War Machine: Wasted Opportunity
After years of being a supporting character in Iron Man and even taking over as the titular hero, Jim Rhodes was one of the most ever present member of Tony Stark’s supporting cast of characters. The genesis of War Machine as a title had its beginnings in Iron Man #282 by writer Len Kaminski and artist Kevin Hopgood. With his health failing (due to various plot contrivances) Tony Stark built a new suit of armor dubbed the War Machine. It was a military grade suit of Iron Man armor armed to the teeth. When Tony later faked his death a few issues later, Jim Rhodes stepped up to become Iron Man again. When Tony revealed that the truth to Jim in Iron Man #289, Rhodes quit and went solo from then on.
While this new iteration of Iron Man proved popular, Jim Rhodes wasn’t actually called War Machine until he popped up in Avengers West Coast #94. War Machine would continue appearing in that title until was cancelled after 102 issues. The character proved popular enough that he’d make guest appearances in Secret Defenders, the US Agent and Scarlet Witch limited series, and a serialized solo story in Marvel Comics Presents #152-155.
I can’t find anywhere that can confirm this, but in researching these 90s era books I have found that a character would appear in Marvel Comics Presents before having a title greenlit. I fondly remember the series as I would pick it up every week because it always featured a Wolverine and Ghost Rider story. Sandwiched between those series regulars were two stories featuring other characters. Sometimes they were a one off, other times they were a serialized story featuring multiple parts. The series got along just fine with the Wolverine and Ghost Rider stories, but I wouldn’t be surprised if an uptick in sales or fan mail regarding the back-up stories would often be a deciding vote on if they should green light a title or not.
Whatever the case, War Machine was green lit and the first issue came out in April 1994. The first 8 issues were co-written by Scott Benson and Len Kaminski with art by Gabriel Gecko. This was a solid pairing. Kaminski was writing a very well regarded run of Iron Man at the time, having him participate in the War Machine spin-off series was a no-brainer. Benson wasn’t at Marvel for very long, writing a handful of books (Ren & Stimpy, a few issues of Sensational She-Hulk, some stories in Marvel Comics Presents) he mostly wrote the War Machine series. Then kind of dropped off the map. Doing a Google search on him all I can find is he also did a series called Satan’s Six: Hellspawn for Topps Comics. Gecko was mostly a Malibu artist in the 90s, working on titles such as Lord Pumpkin/Necromanta, Codename: Firearm, and the odd issues of Rune and Ultraforce. These days if you’ve picked up an issue of Agents of Atlas, or Incredible Hercules or the odd issue of the Hulk from the 2000s then you’ve seen Gecko’s work.
His artwork really shines in this run, particularly with his rendering of the War Machine armor. While this was very much in the 90’s “extreme” style, it wasn’t as over the top as the crop of people working at Image at the time. It was somewhat grounded in reality. Looking at War Machine in these comics doesn’t make me wonder how his anatomy can support its own weight.
The stories were a product of their time, but not in the way you’d think. Rather than be just another brainless comic about guys in metal suits with big guns and big breasted women in skimpy outfits, Benson and Kaminski tries to make a series that was intelligent and had some kind of social commentary. Like I said, Kaminski had a memorably run on Iron Man, it was smart, entertaining, and delved heavy subjects such as corporate greed, environmental protection, and the ethical creation and use of world changing technologies.
The 1990s was a fun time for us in North America, but in places like Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and the former USSR, not so much. There were conflicts all over these regions and one could argue that most of the 1st world nations kind of sat on their hands. The United Nations was reluctant to get involved in these conflicts as it could cause further destabilization or even a larger conflict. If you lived in this decade the nightly news was usually fully of stories about the war in Bosnia, or the skirmish in the Persian Gulf. There were wars in the former Yugoslavia, and Kosovo, and the Congo.
These were places that were hot beds of human misery and chaos. Since these were also places that people in the west didn’t know or gave two shits about the people were often left to suffer. A lot of this was the politics of the time.
