Not an analysis of the issue, just a coincidence I noticed. It seems t me that many or most of the villains being revamped as Mandarin agents in this storyline are each a living counterpart to one of the Mandarin's rings. The Living Laser, Blizzard, Chemistro, and the proposed new Melter each suggest one of the Mandarin's ring powers.

The Mandarin did once have henchmen, each granted one ring, to do his bidding. They were called the Hand...no apparent relation to the more infamous ninjas from Daredevil who also later worked with the Mandarin during the Acts of Venegance. With that in mind, what if that were really intended? Who among Iron Man's villains (loosely defined as a set) would fit the pattern? ( Entries with a "*" next to them are fromt he actual story or from interview comments by Fraction.)

Left Hand
Ice Blast: Blizzard*
Mento-Intensifier: The Controller
Electro-blast Ring: Crimson Dynamo (his forgotten original gimmick was that he could control electricity, hence the "Dynamo" part of the name).
Flame Blast Ring: Firebrand
White Light Ring: Living Laser*

Black Light Ring: An evil version of Darkstar or a resurrected Blackout, maybe???? Spymaster with a cloaking device? There's not really a good Iron Man villain for this one; for all the evil Darkforce users in the MU, few have fought Iron Man. Black Mamba met him once, but she's hardly in IM's class as a fighter.
Disintegration Beam Ring: The Melter* (Remember, his beam was originally supposed to melt matter without heating it up. Stark himself called the Melter's weapon a "matter dissolution ray" in a backup feature in Iron Man Annual #15)
Vortex Beam Ring: Cyclone??
Impact Beam Ring: Nitro
Matter-Rearranger Ring: Chemistro*

Who would you pick, if anyone?

- Omar Karindu
"For your information, I don't have an ego. My Facebook photo is a landscape."

I agree with your list... except for Vortex: I think that would be Whirlwind.

The issue wasn't too bad. By Fraction's standards, it was a positive high-flier. We got some reflection on Obadiah Stane (and some possible foreshadowing? Why DID Stane wear that goofy-ass jewel, anyway?) and open hostility between the Mandarin and Ezekiel. Also, more tech besides a "repulsor-powered" (whatever THAT means) car.
Also a nice second cover of "Cyber-Venom".

I have to say, the Mandarin is diminished in my eyes. The Knaufs tried to turn him into so much more than he was - tempered, yet still ruthless. Fraction has completely ignored this development, just as he apparently chooses to ignore the Mandarin having been altered by the Extremis process. Antagonizing a technological genius who is on a par with Iron Man himself and seeks chaos is stupid. Zeke altered his own physiology cybernetically. How long before he manages to disable the bomb? And being aristocratic is one thing, but now he's just being dumb. "This ring is called Daimonic"? A line like that I would have expected in a comic from 1974.

But, you know, somehow I suspect the rings are gonna get a revised origin, too. They're probably made from gems hacked out of the Holy Grail, or something. I am sure Fraction's version will make no more sense.

(Over in Thor, he sweeped Bor under the rug altogether, although HIS story was told less than three years ago - by a far more talented writer).

It's somewhat irritating to me that Fraction's take on the Mandarin as a Kim Jong-Il (Jong-Un, now?) type has been largely jettisoned here in favor of "generic megalomaniac." Additionally, the question of his relationship with Justine Hammer -- which seems really uncharacteristic, since he didn't just add her to his harem and doesn't seem interested in his own daughter's existence -- remains unexplored. (Zeke is finally mentioning his father as more than a token motivator, but that's about it.)

We already see the seeds of the villains' defeat being set up, of course, since not only are the Mandarin's Minions all unwilling servants, but the Hammers haven't worked out that the other Detroit Steel would have been resurrected like everyone else in Paris. Do they not watch the news?

Perhaps the silliest bit for me in all of this is the idea that the Living Laser: a) needed to be "upgraded" to move at the speed of light, when he's done that before in other comics; and b) can somehow have a bomb implanted in him and be threatened by that despite not having a solid physical form. How exactly do you perform surgery on a bunch of photons, or threaten to blow them up?

- Omar Karindu
"For your information, I don't have an ego. My Facebook photo is a landscape."

- Omar Karindu
"For your information, I don't have an ego. My Facebook photo is a landscape."

Didn't we already get his origin? We already know it (Father's suicide, losing his hair , him being ridiculed and getting pissed off,etc.). It was a pretty cool one too. Also, did the Mandarin ever kill or try to kill anybody when Stan Lee wrote him? Didn't he try to start a few wars then? Thanks.

Sounds really strange to me. Isn't that a MUSLIM thing (Please don't make this political, I didn't mean anything by that, and I'm not judging it.)? And Mandy has a daughter? Oyyyy. Not good stuff.

Me too (comparatively). Princess Bride is one of my fave movies and it was very disturbing reading Mandy say "AS YOU WISH" ...twice! And a bit awkward too - he couldnt have been planting the phrase after the fact, eh?, so it must have been smug self-satisfaction alone. Though, any implied inflection was lost in translation.



