Iron & Frost Is Style Over Substance in the Age of Revelation (Review)

With Marvel’s Age of Revelation event underway, it’s an interesting time to be an X-Men fan. The event sees X-Men comics jump ten years into the future and into a world where Doug Ramsey’s Revelation has taken over to create a mutant nation in the wake of the X-Virus, a nation that is based on oppression and authoritarianism where those who don’t join up with him are hunted down and killed. It’s a grim future, but as is the case in any grim future in X-Men comics, there are always those who try to fight back which leads us to Iron & Frost, a tie in series that takes Emma Frost back to New York after everything went sideways and reveals some surprising secrets.

For fans of Emma Frost, the book leans into a brief period in her history — specifically Gerry Duggan’s Invincible Iron Man run which saw Emma in a relationship with Iron man as well as the pair being members of the Hellfire Club. But while that is interesting and seems poised to give fans of the Emma/Tony pairing, Iron & Frost #1 feels like a pretty thin setup within an event that already relies on recycled ideas rather than anything especially new or interesting.

Rating: 3/5

Iron & Frost Gives Emma and Tony Shippers a Little Hope, But Not Much Else

Iron & Frost #1 starts off with a small group of heroes — War Machine, Iron Man, Firestar, and the White Queen — fighting off a trio of Revelation’s devotees who are trying to recruit (by force) a young mutant girl outside the Avengers mansion. While the heroes ultimately manage to save the girl, Eris, it’s not without cost. Firestar’s powers overload and Emma ends up fatally wounded by Marrow. It’s a moment that reveals Tony’s true feelings for Emma, and hers for him, but also sets in motion events that change everything. Emma shifts into her diamond form to save her life, though it come at the cost of her emotions. Emma gets left behind for dead in the rubble. Years later, Emma returns now completely changed and finds Eris all grown up and another surprise: a much-changed Tony who now calls himself the Iron King.

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While Iron & Frost #1 fills in a little bit of the Emma/Tony relationship and offers up a few good emotional moments in its opening pages, there’s not much in the way of substance with the rest of the issue. The issue lays out that Emma will die if she shifts away from her diamond form and it’s already been well established that the X-Virus has decimated pretty much everything, but all we’re really told once we get into the “X Years Later” aspect of things when Emma returns to New York is that Tony is searching for a cure and somehow, that’s led him to transform into something else.

The suggestion at the end of the issue is that Tony has himself become a mutant, transformed into a literal man of iron. It’s an interesting turn of events, but with how little in terms of story the rest of the issue has given, it’s also a matter of more questions than answers and it’s unclear if any of the questions are worth asking. The Hellfire Club has apparently been reestablished with Tony in charge, but how? What does that even mean in a world where the heroes have to be underground — literally? The end of the issue also suggest that Emma and Tony are at odds with one another, even though the issue also previously established that Emma got herself out of the rubble only to wander alone for years. The animosity Emma is greeted with upon her return to the Avengers Mansion doesn’t really make sense, particularly when Eris, now calling herself Landslide, reveals that everyone thought she was dead. There are just a lot of little gaps and dangling threads.

Iron & Frost Does Look Good, Visually

While the story is a bit rough and feels unfinished, art-wise, it’s actually pretty nice. Of particular note is the use of color for New York City “X Years Later”, specifically the above ground portion of it. There’s a lot of lovely use of green and gold that gives it a growing, thriving feel amidst all the destruction, almost like nature reclaiming the concrete. The use of color is a huge positive throughout the rest of the comic generally. Colorist Yen Nitro uses color as a way of conveying action within the fight scenes in the past as well and it does a very good job of showing the individual powers of the characters as well as highlighting the destruction and devastation.

Along those same lines, the character design for Iron King is actually really cool. He looks more like an evolved Iron Man suit than a mutant or man of metal, but it is really cool and even looks slightly Doctor Doom-adjacent, which kind of gives readers a sense that this change for Tony might not necessarily be a good one. It will be interesting to see how this character design continues to evolve as the series continues, but the first look we get of it is really outstanding. It’s just a little unsatisfying that it’s a good look for a story that thus far hasn’t had much in the way of substance.

Overall, Iron & Frost is a pretty middling tie in for an event that hasn’t really proven itself to be all that interesting just yet. With this first issue doing a lot of very loose setup, it will be on future issues to really craft a story that has something to say. Right now, it’s style over substance, for better or for worse.

Iron & Frost #1 is on sale now.

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