Welcome, dear readers, to another week of comics and commentary at Comics! The Blog! We kick things off, as always, by handing out awards for the Best of the Week - beginning with two Award postings, followed closely on Tuesday with this past week’s Best.

Enjoy.

I love it when a book clicks in and hits hard. I had already been enjoying Iron Man: Fatal Frontier quite a bit, but it seems like everything up until this point has been a prologue to what I assume will be one of the best comic reading experiences I’m going to have this year.

In the first three issues of this story, Al Ewing and Kieron Gillen set up a gold rush story located on the moon. In this issue, the story starts hitting a high gear, having laid down the premise and set all the pieces in motion. As it stands, Tony Stark is Moon Sheriff. He has a bi-polar soviet robot deputy whose settings (the hammer, being the enforcer/destroyer, and the sickle, being the worker) can switch on a dime if pushed in the wrong direction. Oh, and because the moon is international space, the UN has declared that any sovereign nation can set up base to harvest phlogistone, the substance this proverbial gold rush is all about, so Latveria is there (along with Doom), the folks from that one nation that based their tech society around Arthurian legend and made Tony tech-joust with them are there, and a creepy corporation that plans to take over the world through branding is there as well. Oh, and Space Warren Ellis is providing some dodgy security, which allows one of Tony’s unstable villains the opportunity to attack him. On the moon. All of this, before we get to the issue’s final twist, which is a doozy. Everything laid down here sets up a crazy ride for the next several issues, with bear traps of death set up all around Tony’s feet. It’s masterful plotting by Ewing and Gillen, with a fantastic script by Ewing pushing things along quite nicely.

With this issue, the art team changes, and I have to say, I was quite surprised with the combination. Neil Edwards provides pencils here, and where I’m used to seeing work that tips closer to thin-lined realism from him, his match-up with inker Terry Pallot swings things in a completely different direction. Pallot’s is a much thicker line, and it lends a nice feel to the art, pulling things away from “realism” a little bit, and entrenching it firmly in “tech sheriff of a moon colony” territory.

If you have yet to read this series, I would gladly recommend that you pick up this issue. You don’t even had to read the previous three issues (although, once you’ve burned through this one, you might find yourself hard pressed not to go back and experience the previous three). In the course of it’s 67 screens, you’re given all the information you need to know about this set up, you just don’t get to see it happen. It’s a smart and highly entertaining read that deserves more eyes than it’s getting - and it’s this week’s recipient of our Space Warren Ellis Could Give A Fuck Award.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The creator credits for this issue, as listed on ComiXology, and in press directly from Marvel, falsely list Lan Medina (penciller for the first three issues) as the artist. The complete creator list, as made available at the end of the Iron Man: Fatal Frontier #4, is as follows:

Writer: Al Ewing
Penciller: Neil Edwards
Inker: Terry Pallot
Colourist: Jesus Aburto
Letterer: Joe Sabino