Besides addressing the 'problems' posted/perceived past ish,
also would've liked better:

•Broxton staying as (sentimentally sensitive) HQ intead of Aberdeen(for no given reason?).
•a harassment suit filed on behalf of poor, unwilling Tim against one (dominatresque) Ms. Cabe. SPOILER at dreamwith:

•the Resilient Security Chief knowing what specific alarms are for (read a manual instead of baby monitoring Pepper).
•maybe more unique or Oriental mechanizations other than failed MAGGIA base-tech for attack (though maybe he is trying to hide his input) for some Mandarin flair.
•a concerned Tony Stark that checks himself if the docs he fired upon were injured.
•DSC?! A Corps now? Ugh. Watch there'll be specialized armors.
•some more tidbits to Anthem's injury and mention of The Order.
•armor that doesn't frustrate me with unexplored operations, like, did the suit grows over clothes or replace 'em (not that either way is favored)?
•walking thru a door 3 feet away over a more dramatic fugitive exit by destructive glass smashing.
•a more inviting next issue tease than a WM/IM clash. We just had that (displeasure) in 2.0. And it appears Rhodes has exclusive access to STARK INTEL? But is free to disclose it to the military in front of an audience, heh. Hmmm, better/worse/same as Avengers Intel? Wonder if'll like how and how fast they will get the 2 to China.

Iron Man #512
http://www.newsarama.com/php/multimedia/album.php?aid=45343

---

Resolving to move on...

Sasha Hammer (aka the new Detroit Steel and Ezekiel Stane's girlfriend) is the daughter of Justine Hammer and the Mandarin.

Not sure about all of this harem stuff though. Was that from the IIM Annual?

-Frank

I thought Odin just undid the spell that'd turned everyone into stone, which means that anyone who got shattered when they were a statue would still be dead. So it made sense to me that Detroit Steel is still gone.

The Mandarin was shown to have a harem in Invincible Iron Man Annual #1. Harems, though not always called that, predate Islam by quite a bit -- Genghis Khan had a bevy of concubines, as did the Old Testament figure Solomon.

There's actually a Chinese word for the same thing, huogong,and that tradition goes back even further than the harem tradition in the Middle East. So that's presumably what the Mandarin would call it.

- Omar Karindu
"For your information, I don't have an ego. My Facebook photo is a landscape."

Thing is, most of the people in Paris had been shattered, not merely petrified. In any case, the dialogue in the Fear Itself one-shot makes it clear that Odin reversed ALL the casualties caused by Mokk.

- Omar Karindu
"For your information, I don't have an ego. My Facebook photo is a landscape."

I suppose the mento-intensifier could have different levels of success depending on the particular mind it was trying to affect.

And it might have unwanted side effects if used injudiciously... I mean, perhaps he could have taken full control of Maya Hansen at the risk of reducing her mental acumen.

If you're creating completely obedient guards and warriors, that's no problem, but messing with the mind of a genius you want to work for you at the top of their game.

Or maybe the Knaufs just thought that The Mandarin should be an awesome manipulator, and choose to give the rings a power-level that would supplement that without drowning it out or rendering it irrelevent? You can't really present him as a brilliant manipulator if the rings are so cosmically powerful that he doesn't actually need to manipulate anyone.

It's not a coincidence that Fraction's Mandarin has a more powerful mind-ring but Mandarin himself seems dumber. It's a natural push-pull that happens one the result of the other.

Yes, it is.

And?

There's no "and" that hasn't been said in previous posts. You either prefer The Mandarin as a remarkable man with moderately powerful rings or you prefer him as a set of cosmic rings with a chump attached.

I don't really think there's a choice. The rings ARE ridiculously powerful.

Sure, he's remarkable, but there's thirteen to a dozen of those in the Marvel Universe.

And as for the chump part... he was at the top of his game during 'Haunted', but he still got beaten in a surprisingly simple way.

Really? It's a fact like gravity and 2+2=4? I thought it was a comicbook thing where different writers have different takes. And Byrne's take on the rings as Silver-Sufer-in-a-can didn't last very long at all.



There's lots of everything in comics, even Heralds of Galactus and Abstracts.




He outwitted Stark for most of the story, murdered Stark's mentor, stole his woman, brought the entire world to the brink of annihilation, and left Stark with a broken arm, a dented helmet, and missing a chunk of his foot after all was said and done. For a villain, and therefore always destined to lose, he did pretty damned good.

That's about as much of a win without actually killing the main character and ending the book a villain can get.

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=preview&id=11135
http://fans.marvel.com/go/thread/view/108222/28840731/?pg=last
http://xmanscomicblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/quick-look-at-invincible-iron-man-512.html
http://www.advancediron.org/forums/index.php?topic=6439.0
http://www.graphic-kontent.com/home/2012/1/24/review-invincible-iron-man-512.html
http://comics.ign.com/articles/121/1216759p1.html
http://cmro.travis-starnes.com/blog/2012/02/invincible-iron-man-512-review/