If you read these comics, let’s be friends. Unless you didn’t like them. And if you didn’t read them? May God have mercy on your souls.

CHAINED HEAT 3: THE STARKENING

Iron Man #7 is great. There are undoubtedly a few of you rolling your eyes at a comic drawn by Greg Land being pronounced to be one of the best of the week, and I would understand that; his artistic style is famous for its detractors, whose arguments don’t need repeating. Here’s what you need to know: in Iron Man, Kieron Gillen has developed a series that plays to all of Land‘s strengths without sacrificing any of his own.

Gillen does so by taking Tony Stark away from Earth, into a galaxy of trouble. Readers of the Guardians of the Galaxy Point One Issue will have an idea of where Tony will end up, but for the time being, he’s in a dungeon facing a few hundred death sentences for killing the Phoenix in AvX. This setting plays perfectly to Land‘s preferred palette. Instead of drawing people, he can gets to draw aliens and robots and strange new environments that he can fill with a strange, unearthly sheen. Combined with a Tony Stark that looks almost inhumanly celebrity-esque, Iron Man #7 looks both very cool and very unsettling.

The story itself continues the logical follow-up to both Matt Fraction‘s run and Jonathan Hickman‘s current work on Avengers. Over the last few years, we’ve seen Tony conquer his old enemies after being broken down into his constituent parts, and we’ve seen him help vanquish an interstellar galactic firebird god to keep it from destroying the planet. After all this, what’s next? Like in Hickman‘s Avengers, the answer is simple: it’s got to be bigger.

If Tony had to take a step away from Earth for a while to face a convincing challenge, then seeing him in intergalactic jail has put him in an interesting position: the sudden reversal from master explorer playboy to prisoner. We’ve seen Tony broken down before, but Gillen does something very wise: he makes Tony completely reliant on somebody else for help. He can defeat the various gladiators he’s forced to face by himself, but, interestingly, he’s intellectually reliant on somebody else for the first time in what feels like forever. Tony likes to believe himself to be the smartest man in the room, and right now he’s not. That’s the most ingenious setup of all, and an interesting twist on the archetype of the character Unit that he’s used before, going all the way back to S.W.O.R.D. This is Tony’s book, but he’s not in the driver’s seat. He doesn’t even have a plan as ingeniously bad at deleting his own brain and hard rebooting. He’s going by the seat of his pants, and that’s a fascinating place to find him. For all these interesting reversals, from art to script, Iron Man #7 has earned this week’s 499 Problems But a Jail Ain’t One Award.(J)

SOMETIMES THERE ARE FRANKENSTEIN VIKINGS

So apparently, Joëlle Jones likes vikings. This is a very good thing.

If you’re not familiar with the name, I implore you to rethink certain areas of your body; mainly, those attached to your media consumptary glands. Jones is an accomplished artist whose work has appeared on several wide-ranging projects over the past few years. She burst onto the scene as the artist and co-creator attached to Jamie S. Rich’s 12 Reasons Why I Love Her, a time jumping romance story set to several different styles of storytelling. Not only did she manage to keep the narrative consistent (alongside Rich, of course), but she did so while experimenting with her own style, switching techniques as the story required, giving a different look to events as they required without once being jarring. It was a powerful announcement to the comic book industry: here’s Jöelle Jones, a force to be reckoned with!

She followed this up with another stylish collaboration with Rich, a slick noir story called You Have Killed Me that showed her ability to not only jump through styles, but through genres. Since then, she has done the odd project here and there (probably the most prolific of which were the Troublemaker graphic novels by Janet Evonovich as well as work for the Dr. Horrible graphic novel by Zach Whedon), and has now arrived back at Oni Press with Helheim, a collaboration between herself and The Sixth Gun writer Cullen Bunn.

