War Machine #1-5 (2008-2009)

6 days ago 18

Oh…Good? It’s another War Machine series! These have pretty much been universally lame. This time we have a good writer so…Let’s see.

This first arc has Rhodey returning to being an international hero, but this time he’s defying the U.S. Government instead of working for it. Rhodey kidnaps a bad tech scientist and gets him to create a new body since his armor kills him a little bit every time he uses it. In the meantime, his armor gets upgraded. The raw material for the fix comes from the head of a sentinel.

Bethany Cabe, Tony Stark’s old gal-pal, is helping clone Rhodey a body that won’t be killed by the War Machine armor. But she finds herself the victim of a HAMMER raid after helping Rhodey. It seems Norman Osborn covets Rhodey’s body…

So he steals the clone!

From there, Rhodey takes on an international company called Eaglestar.

PIC OF WAR MCIHEIN TAKN

His armor has some new abilities. It can draw in nearby tech and immediately use it for instant upgrades. That’s pretty damn cool. It also takes War Machine out of the “just another Iron Man” realm and into something new–a cross between Iron Man and Forge.

In addition to changing the basis for the titular hero, there’s pretty dense plotting here and some nice moral ambiguity. Rhodey is not U.S. sanctioned, but he’s trying to rescue a United States citizen being held in another country by mercenaries hired by Eaglestar. The mercenaries are former SHIELD agents who quit because they didn’t want to work for Norman Osborn, so they think they’re the heroes and War Machine is the villain. Meanwhile, Osborn also wants to kill the very people Rhodey is fighting, to cover up that he’s been funding them.

All that work is nicely done. But the centerpiece of this story arc is the Dark Avenger deployed against Warm Machine…

Ares!

Ares is deployed to kill Rhodey’s prisoner, Dr. Harmon, who James wants to bring to justice–not kill. But when Ares sees War Machine, he can’t resist a good fight and decides to take him on instead of fulfilling his assassination mission.

Few people write about Gods better than Greg Pak. The ensuing battle is lots of fun.

Meanwhile, Harmon’s secret project was making monsters using the “Ultimo Virus.” It’s a mutation taken from the tech/alien Ultimo.

The second half of this arc has War Machine trying to stop Ares from killing the mutated humans, while also trying to cure them. Beth Cabe uses tiny drones to get blood samples and work with Suzi Endo (another scientist from Iron Man’s past) to cure them.

But the creatures must die–and Ares kills many of them. Until Ares, inevitably, gets Ultimo-infected.

Rhodey’s body begins to fail–as a result of overusing the War Machine armor. But he’s a real hero so he keeps fighting. To solve the virus issue, Rhodes uses the new armor’s “absorbing” power to suck in the Ultimo Virus and adapt it–which cures Rhodes’ body and cures the infected–including Ares.