Christopher Cantwell’s Iron Man handles wealth badly and Hellcat worse
By: Dawn Greathart
Tags: Review, Feminism, Critical Theory, Analysis, Comic Books

Cover for Iron Man Vol 6 #4

I hate to say mean things about comics publicly. There’s something about the high likelihood that the writers and artists will personally see it that makes it seem more cruel than insulting works in other mediums where the creators are actual celebrities too large to get insulted by what some internet loser says, what’s more, comics are cyclical in a way that makes bad comics tolerable, if a major character’s book is bad now, it’s bound to be good (or bad in a completely different way) in a year.

Hellcat and Iron Man appearing together in Patsy Walker: Hellcat #1

This was the ethos that had me excited for Christopher Cantwell’s nascent run on Iron Man, while I by no means hated the previous Dan Slott run, but I never quite clicked with it and the conclusive event Iron Man 2020 would have been bloated under any circumstances, only exacerbated by Covid-19 delays and cancellations. It was surely time for a new coat of red and gold paint on the Iron Man title, and who better than the Eisner-nominated writer of Doctor Doom and She Could Fly. I became even more excited when it was revealed Patsy Walker A.K.A. Hellcat would be a secondary character, she’s one of my personal favorite superheroes (a preference I apparently share with Cantwell) and had become seemingly orphaned following the cancellation of Mariko Tamaki’s Hulk, leaving her rich cast of supporting characters and the deeply clever idea of a superhero temp agency without a book to explore them. Tony and Patsy have played alongside eachother since the Avengers title in the 70s, and Cantwell could surely integrate their recent developments as effortlessly as he slotted the recently-created Victorious into his Doctor Doom run.

Tony and Janet breaking up in Iron Man Vol 6 #1

Any hope that the new run would be neatly picking up threads from former books was lost after the first issue has Tony unceremoniously breaking it off with his previous love interest Janet Van Dyne in the space of six lines and three panels, with nothing but brief allusions to his supporting cast under Slott, followed by immediately and bluntly introducing Hellcat as what can only be construed as a replacement love interest.

Juxtaposing Cantwell’s insistence that Hellcat is his favourite character with Tony ditching his girlfriend to immediately replace her with Hellcat… It feels like indulgence at best and self insert at worst, ditching the woman the character had been with to immediately have the writer’s preferred one fall in love with him.

Hellcat walks into the story as a generic New York socialite, frictionlessly entering Tony’s life with no mention of any other aspect of her own, and she becomes totally subservient to his actions from that point forward. Tony says “Jump” she says “How high?”, he says “Come with me to Oklahoma” she’s there, he says “You look pretty” she has sex with him. It’s bizarre for a side character to have so little mention of their personal life, let alone the secondary protagonist, and in this case a character who has been established to have a busy agency she personally runs, a sidekick/ward who’s still learning to act human, a roommate, a landlord, and a wide circle of friends and employees. Not even including a line like “I had to take off work for this” or “I’ll text Ian I won’t be home for a while” in any scene goes beyond having a fresh start for the character, and makes the book feel cold and incongruent in the interconnected Marvel universe. I understand that an Iron Man comic should revolve around Iron Man, but having his love interest seemingly plucked out of the aether to flirt with him is more off-putting than anything Korvac is doing.

Patsy being possessed by Korvac in Iron Man Vol 6 #4, Cantwell described Patsy in an interview with Comic Book Resources as having a “fragile mind”

Patsy becoming a sort of love interest cypher, listlessly ribbing Tony with Sorkin-esque jabs about his ego, man-pain and constant worries about his personal brand while following him at every moment and doing whatever he wants also leads to her having a distinct lack of agency within the plot. In action sequences she fights alongside Tony, but she achieves little, and neither her strength nor her intelligence are the key to any big wins for the heroes. In passive scenes she doesn’t contribute to any meaningful planning or decisions, with most of her dialogue taken up by those flirty jabs at Tony. In fact, what Cantwell described as her “fragile mind” in interviews leads her to being possessed and turning against the heroes, while the stalwart Tony is immune to Korvac’s suggestions.

Patsy feels underdeveloped in a way that makes one wonder why Cantwell used her instead of Tony’s usual red-haired love interest Pepper Potts, if Patsy’s specific qualities weren’t going to be utilised. It almost seems as if it was written as Pepper and changed afterwards, Pepper working for his company would explain why they’re together all the time, they have a much more intimate history together that would explain the whirlwind romance, and Pepper isn’t usually a superhero, which would solve this non-role in the action.