In the back of this issue, Oni Editor in Chief James Lucas Jones describes the way he put this team together, taking several somewhat disparate looking parts, and sewing them into something whole. At first blush, it wouldn’t seem like Jöelle would have been a suitable choice for this book, but as the EiC notes, she is well adept at jumping through genres. Plus, he had been able to talk vikings with her at quite some length in the past as they shared their mutual appreciation for Brian Wood’s Northlanders series, so he knew that the subject matter was an interest to her. Add to that, the concept and story itself from Cullen Bunn - a heady mix of vikings, witchcraft, and Frankenstein-ism - and what you have come up with is nothing less than comic book gold. Every single page of this book looks gorgeous, and the storytelling on display from both Bunn and Jöelle Jones are some of their best work to date.

I would be remiss if I concluded this love-in without extolling the virtues of colourist Nick Filardi, whose work here elevates all involved. A few months ago, Oni sent out a few black-and-white preview copies of this series to retailers - and while it looked great, some of the moments didn’t quite hit right until Filardi’s tones were added. He works well with some contrasting colours in this book, most of which is rendered with a nice blue overlay… which makes the moments and places where he chooses to break through the overall hue of the book pop quite nicely. Some of the more etherial elements also stand out when he plies a touch of dimension to the two that comics are limited to. All in all, it’s one of the best things you’ll read this week, which is why we’re giving this our Leif Erikson Award for Ballerness in a Viking Arena. Because hey, noting says “credible review” like adding affixes to the word “baller”. (B)

If there was any doubt before that Brian Wood, Ming Doyle and Jordie Bellaire are knocking it out of the park with Mara, then Issue #3 should have proved every doubter wrong. It’s just that good.

The storytelling and world-building in this comic are ruthless in their efficiency. In the first issue, we learned about the world of the comic and just how much power and celebrity it has invested in professional volleyball. In the second issue, we learned about how these women are molded into women like Mara and Ingrid. And in the third issue… we see everything explode.

What’s crazy, though, is how rational it all feels. Mara’s initial response. Ingrid’s hurt feelings. Sponsors withdrawing. Oh, there’s a crazy person with a gun? Of course there is. Mara may be set in an alternate/potential world, but it’s one that is shockingly familiar in the types of people you see and the emotions they express. This grounds it very well, so that when Mara flies or moves faster than the naked eye or withstands gunfire, it feels crazy for the reader, like it does for the other characters in the book. Comics readers are familiar with the idea of superheroes; what Wood, Doyle and Bellaire do is make it all feel strange again.

The brutal economy of the book’s storytelling raises its head again with Mara herself. In a few short issues, she’s gone through her own arc preparing her for the last scene of this issue. When her secret comes out, she starts off charming, moves to conciliatory and as it all falls apart, ends up frustrated and angry, ready to burn bridges. She’s lost her career, her friends, and maybe even her girlfriend. She tried to do the right thing and got shot for her trouble. Why should she be the patient one, she asks? It’s a valid question. She’s not the one who shot somebody, but she’s treated like she did. She’s had enough and… boom. She’s taken one step closer to becoming Volleyball Magneto. Three issues is all it took to get to that point, but it feels natural and beautifully paced; there’s enough world-building in the comic that the bursts of development don’t make it feel crowded. It’s a fantastic script from Wood, a writer who knows when to hit the gas and when to slow things down.

Of course, all this perfectly sets up the final scene of the book. Where do some people end up when they’re angry and lost? Who would want someone who’s immensely powerful and just lost a lot of her connections to the people around her? Who has the most to gain from a super-powered athlete? As the next phase of the book kicks off, the team has allowed it to do so in a way that is surprising until you realize how much perfect sense it makes.

The art in the book is gorgeous. Ming Doyle is quickly becoming one of the most underrated artists in the business; her fine line work leaves lots of room for detail, but she knows when to back off and give something an elegant simplicity. It’s impossible to imagine Mara - stoic, proud, aggressive and graceful - drawn by anybody else, and she’s one of the few artists in comics today who takes an artisan’s approach to costume design. Bellaire is similarly on the shortlist for the best colourists around, and whereas in books like John Carter: The Gods of Mars she gave Barsoom a lush, alien feel, or the sickly pallour she infected Bruce Banner with in Hulk: Season One, in Mara she exercises a different muscle, showing similar restraint to Doyle and Wood, giving the world a cold, antispectic feel with pops of violent vividness. It’s perfect. Mara is beautiful and amazing. Please read this book. (J)