War Machine started off as a series that would commentate on these atrocities that were going unnoticed and uncared about. Where War Machine was going to go in and clean things up, for the people. Depose dictators, set up democracies. Freedom for all! It placed Jim Rhodes as the head of an organization called WorldWatch which was supposed to report on human atrocities and leverage the UN into doing something about it. This was some heavy stuff and intriguing story telling potential. Unfortunately, it was done away with quite quickly.
It started with the Hands of the Mandarin storyline where War Machine teams up with Iron Man and Force Works to stop the Mandarin from rolling back the global clock so every nation was a feudal monarchy ruled under him.
Then we saw a change in creative teams. With War Machine #12, Dan Abnett came on as writer. There was a revolving door of pencilers such as Dave Chlystek, Sandu Flores, until they settled on Fred Haynes, who did the art until the series ended. Abnett shifted away from the WorldWatch storyline, the supporting cast of characters that were featured in the first handful of issues started getting more and more diminished roles. War Machine was thrown into a time travel story where he had to stop the Nazis from changing history. They scrapped the original War Machine armor for an alien suit of Warwear starting in issue #18. Then we were dumped into another crossover with the much maligned The Crossing storyline. Then the series was canceled because we were deep in the mid-90s and Marvel was hemorrhaging money.
Issue #18 also introduced the Eidolon Warwear, a new suit of high tech alien armor that Jim just kind of stumbles upon. This story came around the time when the X-Files was blowing up on TV and it seemed to me that comic book writers were stumbling all over themselves to try and emulate the deep running conspiracy theories surrounding that series. With the Eidolon Warwear we were left with a lot of mysteries, unanswered questions, and shady characters that get almost no explanation before the series was cancelled.
What I can say is that the Warwear looked halfway decent when it was first designed by artist Jim Califore. The only shame is that he didn’t go on to be the artist on War Machine, which is a shame because when other artists drew it, it looked fucking ridiculous.
They were also gearing up for what appeared to be a series of stories where Jim had to travel into space to face some kind of alien menace with the Warwear. It was made to sound like that this was Jim’s destiny. However, after the series was canceled, the Warwear was done away with in Tales of the Marvel Universe #1, a post-Onslaught one-shot that set the stage for Marvel’s books from that period onward. Then it was all conveniently forgotten. I’m not sure if what was originally planned was any good, but this seems like a real wasted opportunity.
What had a purpose and a direction soon became directionless. Supporting casts were dropped for a sea of well established guest stars and crossovers. War Machine as a book was treading water and the series came to an abrupt end.
After the cancelation of War Machine Marvel did away with the Warwear suit in the Tales of the Marvel Universe one-shot. Jim Rhodes then went back to being a normal guy and a supporting cast member for the while, all be it not a very prolific one. In the 2000s he became part of Sentinel Squad O*N*E in the X-Men books. However, he wasn’t War Machine for a while, at least not in the Prime Marvel Universe. When Marvel had its MAX imprint of adult orientated comics they put out two volumes of U.S. War Machines by Chuck Austin that took place in an alternate reality. The first run was published weekly in black and white. The second volume, lasting only three issues was done in really bad CGI. I haven’t read them in nearly 20 years, but I don’t remember them being very good. It’s Chuck Austin after all.
It wasn’t until 2008, when the first MCU movies started coming out that Jim Rhodes was allowed to become War Machine again. War Machine would become a recurring character in Avengers: The Initiative post-Civil War. From there, Rhodey was given a new War Machine series that ran for 12 issues between 2009 and 2010 as part of the Dark Reign storyline. Other times Jim has been given short run series under a different moniker. Such as 2011-12’s Iron Man 2.0 and 2014’s Iron Patriot. For the most part, Jim Rhodes has remained a visible supporting cast member in various Iron Man and Avengers titles. Ever present due to the character continuing to appear in MCU films. Although they have given him the spotlight from time to time, it’s never been for very long.
Jim Rhodes has always been and continues to be an interesting character with a lot of potential, if only the powers that be could give him a chance to stand on his own and shine. Perhaps we’ll see the character being allowed to experience new heights around the time the Armor Wars movie comes out.
