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Round 1, Fight 11

Follow the bracket here!

Armor Wars

vs

Future Imperfect

 

******SPOILER ALERTS!!! DO NOT READ IF YOU DON’T WANT THESE COMICS SPOILED FOR YOU! AND ESPECIALLY DON’T EMAIL ME COMPLAINING IF YOU READ IT ANYWAY

 

Armor Wars takes place in a place called Technopolis where everyone wears Iron Man type suits, all the time. This somehow relates to an arms race between Tony and Arno Stark. I don’t know, it’s pretty unclear. The story opens up with a Spyder-Man named Peter Urich web-crawling along the city.

This scene acts more like a cold open, but it does become important later. In the mean time, the writer felt we needed a scene with a whole lot of information dump. Enter Tony Stark and Pepper:

This exchange exists solely for the purpose of explaining to the reader what’s going on. This shows a lack of faith in one’s ability to tell a story, especially this early on. It is the sloppiest kind of exposition. But even with this scene that just exists to explain to the reader what is going on, I’m still pretty confused. But Tony has to go, so the scene ends.

 

From this point, we are introduced to Grand Marshall Rhodes. Rhodes is having a daydream and he gets yanked back to reality by a fellow officer trying to get his attention.

Makes sense so far, right? The fantasy melts away and is replaced by the police station Rhodes is actually standing in. But look at the top of the next page:

In the upper panels, the background returns to the fantasy. Then in the lower we are once again at the police station. This transition from Rhodes’ memories, to police station, back to his memories then once again to the police station is jarring. Why not just let the memory of that one party that turned to shit play out completely before returning to reality? Why yank the reader around so much? This is just weird. It is also emblematic of the fundamental inability to create unity for this issue. This comic pays little attention to where it’s going and how its getting there.

 

But perhaps my biggest complaint about this issue is the fact that they forgot to give Tony Stark a personality.

 

His character falls completely flat throughout the narrative. They somehow made the Avenger with arguably the most attitude completely boring. Boo to you.

 

Moving on, we have Future Imperfect. It is a known fact that everyone loves a good grammar pun, so it has that working for it. The story opens in a desert just outside of a city called Dystopia (the name of which is a little on the nose.)  Ruby Summers stumbles across an old man who needs help.

I really enjoy the little details in this comic, such as the way Ruby’s hair pops out of the top panel just a little bit. This both shows the expanse of the desert background and her domain over it. The old man identifies himself as Odin. The Odin. Just as important, he tells her that he is also fighting against the Dystopian leader, a man by the name of Maestro. Ruby introduces Odin to her rebel friends and they take Odin to their rebel hideaway. That’s when shit gets real cause hold up, that’s not really Odin! The once feeble old man begins to transform into old Hulk. Oh yeah, he’s also the bad guy they have led him directly to their rebel lair.

If you ignore the fact that nothing the characters do makes sense until then (like only running a security check to make sure this guy is who he says he is once he is already in their secret underground hideout), then this is actually a pretty well laid out story. I can forgive those little character eccentricities a lot easier than I can forgive bad storytelling or boring characters.

 

THE RESULTS:

If you couldn’t already tell, I hated Armor Wars and thought Future Perfect was pretty okay. So it’s pretty obvious Future Perfect is the winner. Both had problems with exposition, rushing the reader along through strange or improbable events to get him or her to the main event of the story. But Future Perfect takes its time and is a straightforward sequence of events that leads somewhere. Armor Wars is scattered, flat, and hard to understand.

-Stephanie Rose

CHECK US OUT TOMORROW WHEN WE FACE OFF GIANT SIZED LITTLE MARVEL VS X-TINCTION AGENDA!!