Synopsis & Review by RachelGrey Thanks!
Synopsis: A shady man walks by Avengers Tower and activates a device. Suddenly, all the SHIELD guards around the tower fall down with their suits deactivated. The man walks up to the Tower and manages to pass through the identification process using tech to sound like Tony Stark and to fake the appearance of him to the cameras. The man rides up to Avengers headquarters and tries to sneak around, only to be spotted by Jarvis. As the faithful butler runs to alert security, the man pulls out a gun and shoots him, setting off an alarm anyway. But the quick thinking man overrides the codes and shuts off the alarm. He then leans over the bleeding Jarvis and apologizes, but says he wasn’t the one who put him in danger so its not really his fault. The man is then surprised as a very angry Iron Man appears behind him. But again, the man pulls through by saying a passcode that shuts off Iron Man’s armor. As Iron Man falls to the floor, the man says, “Mr. Stark. Now the war is over.”

High above Washington, Maria Hill is alerted of an oddity from a SHIELD helicarrier. She is informed the SHIELD guards around Avengers Tower went down, but are responding in. Hill radios the unit, who again respond that everything is fine. Hill then has surveillance zoom in and find the shield guard unit down and realizes it a recorded message responding in. Hill sounds an alert as SHIELD scrambles.

Tony Stark peers through his helmet as the man says he’s not about to let Tony use his inventions and designs against Captain America. He says Tony has betrayed him and others like him. Outside, Hill and SHIELD stand outside Avengers Tower and find out the guard’s armor suddenly froze. Inside, the man notes that since the war started, Tony stopped coming out of his armor. Back outside Hill announces she’s going in. As Tony helplessly watches through his tiny eye slits, the mysterious man says Tony is hiding behind his technology and hypothesizes Tony is ashamed of what he’s doing and keeping the armor on makes it OK. The man removes Tony’s mask so he’ll see what’s about to happen, while down on the sidewalk, Hill says, “Open the toy box and give me some toys”.

Tony gasps for air as the man muses how he forgot how stressful the armors shutdown would be on Tony’s body. Tony tells the man, named Kenny, to stop. But Kenny doesn’t and pulls out an odd device that he announces is an Antimatter Generator. Elsewhere Hill is given dematerializing spray (allows her to walk through walls), a cloaking watch, antigrav shoes, and special grenades (contain bomb explosions) to help her infiltrate Avengers Tower and stop whatever is happening. Back inside, Kenny says his Antimatter Generator, which Tony specifically told him not to build, will make both them and the entire building disappear. As Kenny says this will make people stop caring about the “Whose side are you on?” stuff since there won’t be any sides, Hill sneaks into the Tower. Kenny opens a beer and tells Tony he doesn’t want to kill anyone he doesn’t have to; it’ll just be them and Jarvis. Tony says if he kills him, he’ll just make him a martyr and no one will know why Kenny did it. They’ll just think it was some super villain or the resistance. But Kenny has thought ahead and informs Tony he posted it on his Blog. The world will know exactly why he did it. He won’t let his work be used for the war. Tony yells that he paid for that work fair and square and that Kenny works for him. Kenny yells back that he was a trusted friend and confident who betrayed and he’d rather die than let it keep going. Tony tries to reactivate his armor, but Kenny tells him he dismantled the override codes for the armor when he shut the armor off. Kenny then wonders aloud what it will feel like to not exist when his chest explodes. As Kenny slumps over him, Tony looks around to see what happened and watches Hill appear with a smoking gun. Tony screams for her to run as Hill throws her grenades onto the bomb while asking what exactly it is. Tony tells it’s an Antimatter Generator and her grenades won’t work. Hill throws all the grenades she has onto the generator and jumps over Tony’s body to cover him as the Generator goes off. When the smoke clears, Hill gets up to find both her and Tony are alright as SHIELD enters the room with Ms. Marvel and The Sentry. Hill radios in a med evac for Jarvis while Tony cries.

