Tough Sell of a Jumping-On point
This issue suffers badly from terrible, horrific VAGUENESS. The first third or so of the issue is devoted to setting up a political meeting between parties that have no ties to the ongoing storyline of this title or the marvel universe as a whole, and to fully grasp what all it is getting at, it would help to have listened to a lot of NPR. And then we get to War Machine. Sort of.
Back from Fear Itself crossover land and returning to his own story, Jim Rhodes / War Machine meets with his support staff to rehash (vaguely) what we know about the ongoing story of technological terrorist Palmer Addley. What we find out: nothing really. The team member who knows the most apparently got freaked and called out sick (but is fine; not missing or anything like that' she's just at home with her roommate not addressing the issue).
The issue treads water further by going from there to a multi-page pointless scene of Rhodes' boss being told that there's a robot rampaging in France (near the political meeting set up in the opening), and that the robot is an Addley design. There's no reason for this to take more than a few panels, but it gets a few whole pages (none of which addressing the fact that there's an important meeting of world leaders taking place nearby).
So War Machine flies out to save the day, and the battle is anticlimactic. He beats the robot but finds out the vague political event fell apart in the carnage and the despot ruler everybody was so concerned about has gone home to have his soldiers massacre pretesting citizens in what is most certainly not Libya.
This issue fails to build upon what's come before; it just reestablishes it, and poorly. The political angle, while another bold choice from writer Nick Spencer, just feels wildly out of place. This is one of Marvel's .1 issues meant to bring aboard new readers, and I can't imagine this issue working well to suit that purpose. I respect Nick Spencer's bold choices and his talent (morning Glories and Infinite Vacation are great, check THOSE out), but this is another bad misfire for him at Marvel (something swiftly becoming the norm for his output there). Based on respect for the writer's talents and not liking having incomplete stories in my collection, I'm determined to follow this storyline to the end... but issues like this REALLY make me begrudge this title, its creators AND myself for that.
