Brian Bendis says goodbye to the Marvel Universe.
Invincible Iron Man #600 is a big deal. Aside from the obvious numeric milestone, it's also the finale to Brian Bendis' Iron Man run and his last Marvel comic after a nearly 20-year career at the company. There's a lot riding on this issue to cap off both this long-running Iron Man saga and a hugely influential Marvel career. In some ways it succeeds, but the biggest takeaway here is that Bendis is leaving just as things are becoming truly interesting for Tony Stark.
There's a lot for Bendis to wrap up in these pages, what with Tony recently returning to active duty, The Hood attempting a hostile takeover of Stark Enterprises, Riri Williams and Toni Ho being recruited by Leonardo Da Vinci and Tony's supposedly dead biological father resurfacing. Needless to say, Bendis and his artists are able to give some plot threads more satisfying conclusions than others. Of these, the Jude reveal proves the most unsatisfying. There's never any real explanation for how the character survived, nor is there a clear sense of what his return means for either Tony or Amanda. If his return was actually going to have story significance, it probably needed to have come sooner than the last page of the penultimate issue of the series.
That's probably the real tragedy of this issue. Whether the various story beats work or don't, there's a nagging sense that now isn't the time to be capping off this story. There's so much potential with the idea of Da Vinci building a bigger, better S.H.I.E.L.D. or The Hood and Dormammu attempting to use Stark Enterprises' influence to corrupt an entire planet. Given how slow and meandering this book has been over the course of Marvel Legacy, you have to wonder why Bendis didn't get to some of these developments sooner. Still, you can't accuse him of not leaving plenty of material for incoming writer Dan Slott to work with.
One major benefit to this issue is that Bendis ends Doom's story on an unexpectedly satisfying note. There's plenty left unresolved in terms of his unborn child, but in terms of his journey from villain to hero and uncertain place in the Marvel U, this issue gives his journey a fitting end-cap. Much more than expected given how pointless his role in the series has been lately.
As is often the case when Bendis says farewell to the series, there's a rotating lineup of past and present artists jamming together on the book. The various artists generally mesh well together, and it helps that the constant back-and-forth between Stefano Caselli and Alex Maleev on past issues has established a pattern of alternating visual styles. Caselli's expressive art style remains the highlight, though guest artist David Marquez is a close second. Leinil Yu proves an apt fit for the Hood/Doom pages. Only Mike Deodato's style stands out as being particularly out of place, but the same was true when he was drawing the series circa-Civil War II. His work is just too dark and stiff to match the general tone of the series.
This issue will likely prove polarizing with readers given how much the script relies on narrative captions courtesy of Tony's digitized self. While definitely overbearing on some pages, the narration generally works if you consider the Tony A.I. an extension of Bendis himself. The brains behind the series is taking stock of everything he's built and the need to leave it in the hands of the next generation of caretakers, for better or worse.
The Verdict
Invincible Iron Man #600 serves as an imperfect finale to an imperfect series. Not every loose end is given satisfactory resolution here. It's also frustrating to see Bendis leaving just as he introduces some intriguing new developments in the Marvel Universe. But regardless, at least this issue leaves a strong foundation on which the next Iron Man comic can build.
