War Machine #2

Hmm. I have to say, this comic is not as great as I'd hoped. Christos Gage had a strong arc in the Iron Man book before it was cancelled, but I'm just not as interested in this series. Greg Pak writes a fairly standard story of WM trying to free an old friend of his from military contractors. That part was ok, but their young hot-shot boss reminded me quite a bit of Ezekiel Stane. Is it actually supposed to be Stane? I was also confused because I thought Bethany Cabe was captured at the end of the previous issue, but here she's providing support for WM again. I don't think I read it so fast that I missed how they explained that. My third problem with the story is that again in this issue, WM gets his arms and legs blown off and has to creatively plug some parts onto his armor. That would be fine, but we saw a similar scene in issue 1, so I'm concerned that this is going to be a recurring thing. Rhodey himself doesn't have a whole lot of character development. He is out to get the bad guys because they are bad, there is not a lot more to it. Gage interspersed his story with neat flashbacks of Rhodey in Philadelphia growing up, and those roots are missing in this new series. Basically, I'm not sure why I should care about the title. Having Ares show up on the last page is a great hook though, I'll pick up the fight with him and War Machine for certain. After that, I'm not sure if I'll stick with this book or not.

Leonardo Manco's art is still in that gritty realistic style, with the weapons and armor being a high-point. But nothing feels very super, if WM is just fighting normal dudes, I'm not sure I'm going to stay interested.

Average