Dan Slott’s spent a good long spell on Amazing Spider-Man, which has effectively been Marvel’s flagship book for much of his time there. Now he’s writing Tony Stark: Iron Man, a title that Marvel positioned to be it’s flagship book, much like Iron Man was the flagship of it’s movie franchise (at least until Black Panther premiered). Iron Man didn’t assume top dog position in comics last time, so now we get to see if Slott can work similar magic on ‘ole Shell Head.
Joining Slott on art is Valerio Schiti, who cites animation and manga as interests, which you can see in the sample pages below.
In an interview with Nerdist, Schiti says they’re looking to move the personality of Tony Stark away from the “wounded, dramatic, and stressed” warrior paradigm from the Hickman Avenger years and more towards “the real, new Iron Man: funny, charming and cool,” which is to say taking the character back a bit closer to the 70s/80s incarnation.
Schiti also say we’ll see “hundreds of different armors in this series.” So new armor isn’t necessarily going to be an event in and of itself, necessarily. Which makes sense if you’ve got a tinkering inventor for a hero.
What’s left unsaid is whether this is going to be the only Iron Man series. The title Tony Stark: Iron Man sounds like it’s opening the door for a companion title along the lines of Edwin Jarvis: Iron Man (for the sake of argument). Like Marvel has had both Steve Rogers and Sam Wilson in Captain America titles at the same time. Or Thor. Or two non-Stark Iron Mans. Or for that matter, across the street with Hal Jordan & the Green Lantern Corps / Green Lanterns. We’ll know soon enough if a second Iron-title is in the offing.