Nine Hours Later: Tony watches the sunset when Hill walks up to him and asks how he’s doing. Tony gives her a vague answer and Hill asks why he hates her so much. Tony says he doesn’t hate her. He just doesn’t know her. Hill says he hates her because there were seventy-five more people better qualified to run SHIELD than she was. Maria then asks if Tony has ever seen the movie “A Few Good Men”? She explains the movie and relates it to her promotion to SHIELD director. She wonders aloud why a low-level agent working in Madripoor with no leadership experience would get the position and things it may because someone doesn’t want someone more experienced and knowledgeable in there. Hill then says she doesn’t want her job anymore and says she knows who should replace her. Tony asks who and Hill says “You. And wouldn’t that piss off all the right people?”

Review: Well that’s an interesting ending. But really, that’s the only good part. I was hoping this issue would give us some real insight into Tony’s thinking and hopefully finally give us some good Pro-sided arguments. But instead we get another crazed, suicidal, and overzealous employee story. Kenny came off as really a crazy man. He didn’t come off as a righteous person doing what he believes in or someone with real insight and profound beliefs. He didn’t want his work, which he sold to Stark, to be used on Captain America so he decided to kill Tony. He seemed too imbalanced to make Tony or the reader seriously contemplate that he had a point. While we do get a little more scumbag Tony by using Kenny’s tech for a different purpose than what he said. But that happens all the time in the business world. Tony rightfully paid for it and it was his. While not saintly or respectable, deciding to kill Tony for it is a step too far. Also, how did no one notice the SHIELD guards falling right away? They even made loud clanking sounds as they fell. Perhaps the public has already become that desensitized to the war? We finally Hill get her hands dirty. She doesn’t do anything spectacular or new, but it shows she’s not all bark.

Jim Cheung steps in for art on this issue. I can see vast improvements in Cheung’s art from the first arc of Young Avengers he did. He’s definitely improving and refining his style. His Hill looks slightly off with the ears, but everyone else looks good. The faces look different and Iron Man’s armor looks great. The art was really the high point in this issue.

The biggest part of this entire issue is the very end. Tony could very well be taking over SHIELD. Now there have been rumors for a while now saying Tony will not be in the Iron Man armor after Civil War. Who will be in the armor is another story, but I’ve heard everything from Jim Rhodes again, to a LMD, to even Speedball. But that’s all speculation. What’s important is that there seems to be a good chance Tony will be the new Director. This could be a red herring and Tony will pass the role onto someone else or decline the offer, but I’m not sure. I firmly believe they will throw at least one curveball with Iron Man at us before Civil War wraps up so I can’t really say what’s going to happen with Mr. Stark. Personally, I’m indifferent. It could spawn some interesting Tony Stark stories or it could flop. I’ll just wait and see what happens. Too bad the rest of the issue doesn’t invoke so much thought. It’s very straightforward and quite boring. A lot of the issue is like a Bond movie or something while the other part is Kenny ranting on and on. Unfortunately, this issue follows the typical New Avengers recipe of great art and little story and plot outside of a shocker here and there. I was really expecting more out of this issue. I honestly think this Disassembled arc has been the worst arc so far in New Avengers, which is surprising because it gave plenty of opportunities to really enhance a character. But instead we get a small story that seems to be set up in this issue. Of the five issues, I only consider one a really hit with Spider-Woman with the Luke Cage issue barely passable. The others really don’t stand up to what they could and should be. While Marvel has intentionally made most of their tie-ins supplemental reading that you don’t need for Civil War, these really don’t capitalize on Civil War enough to really take advantage of it and make a great enhancement for the characters, again barring Spider-Woman and parts of the Luke Cage issue. The Captain America and Iron Man issues in particular don’t really say enough about the character’s stances. This was a perfect opportunity to spotlight their thoughts in depth to really see it beyond the normal “It’s morally wrong” and “It’s the future” bit that it seems to stay at. As a whole I just feel this story and most of the others missed the mark it should have hit. Hopefully Bendis will have things more together after Civil War and really show the aftermath because no team was hit harder than the New Avengers by Civil War. It wasn’t shown with these tie-ins well, but maybe it will be shown post-war. I can hope.