2005 they gave Warren Ellis a call. Review by Karl Verhoven Spoilers in review
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