As an old Iron Man fan, I really enjoyed the first story presented here - basically it's Tony Stark and Steve Rogers talking and going over their old battles. Despite not regularly reading superhero comics for about 20 years (but still taking a peak once in a while) I remembered most of the incidents between the characters. I was impressed at how these events are recontextualised for the Civil War arc - they didn't change the originals, but managed to fit them into a wider context in a believable way. I was impressed by that. The dialogue also works really well - believable, revealing, consistent...

The rest of the issue was fine - diverting enough, but nothing revelatory. But I do recommend that first issue.

815

This was an ok set of tie-ins. They do a good job explaining Iron Man's motivations for actions that were otherwise less than obvious. Unfortunately, I found the "I'm a futurist, I can see the future, man, and this is the least bad possible one" shtick quite unsatisfactory. It makes him (and Reed Richards) feel much more like oracles (albeit with a science gloss), rather than genius inventors/scientists. ( )

A really integral part of the Civil War story, less so for the Iron Man issues as for the Casualties of War and Confession one-shots included. ( )

Not one for your average comic book reader, but collects together some key conversations from the whole Civil War epic and two of its most heartbreaking moments. There's a lot of political (and highly emotional) argument but not a lot of action. What it does most is clarify Tony Stark's motivations for his actions over the whole Civil War debacle. At least one of the issues collected here (Civil War: the Confession) is regarded, quite rightly, as a superb piece of graphic storytelling. ( )