Greg Pak proves once again why there's such a buzz in the industry when his name comes up. This stands out as the strongest House of M spinoff concept yet, mainly because it's not about world domination, it's not about racism and it's not even about super-heroes. It's about a conflict between father and son, and I think most readers will see something of themselves in this incarnation of Tony Stark. The art's pretty good -- definitely leaps and bounds better than what Pat Lee offered up in the abysmal X-Men/Fantastic Four limited series earlier this year -- but the visuals are still occasionally rough and difficult to make out.
Magneto's House of M rules the world, and mutants dominate humans in a racially divided society. The most popular sport on television is Sapien Death Match, in which armored humans fight facsimiles of Sentinels as well as each other. There's only one Sapien Death Match contestant who's better than Tony Stark, and that's his father, Howard Stark. Tony lives in his father's shadow in another way as well: the elder Stark handed his son his company, Stark International. And though Tony has transformed it into a technological and financial powerhouse, it will always be his father's to begin with. Tony has created something new, though... something all his own. It's a new suit of armor that's far superior to anything he or his father have worn in the ring on TV.
Fans of Lee's Transformers art will be pleased with his Iron Man armor redesign (as seen on the cover), as well as the big-robot action of the plot. That aspect of the story plays to Lee's established strengths and his core audience. Still, some of those elements aren't as clear as they could be. We never get a clear picture of Johnny Storm's "Flame On" armor, for example. Furthermore, Lee's human figures are rendered inconsistently, and it's really only color cues that set Tony apart from his father, for example. The computer-enhanced art brings a nice amount of detail to the backgrounds, but one can see the artificial nature of that approach in the foreground and in the characters' faces. It's not as polished as it should be.
Pak's plot and characterization is really quite good. I love that we get to see Tony's fear of the mutant establishment. He's no human-rights activist. He's just trying to protect his little corner of the world, and if he has to suck up to his mutant masters to do it, he will. He's shown to be brilliant but thoroughly insecure. He's no villain, mind you, but he's a deeply flawed protagonist.
Ultimately, this story is about Tony trying to emerge from his father's shadow. Howard Stark's ego (and other secret motives) won't allow him to acknowledge that his son could surpass him in any way, even though it's clear Tony has had successes where Howard failed. It's clear to us, but Tony's blind to it and therefore, he's haunted by it. It seems to me that Howard Stark is a man of such ego that he needs to denigrate his own son in ordr to feel superior. He's not allowed by law to feel superior to mutants, so he's found his own lower class to lord over, and that's his own flesh and blood. 7/10
