A musing on Iron Man and neogenres

[edg]

So what the hell?

Okay. I pick up the latest Invincible Iron Man and flip through it. Apparently it begins with Iron Man's helmet being found in a tomb that dates to the first milennium AD. Everybody (and I'm still not sure whether Tony Stark has been revealed to be Iron Man yet) who knows is in something of a tizzy about this, and Tony effectively tells the researcher (who happens to know who Iron Man really is) that it's not possible, stop wasting my time.

The inevitable is therefore going to occur: by some random plot device (I skipped over it: as I recall from the expository dialogue, it was a temporal wormhole, no doubt created by the device that Tony was seen to have been working on when we first see him in this issue), Tony Stark will be thrust back to the first milennium AD, to be chased after by knights in shining armor, heraldically-barded horses, and bright, primary colors. He will then either a) die, or b) be thrust through the wormhole minus his helmet. (Given that the helmet was found in a tomb, if Tony does manage to return to the present, he will have a) given it to someone as a gift, or b) had it taken forcefully from him.

I'll stop here for a moment. Since when has "modern artifact found at ancient site, could only have been deposited by a single modern person, that person scoffs at the idea of time travel, that person ends up being transported back through time so he can deposit artifact and have grand adventure" become a genre? I know I've seen this somewhere else, but the only place that comes to mind is Michael Crichton's Timeline, which while not an excellent book was at least researched.

That, sadly, is more than I can say for the "Knight In Shining IRON" story arc of Invincible Iron Man. Now, I'll grant that this is only the first issue of the arc, so I may yet be proven wrong, but:

1) Couldn't they at least have chosen a plausible time-travel method?
2) How did knights and barding that look like they came out of a Renaissance Faire end up in 1,000 AD along with Tony Stark? (Possibly Tony was sucked into a wormhole at a Ren Faire; I suppose stranger things have happened. Or maybe it's all just a trick by that wacky Ringmaster! "You are in Dark Ages England... but everyone is wearing early Renaissance clothing! Ha ha ha ha ha!")
3) We know it's 1,000 AD because the scientist who found the helmet says that it dates to "the turn of the millennium... the first millennium AD!" But how could they do that? Again, a supposition: This is the Marvel universe, with geniuses such as Reed Richards, Peter Parker, and, yes, Tony Stark wandering around. Maybe the Marvel universe has hyper-advanced dating techniques. My first instinct was to assume that they dated the tomb, and then associated that with the helmet - to which I say "well, couldn't someone have dropped it there in, say, Victoria's reign?".
4) On the other hand, when I hear "turn of the century" associated with a numbered century, it's usually the century which was turned into: "the turn of the 20th century" refers to the early 1900s. Perhaps this is anomalous; perhaps it's not always used that way. Still, that implies that Tony might have been sent back to roughly the (supposed - gotta appease those non-Christians) time of Christ, in which case knights with lances and Renaissance heraldry would be even more out of place (as would a medieval castle, come to think of it).
5) Back to Iron Man himself. Somehow this wormhole has "reversed the polarity" of the armor, negating all of the powered systems. But isn't this a myomer-based suit of armor? If the electrical systems went, would he even be able to move? Or see? And for that matter, does the suit still sustain his heart? If so, he'd better be praying hard - without power to the suit, he'll die quickly.
6) Tony mentions that without power, his suit (and I think I'm quoting this properly) is like "a tin-foil tuxedo". Does the Iron Man armor really have that little intrinsic defensive worth? If that's the case, shouldn't every single one of Iron Man's enemies invest in a miniature EMP generator (hey, if they have reliable dating techniques, they can have mini-EMPs) and a Saturday Night Special? Iron Man would be a goner! And if the Iron Man armor can withstand gunfire, why can't it withstand a lance? (I know, I know, piercing vs. bludgeoning. Pah, I say.)

Honestly, I would love to see them kill off Tony Stark. It'd be a surprise to the readers, that's for sure! Still, I'm sure he'll survive. He has to - he's one of Marvel's flagship characters.

(I just remembered where I saw this plot before - it's a classic sci-fi short story - but I can't think of the name or the author! It revolves around a ring found on the finger of a skeleton in a cave on an asteroid where no human has been before - and then the crew (and prisoners) of a starship being thrown back in time to when the asteroid was still part of a planet and just beginning to break up, finding out that the ring belongs to the daughter of the captain, and everybody playing a deadly game of keep-away (trying to distance themselves as much as possible from the ring) until the very end, when...)

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Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Lots of sci-fi fiction has used this theme.

There was an episode of StarTrek wherein Commander Data's head was found in a cave on earth. Also recall the Back To The Future series, which did the reverse, having Marty dig up the car which was left for him 100 years before.

Just two examples. Countless others exist.

-DrAndy

[edg.livejournal.com]

Aha! Thanks for helping out a short-circuiting brain. ^_^