Invincible Iron Man: Volume 3: Civil War 2 Review

Invincible Iron Man: Volume 3: Civil War 2 Review

As a huge fan of the Invincible Iron Man series and seemingly one of the only people that like Civil War 2, I’m very excited for this cross-over event.

Knowing this is the last in the Iron Man series also adds a lot of excitement for what’s to come as I would much rather read a self-contained storyline than have it go on until it fizzled out.

So, as you can guess, I’m very hyped.

But will the book live up to it?

Well throughout this review I’ll be breaking down my thoughts on Volume 3 and telling you whether it’s worth picking up.

There will be some spoilers here so if you haven’t read the work yet and don’t want anything ruined then I recommend that you skip to the score and come back when you’ve had a chance to.

With that out the way, thank you for clicking this, now let’s get into Invincible Iron Man: Volume 3: Civil War 2!

Back From The Dead

After faking his own death, Tony Stark has a lot to live up to.

Rhodey has died, Stark Industries is in turmoil, his girlfriend Asmara hates his guts and Doctor Doom is now his best friend.

Things couldn’t really get worse and Volume 3 starts with a rather downtrodden Stark being dealt bad hand after bad hand.

Tony is often a character who always comes out winning no matter what and his confidence normally sees him through every situation. However, Civil War 2 paints out the protagonist in a new light and he’s never been this vulnerable before.

The opening is a charming reminder of why we tend to gravitate towards Marvel characters so much. Their humanity is their biggest selling point and that’s definitely on display here. Tony is completely on the back foot and it’s refreshing to see.

He slowly forms a relationship with Riri Williams, a young inventor that’s reverse-engineered his armour and this subplot really provides the book with a heart that allows us to see Tony as a mentor rather than a reckless superhero.

It makes for a thrilling read and as with all of the introductory chapters in the series so far, it’s easy to get lost in it.

Civil War 2 provides a real page-turning opening and it makes it easy to get hooked on the graphic novel early on.

Civil War 2

At the forefront of the work is the Civil War 2 storyline and watching the ‘behind the scenes’ aspects of that book play out certainly adds a lot more weight to the main storyline.

We see Tony handles the deaths of Rhodey and Bruce Banner badly and thus he attends an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting.

Here he comes face to face with Captain Marvel who also happens to be an alcoholic too and the pair have an exchange that feels like one of the most human face-offs in comic book history.

Both are clearly pulling their punches in the main book and here we get the reasoning for that as both try to argue their points and perspectives diplomatically. It might not make much sense if you aren’t familiar with Civil War 2 but as someone who is, I found it fascinating to read.

Victor Von Doom

The book culminates with a story about the Marvel heroes taking down Doctor Doom.

Whilst this would normally be an enthralling showdown, for some reason, it feels slightly lacking here. If you’re unaware of the overall Marvel arc then it will probably lose you completely as you’re picking up at the climax of a story without any of the setups and it feels very poorly handled.

There’s time travel, new characters are thrown at you a mile a minute and overall it left the final chapter of the trilogy feeling disappointing.

Everything wraps up nicely but it doesn’t quite give the series the send-off that I was expecting and because it it it definitely leaves the book with a bitter taste in the mouth of readers.

The Verdict

Overall, Volume 3 is the weakest of the trilogy (mainly for its final arc). As a companion piece to Civil War 2, it works well but as its own standalone graphic novel, it suffers greatly.

This is a shame because the series was outstanding until this point but unfortunately it finishes on its weakest entry.

Volume 3 was pretty meh in the end and it gets a…

6/10

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