Welcome back to Strange Times & Places, where we’re jumping into the modern age of Amalgams by looking at one of Marvel’s Infinity Warps, Iron Hammer!
How’s It Different?
Gosh….For Want of a Royale With Cheese? It’s an alternate present created by the merging of various Marvel characters, with the (appropriately) two issue mini-series filling in origins.
What’s The Story?
Sigurd Stark is a Norwegian billionaire who wandered out of the wilderness five years ago with no past. He’s built his fortune over the half-decade through his preternatural gift for designing brand new, nigh-unearthly technology. His gifts see him kidnapped by the Dark Elves and forced to work as their weaponsmith alongside Eitri the Weapon-Smith, with the two brilliant prisoners conspiring to build Stark a suit of armor that can free him…if he can survive the Dark Elf poison in his veins long enough for it to boot up…
Best of Differences
- Al Ewing deftly weaves together the backstories of Thor, the son of Odin temporarily exiled to mortality to learn some humility, and Iron Man, a billionaire tech whiz whose experiences kidnapped by rebels/terrorists teach him some responsibility, in a way that works better than most would expect.
- That Howard Odin (who should really be Howard Borson, but Stark Howardson don’t have the same ring to it) is described as the Chief Executive of the Aesir. Highly amusing, particularly because it’s an accurate description of Odin’s position in the Aesir government.
- Malekith’s ongoing dreams of conquering the (now) 10 Realms and the Mandarin’s ten rings of power combine surprisingly well. Particularly since the Asgardian mythos already lends itself to weird magic artifacts.
- Krimson Kurse is a nifty merger of Kurse, who wore living armor that enhanced his natural Dark Elf physiology, and Crimson Dynamo, a Ruskie anti-Iron Man.
- Stane Odinson, adopted Midgardian brother of Stark Odinson (Sigurd Stark’s godly identity), feels incomplete. That’s the only nod, IIRC, the entirety of Infinity Warps to the larger event and it works very well in context – it’s part of his villainous motivation, after all.
Come Back Next Week for a New Tokusatsu Gesundheit!
