2020 Rescue - Review

 Rescue to the rescue!

Written by Dana Schwartz, Art by Jacen Burrows.

Well, here we are again. Since this blog started, I’ve gradually taken a look at every tie-in series to the Iron Man 2020 focused series of event comics. Why do I go about it in this, some would say, unnecessarily drawn-out manner? I mean, I just reviewed other event comics without bothering to cover (virtually any) tie-in books at all. Well, it just sort of happened this way. 

I reviewed 2020 Iron Heart first as a means to support the character. I covered 2020 Force Works two months later because I wanted to something comic book related and I was very much intrigued by its character line-up. It was then that I realized that I could turn the Iron Man 2020 event series into a tradition of sorts, something I’ve seen many YouTubers do. 

So that’s when I decided to review something Iron Man 2020 every other month (if nothing else came in-between, with this time around it did) before reaching the core series itself. I reviewed 2020 Machine Man last December and now it’s Pepper Pott’s superhero alter-ego Rescue turn. How does 2020 Rescue stack up against its fellow 2020 tie-ins? Is it a good two-parter to read on its own? Does it do the character justice?

Let’s dive in!

2020 Rescue starts, as the captions tell us, somewhere in the middle of the Iron Man 2020 storyline. Tony Stark is, once again, dead. Killed by his delirious brother Arno who has taken over Stark Industry, the Iron Man armour and name and who is trying to end the free will of all A.I. But don’t fret, Tony’s allies have a plan to bring him back. Again. The whole ‘he’s not ‘dead’ dead but ‘mostly’ dead thing in case you were wondering. To do so, however, they need to obtain DNA samples of Tony’s parents. No, not Howard and Maria Stark but his biological birth parents. Marvel comics retconned Tony Stark’s origins a few years ago and “revealed” that he was adopted. I got… thoughts… about this development but for now, I digress. The point is that Pepper sets out to find Tony’s biological parents to get a DNA sample from them.

Rescue is far from the most well-known iron-clad hero in Marvel comics, but Pepper did do the armour during the climactic battle against Thanos at the end of Avengers Endgame. The design of the armour in this series was redesigned to match that one more closely so you know the writers knew that was probably the place most people who do know about Rescue learned about her. As such, this series will probably be the first introduction to the comics version of the character. As a (re-)introduction to the character, the book is fine. It scratches the surface of Pepper as a character, it shows her backstory, gives a few revelations and shows how the character has a depth that could be leveraged. It doesn’t go further than scratching the surface though. The background elements don’t have much to do with how Pepper behaves in the present and she comes off as rather bland as a result.

Bland is pretty much how I’d describe the entire 2020 Rescue tie-in. The story of the two issues isn’t all that much to write home about. It mostly just follows established plot beats without any real surprises. The story unfolds exactly the way you think it will. Issue one is the better of the two in my opinion, as it at least has a better emotional core with Tony’s mother. Even though she does relent at the end of the issue, her reasons for initially not giving Pepper a strand of her hair did resonate with me. That Pepper respects her decision and doesn’t try to take by force was also refreshing and shows one way in which Pepper differentiates herself.

A sample of the book's art so you can decide for yourself if you dig it or not.

Conclusion

2020 Rescue is, in one word, ‘meh’. It shows some potential when it comes to its titular character and maybe one or two interesting moments, but that’s about the most remarkable thing it does. The rest, the story, the art etc. are all basic to bland. If you’re dying to read more Pepper Potts as Rescue, Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother with it unless it’s in some sort of trade packed in with better books.