Description from Library Thing: “I am Iron Man.” With those words, billionaire industrialist Tony Stark revealed his secret identity. Now a famous high-tech superhero, he uses his powers to protect mankind. Yet things are not going well for Tony Stark. The U.S. military demands control of the most powerful weapon on earth…the Iron Man suit. His beautiful new assistant has a strange, mysterious agenda while his best friend, Rhodey, has betrayed him. And Tony is hunted by a vengeful Russian criminal armed with a lethal technology that may be stronger than Tony’s suit. But even as he fights his demons, the hero faces his greatest threat…one that no armor can defend against…

My Review

Iron Man 2 may be the first novelization of a screenplay that I have read, and as an introduction, I think it was quite a good one. I’m an old time comic book reader, and I’ve gone to every comic-based movie that I can, including the first Iron Man, so when LibraryThing.com had some review copies of Iron Man 2, I signed up. I wasn’t sure what to expect though, because I hadn’t read a comic-book to screenplay to novel before, as I said, and I was concerned that the feel of a comic book would be lost in a novel, or that it would not appeal.

Face it. Most comic books, especially the old Marvel Comics which originally brought Iron Man to life, have a larger than life aura that defeats efforts to constrain them to the expectations of life. It’s big, beautiful, brutal, life on the edge and without any sign of social conformity. Very few comic book heroes are people I’d enjoy having in my life. They tend to be arrogant, obsessed, driven, and so totally focused that the details which make life livable are just cast aside as unimportant. What that means is that if you’re not the super powered or gadgeted hero, you become something less than an appendage and more like an inconvenience. And none of that changes the fact that within a comic book, these stories are compelling, inspiring, and just work.

When they first started making comic book movies, ignoring the Superman franchise, of course, a lot of people thought that transition wouldn’t make it to the big screen. The roaring success of these movies, and how those involved transformed paper images into a full-featured show, left readers like me stunned. These obnoxious people were conveyed in such a way that once again inspired and compelled, while maintaining their true characters. That didn’t stop me from wondering if the same feel could make it back to paper without losing something in the translation. Frankly, the idea of spending some 300 pages with an arrogant megalomaniac had me nervous.

Let me reassure on both those counts.

Irvine manages to capture the same feel as the comic books (something quite similar to men’s adventure) while not alienating me as a reader. In fact, I was thrilled by some of the lines, and appreciated the balance between the outward and inward lives of the characters.

He manages this balance in part by using multiple points of view, some of which are known and familiar, while others, including the villain, a mirror image of Tony Stark himself, are new to me. While there are some moments when I’m feeling the “oh come on” part of hanging out with someone as arrogant as Stark, or when the sheer lack of honest and open communication makes me want to slap the characters, these same moments are very much in character. And the consequences are real and plausible.

Not only that, but Irvine has captured how Stark thinks in a beautiful way that opens a window into that kind of genius. While there’s no way I’m going to turn around and build myself a flying machine, nor am I so naive as Stark who continues to protest that the Iron Man suit is not a military weapon while he’s flying around stopping the bad guys with the suit, I have a touch of that kind of focused problem solving, and I can tell you the portrayal is spot on.

Which segues nicely into a couple sentences I just had to pull out to say wow. I hope they work as well out of context, and give you a taste of the skill at which this tale is undertaken (Note that there are minor spoilers):

This is from his first meeting with the villain, when he’s using a smaller version of the Iron Man suit that he’s still testing out:

If he’d been in the Mark IV, everything would have been fine. But in the Mark V, he had a fight on his hands. … It was like instant coffee if the Mark IV was Jamaica Blue Mountain; all it did was make you wish for the real thing.

And an illustration of the sense of genius I was talking about:

For a moment Rhodey had a daydream of how this same presentation would be going if it was Tony Stark doing the pitch. … Because Tony was an engineer at heart rather than a businessman, he spoke the language of the barely possible, the thing that could be done if the brain could be stretched enough to see the way to do it.

It should be clear that I enjoyed the book. It’s a fun ride, and definitely a candy-type book.

That said, there were some weaknesses I wish could have been handled better. The biggest one was how the story had too much going on for so short a book. While I understand that some of the threads may be introduced to set the stage for Iron Man 3, it seemed a little much for so many huge happenings to occur in the same short time span when they were completely unrelated. Since details would require major spoilers and I try to avoid that, let me just say that there were three main plots going on, ignoring the ongoing relationship issues between Pepper and Tony, and though they crossed over every once in a while, I felt there was a little too much “popping up when needed” going on to make that happen. I’d have preferred a little more foreshadowing and prior integration to bring these things together smoothly.

And the other is a continuity error, which is something that drives me nuts. The end is dependent on something happening with the suits that logically should not have been possible because of the way the suits are designed around Tony. Now, with Stark the way he is, I can see it happening, but why not mention that he’s done so, in his head at least. And how is it that Rhodey knew it was even a possibility? I’m curious if any of you who end up reading this noticed the same thing, but I’m hoping my comments here are intriguing but without spoilers.

Anyway, yes, I had quibbles, but my walk away was pure enjoyment. If I let quibbles taint my reads, I’d never enjoy anything. If you like the comic book over the top feel, Iron Man 2 offers that and more. It’s not a deep think by any means, but it has its moments, and they all add up to fun.