[...] readers know, I very much enjoyed the Iron Man movie, but I’ve had less luck with reading comics with the same feel. However, I did enjoy Iron Man: Industrial Revolution (JUL11 0750, $16.99, Oct 19). This story, [...]

Starting with the earliest stories is a good idea. There’s a lot of the spirit and ideas of them in the movie. If you like ‘em, just keep rolling all the way through the SUSPENSE run and up to IRON MAN #28. Stop there, though (seriously, the book becomes awful for a long time and doesn’t really recover until after #100, but that run’s derivative of the Goodwin run, so it’s skippable), and jump ahead to the first Michelinie run, which has a lot of the breeziness of the movie, and is where most of the movie’s ideas and spirit that Stan Lee and Don Heck didn’t create came from.

If by the time you get to #150, you still want to keep going, I’d jump to the second Michelinie run, and pick up again there. And after that, well, maybe my run — I’ve read reviews of the movie that say there’s a lot of what I did in the movie, but I think it’s largely coincidence, since I was trying to do a modernized take on what’s fun about the early stories and the Michelinie run, and I think the movie folks were working from the same influences. [Tony's "smart house," though, I'll call dibs on that...]

That’s about 185 issues, so you’ll probably have had your fill somewhere in there…

kdb

Also try the Warren Ellis/Adi Granov Extrimis.

They are both very similar in tone to the feel of the movie.

I dig the (unintended?) typo. Awefull ~ Awe + full = full of awe?

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Awesome!

I find the early Lee stuff almost unreadable. The cold war stuff is too dated and the science is awefull.

The O’neil run is good, but it doesn’t sound like it is what Johanna is looking for.

I’ve been thinking of looking at the Marvel Age Iron Man. Especially since they have them in the big magazine size digests at Target again.

I’ll throw THIS out there, though: I saw it last night with my brother-in-law who’s read a lot more comics that I have and what we came away with was this: Not only is this arguably the best superhero movie we’ve ever seen, but neither of us could think of an Iron Man comic we’d enjoyed more than the movie! And can anyone honestly say THAT about any other superhero movie?

I also liked O’Neil’s run, even though some say that he was directed to “up the alcoholism” by editorial fiat. It still gave us Rhodey in the armor and some excellent tales of Stark rebuilding his life and company. O’Neil’s Iron Man was consistently good as well.

The -best- run for me was Archie Goodwin’s take in the original Tales of Suspense through the beginning of the original Iron Man title. Goodwin was the first to really get the character ‘right’. Better than Lee. All available now in the cheap Essentials now.

Bill Mantlo’s run brings fond memories to mind — he was one of the first to re-examine the Goodwin issues if I recall correctly. Probably not reprinted yet.

Busiek’s run after the Heroes Reborn thing began pretty well. Roger Stern had a hand in there at the time too, to good results.

Thought Ellis’ Extremis storyline was great, marred at the time only by a very slow artist.

I’m going to have to look up this hair thing, because people keep mentioning it. Thanks very much for all the suggestions!