With "Iron Man" in movie theatres, Marvel decided to release volume 2 of Orson Scott Card's "Ultimate Iron Man". Why? Movie fans who may have picked this up instead of the "real" Iron Man title are bound to be confused.

The "ultimate" version of Tony Stark bears little resemblense to his regular Marvel universe counterpart--his father is still alive and runs Stark Industries, and he's fueding with another teenager for most of the book. (The evil kid is Tony's dad's ex-wife's son, if you can keep that straight...). There's a shadowy government operative, a Middle Eastern weapons dealer, a hackneyed plot involving suitcase nukes...etc. etc.

Unfortunately, this is a weak offering which should be considered to have nothing to do with the Iron Man franchise, outside of the name. Every compelling concept behind Tony Stark has been replaced by a blue-skinned mutant kid who is made entirely out of regenerating brain cells.

Orson Scott Card himself said this in relation to being given Iron Man as a project: "I really hate superhero comics. Then Marvel comes to me with this character, and when they told me what it was I said, "Wow, that is even dumber than most superhero comics."" This sort of statement gives us an indication of how much of a mistake it was to put this project in his hands. What we have in Volume 2 is a mostly dull read involving shadowy government and a middle eastern conflict that wears a hawkish ideology on its sleeve. It's a slight improvement over vol. 1, probably just for not ending on a cliffhanger.

Ultimate Iron Man has been left as the weakest offering in the line. The decision to bring in Card as a celeb writer has turned out to be misguided. Even though there are a few loose ends left for other writers to tie up, it's probably preferable to simply drop or de-emphasize this version of Tony Stark's past.

To be honest, I found reading this book to be a bit of a chore. The first volume of "Ultimate Iron Man" didn't win me over, but I was willing to follow up and see where the story went, and now I think I'm done.

UIM is probably the weakest book so far in Marvel's "Ultimate" universe -- the big differences between this an the regular Iron Man are that this Tony Stark is a kid (maybe 20 years old), that he personally has a super healing factor (ala Wolverine, but not as fast) and is semi-unkillable as a result and that the book just isn't that interesting. This volume's subplot -- of inventor Tony Stark being manipulated by a mysterious, menacing government agency into using his super-tech in their gruesome fight against Middle Eastern terrorism -- was tiresome and repetitive. Iron Man fans have been there, done that, and seen it done much better about a bazillion times before. Mostly, this book just never hits a good rhythm -- the pacing seems clunky and awkward and the dialog and plot are fairly mediocre. Can't say as I'm all that impressed with Orson Scott Card, the sci-fi author who was brought in as a celebrity scriptwriter for this series...

One particularly glaring point came when Card posited that the bad guy's design for a nuclear weapon would not work because the half-life of plutonium would render the device inert within a month. Since the actual half-life of plutonium-239 is 24,100 years, it's hard to see why this would be the case. (Plutonium-240 is much more volatile, but is not used for weapons production for this reason.) Anyway, the book's science seems to be as weak as its overall presentation; can't say as I was impressed. (Axton)

I was a little disappointed in the first volume of Ultimate Iron Man. But Card delivers in the sequel. The storyline is compelling and the plot goes somewhere. We see the seeds of Iron Man's strengths and faults in this issue. We get a chance to re-live the Iron Man saga, and re-love it all over again.

As disappointed as I was with Orson Scott Card's initial Ultimate Iron Man, Vol. 1 (v. 1) series, I wasn't able to resist reading the sequel. Part of that was wanting to know how the story ended, and part was the hope that the second installment would be a dramatic improvement over the first. I already reviewed the first Ultimate Iron Man collection, so I won't rehash that, but most of my objections to that series carry over to the sequel.

I'm sure Orson Scott Card is a talented writer, but I really dislike what's going on here. This is a perfectly average sci-fi/mystery story that Jerry Bruckheimer would no doubt turn into a summer blockbuster, but has nothing to do with either the classic Iron Man or Mark Millar's version from the The Ultimates, Vol. 1. It's as though Card had a story he wanted to tell and any character would do, so he added the Iron Man elements after the fact. I will give him credit for making both Jim Rhodes and Obadiah Stane very compelling characters, and the Iron Man/War Machine raid of the terrorist camp was a very cool sequence.

The artwork is once again the series' only saving grace. Pasqual Ferry's manga-inspired style is perfect for this kind of story, and his Iron Man and War Machine are truly impressive and dynamic. Unfortunately, as with the first Ultimate Iron Man series, he is unable to close the deal, leaving the final issue to Leonardo Manco. Manco does a perfectly decent job, but it wrecks the continuity of the artwork to have such a different style for the closing chapter.

There are still a lot of unanswered questions, such as the ultimate fate of Howard Stark and whatever happened to Rhodey/War Machine. I wouldn't mind seeing these questions addressed in a future Ultimate Iron Man series, but I really hope someone else is at the helm.