Black Panther: Wakanda Forever’s Ironheart got Marvel’s worst weapon

Iron Man stories in which Tony Stark confronts his own god complex are a standby of the character’s history, and writer Christopher Cantwell’s two-plus-year run on the series is no exception. But you can’t say that his arc hasn’t been creative, what with him deleting his Twitter account, going on a cosmic adventure with Frog Man, and turning into an actual god. And this week’s issue, which caps a story arc with the surprise appearance of Ironheart, is no exception.

The good news is that the Ten Rings — not the floaty ones from the MCU but the devastating super-weapons of Marvel Comics — are out of the hands of the criminal syndicate looking to sell them to highest bidder. Iron Man is embarrassed to report that his whole fortune was spent on super-weapons. He then faked his coma by setting up a months-long operation for the Ten Rings. Riri, also known as Ironheart, saved them from being sold to criminals.

Riri will soon make her MCU debut. Wakanda Forever: Black PantherThey are yours to keep Indefinitely.

Is there anything else happening inside our favourite comics’ pages? We’ll tell you. Welcome to Monday Funnies, Polygon’s weekly list of the books that our comics editor enjoyed this past week. It’s part society pages of superhero lives, part reading recommendations, part “look at this cool art.” There may be some spoilers. It may not provide enough context. There will still be some great comics. You can also read the previous edition if you haven’t seen it yet.

“I’m a hero too, Tony,” Riri insists. “And I think I can save the world with these things.” Tony thinks for a long beat, before saying “Okay, take them. I trust you,” in Iron Man #24 (2022)

It’s anyone’s guess as to whether “Riri has the Ten Rings and intends to find a way to use them for good” is a plot thread that will be remembered and used in a future comic — but I don’t think it necessarily matters. It’s a comic that is full of humor. eight pages to explore why Riri is no less qualified than Tony Stark — and probably more — to safeguard the Ten Rings, to establish that she deserves his trust as much as any Avenger… that’s a cool comic. For keeping the peace, Angel Unzueta deserves props. Conversation on eight pagesIt is visually appealing.

Kate sits on a bed as her two male friends and coworkers play a first person shooting game in their dorm-like room. “Your sister and friends,” one asks, “Are they hot?” Or are they “camp hot.” They explain to Kate that “camp hot” is “when you’re a four in the real world, so you’re an eight here.” “Jesus Christ,” she says to herself, and they don’t hear her over the game in Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands (2022).

Kate “Hark! A Vagrant” Beaton’s DucksAlthough it has been available for many weeks, I have only recently finished it. It’s absolutely one of the best comics of the year, a deliberate-but-never-slow, sobering-but-never-existential memoir of the cartoonist’s two-year stint working in the remote, self-contained, overwhelmingly male, and dangerously unregulated worker camps of the Alberta oil sands boom. Beaton weaves together explorations of generational economic scarcity, workplace sexual harassment, capitalist exploitation of people and environments, being on the internet in the late ’00s, and putting your own psyche in place after sexual assault together so deftly you don’t even see the loom.

Ric Grayson looks over his shoulder from the open window of his taxi cab, saying “I need you to get in the cab,” in Nightwing #97 (2022).

The final page reveal at the end of this week’s NightwingRic Grayson. By which I mean the persona Nightwing donned after he got shot in the head and lost all his memories, a memory that every person I’ve ever talked to about it wishes they, also, could forget. How has Ric Grayson and his taxi cab appeared in the middle of the woods where Dick Grayson and Batgirl are hiding a state’s witness? My guesses are as valid as yours. For the first time in my life, I can’t wait to see where a Ric Grayson story goes from here.

Milly psyches herself up to draw back the creepy shower curtain in a creepy bathroom, then turns away going “Nope.” After a one panel beat, she strides back angrily “Fuck, Billy, you better be in there—” in The Night Eaters (2022).

The Night EatersThis is the first volume in the ongoing graphic novel series from the people who brought you hit MonstressIt is hard to explain the series without ruining some of its best parts. Sure, yeah, it’s a story about Asian immigrant generational trauma, a la It’s time to turn redOr Everything at OnceThis is haunted horror meets house. But there’s a lot more to its twists and turns.

Also, as illustrated above, it’s Very funny.

Taaia pushes back against a villain who wants to “fix everything.” “And what then — when your new timeline doesn’t ‘make the grade’?! ‘Reboot after reboot’, you said!! And each sooner than the last — always hunting for the ‘perfect fix’— until not even we know if we’re the ‘true story’ — or your latest ‘maybe-verse’!!!!” she says, against an illustration of dozens of parallel earths in Defenders Beyond #4 (2022).

Marvel comics and DC comics enjoy taking shots at each other, but I have to say that this shot is a great one. Defenders BeyondThis might have been the one that got me. I was a DC person for a lifetime, and it really touched my heart. You will eventually get there. Do live through enough reboots that you either quit or accept that you’ve gotta stop caring about canon so much.

The heroic teens of Wynd: Throne in the Sky #3 (2022) look up at bearded person so huge that pine trees grow on their hat. “Couple o’ little birdies told me some young’uns were in trouble down the slopes,” they say in huge letters, “and sure as can be, there you were.”

I’ve only known Strawberry, the giant who rescues the heroes of Wynd: The Throne in the Sky by popping them in a huge jar like they’re bugs from the backyard, for two pages. But if anything bad happens to them I’ll kill everyone in this room and etc., etc., you know how it goes.

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