Iron Man: The Gauntlet

by Eoin Colfer

[Leah]

I love the Iron Man movies. In the MCU, the Iron Man movies are probably my favourites, because they’re funny, they’re warm, there’s comic book characters fighting and, the best reason of all, there’s Robert Downey Jr who is just Tony Stark all the way. No one else should ever, ever play Iron Man, because this is what Robert Downey Jr was born to do, I’m not kidding. So I was intrigued to see there are going to be novels about Iron Man (and perhaps others in the MCU?) and Iron Man: The Gauntlet seems pretty true to the movies, and what Tony Stark is all about.

Probably the only thing that bugged me about Iron Man: The Gauntlet is that I don’t know where it lands in the MCU. Is it after the Iron Man movies? Is it separate? Where’s Jarvis? And Pepper? In fact the only other named characters I knew were Spiderman and Rhodes. The rest all seem to be new, and it would have been easier to enjoy if I knew where it stood in the MCU timeline.

I actually really enjoyed this. It’s a fun action-packed adventure and the addition of a new AI, Friday, was thoroughly entertaining. I can see kids lapping up these books, because they’re perfect companions to the Marvel movies. Tony Stark is hilarious although I have got to give props to Proto-Tony because oh my God, he was amazing. He was like Stark on steroids and he made me laugh so hard.

I can’t wait to see which Marvel superhero gets the novel treatment next (Thor, Thor, Thor, please, Thor!). Iron Man was superbly entertaining, with the right amount of snark and wit to truly believe these words would come out of Tony Stark’s mouth. It also has me jonesing for Iron Man 4. PLEASE, Marvel. Do it. Do ittttt!!!!