Volume 01: Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle

Iron Man: Demon in a Bottle

Authors: David Michelinie / Bob Layton  |  Illustrators: John Romita, Jr. / Carmine Infantino

"I'd grown up in a small town that'd grown up into a big city. They called it 'progress'. I called it a shame."

If you read the books in their final numbered order, as opposed to the strange order they were released to shops and subscribers, then the collection kicks off with a 'Bronze Age' Iron Man tale exploring Tony Stark's alcoholism. Damn billionaire first world problems, eh, Stark?

Lightly incorporating real-world problems into fictional settings had proved beneficial to the stories of other Marvel heroes, but it was time to take it to another level. That goal was achieved with Iron Man.

It helped the man who could buy an island if he chose to seem a little more relatable. All it required of the reader was a putting aside of external trappings and a focus on the underlying fragility of the man beneath the impenetrable suit. In short, an understanding that the suit protects Tony from harm but in no way protects Tony from Tony.

Before it can get to the heart of the topic, however, it has to satisfy the story-telling devices and expectations of the era, which it does in exaggerated comic-book style with action that's fast-paced and at the upper end of the 'super heroics' scale (i.e. ridiculous but fun).

The spoken dialogue and thought bubbles are standard stuff for the most part, but Michelinie and Layton occasionally put more effort into what's placed in the text boxes; at times they're like something you'd expect to find in a novel, not a mass market off-the-shelf comic from 1979, which was the year it was first published.

The chapter from which the collection takes its name doesn't appear until the end, but, in hindsight, much of what happens prior to it is affected by the root cause, i.e. the 'demon' of the title, and even allows for both it and the 'bottle' to be interpreted in different ways.

The book collects together Invincible Iron Man #120-128.

Verdict: