What If? Fallen Son #1

Blech. There really wasn't too much to this story, other than the message that with Stark dead, the Marvel U would be much worse off than it is REALLY fast. The Skrulls would be undetected, Alexander Lukin would have taken over Stark and gotten the Iron Man armor, the Mighty Avengers would capture the New Avengers, and War Machine would be a jerk. Most of the issue is taken up with different characters being bummed out by Stark's death, so it isn't a very far-reaching story. In fact, the book concludes with Stark's funeral, so quite a bit must have happened pretty quickly in this story. I didn't care for Luke Cage gloating about Iron Man's death either, he even wished it could have been him who killed him. Putting stuff like that in a comic actually makes me like Cage less, what a stupid opinion. Tom Foster (Goliath III) is the guy who actually kills Stark, so I guess that pretty much means he is a villain. When editorial allows stories to go out like this, I do think it colors the perception of those characters in the main continuity. Marc Sumerak is usually an editor, not a writer, and I think he missed the mark in much of this comic. I would have liked seeing Cap leading some inspired Avengers or something, that would have been much more interesting.

Trevor Goring's art is interesting, kind of John Paul Leon-ish, or maybe Tommy Lee Edwards. It's heavy on the inks, so everything is gloomy, but that fit the material. His super-characters didn't look great, but on the right type of book (like Punisher or Moon Knight) he'd be fine. The barely there story didn't give him much to work with though.

Poor