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[Punchy]

After last time’s ‘Tony-Lite’ issue of Iron Man, the moustachioed one is back in the mix, but there’s still lots of other stuff going on, but you really do get the sense at the moment that the tables have turned now. Whereas before the Mandarin was two steps ahead, now it’s Tony that has the advantage. It’s a bit like the back half of Breaking Bad Season 4, where (SPOILERS) Walter White finally began to out-think Gus Fring. I just hope that when the Mandarin is finally brought low, it’s even half as awesome as how Gus was. Anyway, enough about AMC TV shows, back to the comics! It is interesting to see how Fraction is juggling all of his myriad plotlines, each issue gives one a lot of prominence, and the others kind of fade into the background. Like how this issue only had Iron Man on the last page, or how the big Stane Vs Mandarin cliffhanger from last time was dealt with in 2 pages. Here we got a lot of Sasha Hammer and Detroit Steel and a fair bit of post Spy Master reveal stuff. It was interesting to see Spy Master commit ‘suicide by cop’, Fraction subverted my expectations there, I thought it was an escape attempt, but it was something a lot more tragic and intriguing.