IRON MAN #10: Inside The Issue

For what is an Iron Man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught. The record shows, I wrote the prose. And did it my way

Edited by Sam Thielman

AN EDITION of this newsletter about comic books is not the appropriate place to address Israel's U.S.-supported mass starvation of Gaza, but the enormity of this crime makes it impossible to leave it out. Read Abdel Qader Sabbah and Sharif Abdel Kouddous' dispatch from Gaza City. "There are no signs that Israel’s assault will ease anytime soon and the international community has taken no steps to force Israel to end its attacks and to allow massive amounts of aid needed to stave off mass starvation," they write. They quote Eyad Amawi, a representative of the Gaza Relief Committee and a coordinator for local NGOs, who appropriately says, "Damn it all – humanity has collapsed." 

The other day I saw a meme on Instagram that said "I screamed at God when I saw the starving child, until I realized the starving child was God screaming at me." I've been thinking about it ever since. 

You can also hear me talking about this on the podcast of legendary hardcore singer and writer Dan O'Mahony this week. And I talked about the genocide, the history of Zionism and the new Superman movie with my friends and fellow Jews Connor Goldsmith and Holly Raymond in this Patreon-only-but-affordable episode of Cerebro. How's that for a comic-book transition? I don't love it any more than you do. 

SO THIS IS IT. Issue #10, the end of the run. Everything Julius Ohta, Alex Sinclair and I did wraps up here. Julius is on THE PUNISHER now, so the immensely talented Guiu Vilanova steps in to draw the hell out of our finale. Alex colored it, though. I got to work with a rising star of comics art and a legend of comics coloring, and I'm proud of what we made. 

I am grateful to Marvel—to Sarah Brunstad, Wil Moss, Rickey Purdin and Tom Brevoort—for the opportunity to make this book at all. The great gift of this comic came when I got to show it to my oldest child and tell her that even if it takes decades, a dream of yours can actually come true. That gift will regenerate when my youngest is old enough for me to show/tell her the same.

I'm grateful to everyone who gave IRON MAN a chance, even if you ultimately decided it wasn't your cup of tea. I'm grateful for something I absolutely did not expect: a loud and substantial contingent of fans and reviewers with whom this book resonated. For those of you on the Iron Man subreddit especially, thank you. You were a tough crowd and you treated me very well. There's something in the backmatter of the issue for you. 

I'm also grateful for my community of comic-book professionals who took time out of their busy schedules to let me vent, to let me bounce ideas off them, to pick me up when I despaired or panicked, to check me when I needed to be checked, to validate me, to let me text absolutely deranged shit. You know who you are and you are the best. Thank you for letting a novice feel like he belonged. 

Every run must end. I tried to leave the narrative tapestry of Tony Stark in the best and least-encumbering position for the next writer. And I did all that by saying what I wanted to say with the character. Anyone who reads our ten issues will see that I was well and truly on my bullshit. I wrote about oligarchy, surveillance capitalism, police repression, finance capital, the relationship between intelligence agencies and corporations, social media, artificial intelligence, private equity, technocratic liberalism, proxy warfare, great-power competition, terrorism, building labor power, worker-led transitions to a green economy, Ottoman history in Europe and Isaac Babel (more on him after the paywall). I referenced From The Depths, Refused, Earth Crisis, Amebix and my own journalism. I wrote Ironheart, Belasco, Force, Scarlet Witch, Black Widow, Winter Soldier, the Winter Guard, Doctor Druid and Doctor Doom. I brought back Tuatara and the Iron Monger. I co-created Vishte Taru and Ramon Vicente. I wrote my dead friends on-page in the Marvel Universe. I got to play in a big superhero crossover.

And since I see a narrative across the internet lamenting that my run got "derailed" by One World Under Doom, I want to say: absolutely not. I jumped at the chance to have my run serve OWUD. Sarah offered me the chance to keep my run away from Ryan North's story and I chose the opposite. His crossover speaks to themes I explore in my own writing, and OWUD gave me the opportunity to address them in a manner far more organic than anything I would have come up with on my own. If you didn't like "The Insurgent Iron Man," it was not because of any editorial mandate related to OWUD. No such mandate existed. It was because of me. OWUD is good and deserves all the praise it's gotten and more. Nuff said. 

What is my future in comics? I don't know. For the rest of 2025, my professional focus will be on THE TORTURE AND DELIVERANCE OF MAJID KHAN. After I finish my manuscript, then I can consider if there's a next thing for me in comic books. All I can say is this is the most fun I've ever had writing. It's so completely different from journalism as to be bracing. And it has sustained me when the subject matter of my journalism became, at times, bleaker than I could handle. Sometimes I could close the file and write a couple pages of a comic book script to bring me back. 

But this edition isn't about the future, it's about right now. After the paywall, I'll run through my final notes on my final IRON MAN issue—which you should read before continuing onward, since I will spoil everything. And maybe I'll reveal a couple things about where the run would have gone if it had continued. You'll have to pay me for that, though. I'm not Tony Stark—I need the money!