Iron Man has become one of the most popular characters in superheroes because of the MCU, and has brought a few characters along for that success. One of them is a hero with a much bigger legacy in the Iron Man section of Marvel than a lot of MCU fans realize: James Rhodes, War Machine. Rhodes served as Tony Stark’s pilot back in one of the best stretches of the character’s existence (the late ’70s to mid ’80s Iron Man comics were great), and would end up wearing the Iron Man armor for his boss for a time. He made a pretty great Iron Man and would eventually get his own armor in 1992’s Iron Man #281 with the debut of the War Machine.
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Iron Man is known for powerful bleeding-edge tech, but the War Machine armor was different. Rhodey was a soldier, and Stark designed it for a soldier. It was armed with gatling guns, missiles, and other ballistic weapons, as well as the usual repulsors, flight, and super strength. It was the ’90s; big guns were the coolest things imaginable to the 12-year boys who read the comics, bought from grocery stores. On February 8th, 1994, those fans got War Machine #1, the first of many series for the character.
War Machine #1 Is Everything ’90s In One Comic, but It Led to Greater Places
Marvel in the ’90s was interesting, and that’s putting it lightly. The massive success of books like Spider-Man #1, X-Force #1, and X-Men (Vol. 2) #1 led the publisher to go all-in on the style over substance approach, which led to the birth of Image Comics. Suddenly, there was an arms race for who could appeal to the teenage boys buying comics, and one thing that really worked in the ’90s, full of kids who had grown up with Schwarzenegger movies, was big guys with guns.
The comic bubble was starting to burst by 1994, but Marvel was still holding together thanks to short term pops from kids buying shiny covers on the newsstands and spinner racks. War Machine #1 has a silver foil cover on black, a rather striking image that would have sold a lot of young readers and people who thought it would be worth something because it was a shiny number one. The book itself, by Scott Benson, Len Kaminski, and Gabriel Gecko, is ’90s cheese incarnate, with Cable, Deathlok, Nick Fury, and a dream sequence with everyone you can imagine in it. It’s not terrible, but it’s not good. It’s ’90s Marvel. If you were there, you get it.
War Machine was Marvel’s attempt to make the Avengers side of the Marvel Universe more popular with Image readers. He had the big muscles, the big guns, fought all the cool people. There was overwrought art, people grimacing, big splash pages of firing guns. He joined the cast of Avengers West Coast and Force Works, and then went back to being a bottom level character. After the return of the heroes in “Heroes Return”, he wasn’t really a going factor in the Avengers at the end of the decade.
However, the 2000s would see the character come roaring back, thanks to writer/artist Chuck Austen. The infamous creator, known for terrible stints writing the X-Men, the Avengers, the Invaders, Superman, and probably more I’ve blocked out, gave readers U.S. War Machine, a re-imagining of the character that fans loved. The 12-issue series gave readers the big guns action they wanted, and a star was reborn. However, that ’90s series will still be special to a lot of fans.
That First Volume of War Machine Laid the Groundwork for the Character’s Success
Don Cheadle’s War Machine is a beloved character, and none of that would be possible without War Machine #1. It’s not some kind of classic that is a secret gem or anything like that. It’s big time ’90s Marvel cheese, but it put a great part of Iron Man history in front of the eyes of a new generation, all of whom went and watched Iron Man in 2008 and fangirled over seeing Rhodey on the big screen. It was big dumb fun.
A lot of times, it can be easy to forget how something as simple as a cool guy in armor with big guns is such fun. War Machine had been awesome in the ’80s as Iron Man, and then in the ’90s, he scratched an extreme itch missing in the Marvel Universe. From there, he’s become a minor legend, a small but integral part of the success of the MCU.
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