Iron Man 2 by Alexander Irvine

Description: “I am Iron Man.” With those words, billionaire industrialist Tony Stark revealed his secret identity. Now a famous high-tech superhero, he uses his powers to protect mankind. Yet things are not going well for Tony Stark. The U.S. military demands control of the most powerful weapon on earth…the Iron Man suit. His beautiful new assistant has a strange, mysterious agenda while his best friend, Rhodey, has betrayed him. And Tony is hunted by a vengeful Russian criminal armed with a lethal technology that may be stronger than Tony’s suit. But even as he fights his demons, the hero faces his greatest threat…one that no armor can defend against…

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My Review

Iron Man 2 may be the first novelization of a screenplay that I have read, and as an introduction, I think it was quite a good one. I’m an old time comic book reader, and I’ve gone to every comic-based movie that I can, including the first Iron Man, so when LibraryThing.com had some review copies of Iron Man 2, I signed up. I wasn’t sure what to expect though, because I hadn’t read a comic-book to screenplay to novel before, as I said, and I was concerned that the feel of a comic book would be lost in a novel, or that it would not appeal.

Face it. Most comic books, especially the old Marvel Comics which originally brought Iron Man to life, have a larger than life aura that defeats efforts to constrain them to the expectations of life. It’s big, beautiful, brutal, life on the edge and without any sign of social conformity. Very few comic book heroes are people I’d enjoy having in my life. They tend to be arrogant, obsessed, driven, and so totally focused that the details which make life livable are just cast aside as unimportant. What that means is that if you’re not the super powered or gadgeted hero, you become something less than an appendage and more like an inconvenience. And none of that changes the fact that within a comic book, these stories are compelling, inspiring, and just work.

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