[Jason Abbadon]

I respect your opinions guys...I'm just frustrated with Fracton.
His current stuff just never comes to a finale.

I LIKE defined story arcs- I like characters going through something and it being a turning point- Fracton's first arc (Five Nightmares) on Iron Man did this beautifully- it was smart, took bits of IM contunity and used them in a new direction, it had crazy action every issue while introducing new awesome bad guys while also focusing on the hero (Tony) and at the end of the arc, things were changed.
But he was only writing IM at that time- as soona s he was on X-Men too and now all these big projects...

Some writers get slammed for "writing for trade" so a story works well for that format and I'll tell you all that those are the stories that become legendary- stuff like Born Again. Armor Wars, Enemy Of the State, Death of Jean DeWolf, etc.
Six to eight issues that tell a story- that's 140-160 pages of comics- the equivalent of a 350-400 page book.

If you bought a current IM trade ($20 retail) you'd have...nothing. Meetings and backbiting betwen supporting cast, self doubt and lots of buildup.

As to me not reading it- as far as marvelis concerned, I DONT- I read my roommate's for free, but I'm not buying it- and I have a couple of long boxes full of nothing but IM comics.

Regarding other titles doing their own IM thing- what choice do they have? Before Fear Itself, no one knew when the IM storyline was taking place compared with other appearances- surely Fracton could have mentioned in Iron Man that Tony gave up the flippin' Infinity Gauntlet in Avengers! That depiction was SO GOOD- heroic in every way and Tony damn near got thrown off the Avengers for it!

And then there's the armor itself- other writers have no choice but to use Iron Man as having the same abilities as his Extremis armor version- no other breakdown or explanation of the suit's abilities have been established.
It used to be that prt of the fun of reading IM was KNOWING what the suit could do and seeing how Tony used it all to get out of bad situations or save the day- the Haunted storyline rocked so hard because Tony had no Extremix armor or abilities and was suspended as SHIELD director- and he still beat the Mandarin!

Really, I cant reccomend Haunted enough, guys.

Hmm...you know, if you go back and re-read this with an abe Simpson voice, it's pretty funny.
Fuck it, read what you want and hope for the best- at least I aint paying for it!