The only unique quality of Patsy’s possesses Cantwell seems to be interested in is her unique trauma, stemming from (among other things) her regularly-referenced suicide in Hellstorm: Prince of Lies, her time in hell and her eventual return to life in Thunderbolts Annual 2000 & Avengers Annual 2000.

Patsy discusses her suicide in Iron Man Vol 6 #3 (The citation is an error, the actual book is Hellstorm: Prince of Lies, not Hellstrom)

The references to the much-maligned Patsy suicide arc by the more-maligned sex pest Warren Ellis seem like an obvious fit into a book about trauma and mental illness, and there are some genuinely clever references; Korvac whispers to Patsy in the same way Satan whispers to her in Prince of Lies, and her introduction in issue 4 mirrors panels depicting her increasing derangement in Prince of Lies. However, these references seem to belie an underlying lack of self-awareness, as Patsy losing all her agency and connection to her loved ones in subservience to an egotistical man is the exact state that led to her suicide, and exactly describes her relationship with Tony in this new book. I say “seems to” because it’s possible, although unlikely, that this is what the writer is going for, and we’re supposed to read their relationship as unhealthy, but I somehow doubt it based on the tone of their scenes together. Their sex scene in issue 4 comes after Tony is rude and standoffish towards her, where usually the typical male hero’s sexual reward comes after his character development, Tony gets the girl prior to any meaningful changes in his egotistical demeanour.

Cardiac performing a supervillainous stunt against big pharma in Iron Man Vol 6 #2

Patsy Walker isn’t the only character who seems off in this new run, Cardiac, a C-list medical-themed hero from the 1990s, appears here as a heel, inexplicably performing supervillain schemes where just months prior he had appeared in a team of heroes in Valkyrie: Jane Foster. The obvious explanation would be manipulation from the mind-controlling villain Korvac, but the book goes out of it’s way to show that’s not the case, Cardiac has simply chosen to become a straw leftist standing against big pharma by kidnapping and attempting to kill pharmaceutical scientists? Not executives or salespeople?

A montage of people complaining about and looking down on Tony in Iron Man Vol 6 #3

It’s a bizarre scene that appears as part of a slew of anti-billionaire slights that Tony endures, increasing his alienation in a way he just can’t seem to escape no matter how much he helps. Ignoring how untimely a story about having sympathy for people like Jeff Bezos is in 2020, it’s a thread that feels underdeveloped. Someone (or a montage of someones) will insult Tony on Twitter or in person, Hellcat will give him the same speech about his privilege and ego and he’ll take it all on his chin, continuing to act the same way as a noble man who just doesn’t know what to do. His attempts to get “back to basics” in issue 1 are intentionally pathetic, I would have to assume, going from a mansion no normal person could afford to a log cabin no normal person could afford, packing up his billion-dollar metal suits for a million-dollar vintage car, but then the rest of the story acts as if Tony has no access to money at all, even when he and Hellcat are faced with a powerful villain who seems to have them on the ropes. Korvac’s hostage makes Tony unable to call on the Avengers, but also means he can’t pay for a better hotel room? It makes a bizarre comparison to equivalent “Back to Basics” storylines in previous Iron Man runs, where Tony has his suits, company and even his physical body or identity stripped away from him, forcing him to ask what remains underneath; Cantwell’s Iron Man is unique in how little it strips away and how little it reveals.

The would-be god Korvac prepares for a brutal experiment in Iron Man vol 6 #4

Hellcat comes out of the closet in Savage She-Hulk #14

This is not to say there’s nothing to like about the book, Korvac makes a fantastic arch-villain, there are some genuinely funny moments and Cafu’s art is perfect for Iron Man, it comes to life in action sequences and features some astonishingly good backgrounds for a bi-weekly book. I also must reveal my biases, both as a Hellcat fangirl who primarily came to the book expecting good content regarding her, and as someone who was hoping the queer subtext that runs throughout a lot of her comics might become text, I would have been put off by her dating Tony in any capacity, but I’m certain it could have been handled better than this.

In the end, I come back to what I said at the start, when comics are bad now, they’re bound to be good or bad in a completely different way a year from now. Despite being a Hellcat completist, I’ll probably stop reading Iron Man after this, at least until I hear it’s changed in some way. Cantwell hopes to have 20 issues of The Books of Korvac and several more arcs after that, I can only hope it’s very different when I return.