Identity Crisis: Tony Stark: Iron Man #11 Review

Writer: Dan Slott, Jim Zub / Artist: Valerio Schiti/ Marvel Comics Tony Stark is back at it again with the white Vans! Tony Stark: Iron Man #11 marks the first resolution of the series and it delivers the goods from the jump. Writers Jim Zub and Dan Slott’s approach to Tony has been multi-tiered. We’ve been given the most fleshed out version of this character and the world he occupies or, should I say, the many worlds he occupies. The Controller is locked out of eScape and is catching hands from Rhodey, Wasp, and the Champions. Slott and Zub slyly develop a ‘passing of the torch’ moment here; everyone is asking for Iron Man when Ironheart shows up.

With no grandiose fanfare, Riri holds her own in the field. Until Iron Man shows up in a newly developed God Killer armor that he designed inside the eScape and bodies The Controller. Boom. The heroes win the day, but we now have a glimpse of yet another layer of who or what Tony really is. Arguably the most excavated we’ve ever seen, Tony recalls that he is entirely new, down to the cellular level. This crisis of identity puts into question the many ways we’ve seen him ‘perform’ normality in his many worlds: and whether his relationships are ‘real’. This shift causes Tony’s birth mother Amanda, to question who she is and what Tony is since his reconstruction. Andy considers leaving the Stark compound with Amanda because he’s pointless with no real initiative in the story. Jocasta, who is to this comic as Nebula was to Avengers: E…