#feilong

He's back and he's even hotter!

I LOVE his shit eating grin, rippling cape and muscles, and most of all his cunty posture. 'Hello Stark, check out these thighs.' It's true that his wife (Emma Frost, it's a sham thing but Tony catches feelings) sent Mags to rescue his dumb ass as he makes a huge mess in the Australian Outback, but this is a newly resurrected, kinder Magneto. I suspect he'd have done it anyway. For drama, if nothing else.

Invincible Iron Man #19 - "If I Only had a Heart" (2024)

Been looking at some Marvel stuff I missed out on for awhile & this has got to be the most humiliating thing I've seen happen to a villain. Feilong here Is basically Elon Musk of Marvel obsessed with Mars & butthurt over Both the Avengers abandoning it, & The X-men colonizing it so much that he rallied with Orchis & bought Stark Unlimited to build Sentinels & kill god knows how many people & Magneto the biggest Mutant out there just hits him with a "Who?"

Hellfire Gala... 2022! I thought I was done with X-books for the Fall of X event, but then I remembered that one of the IIM books had a flashback to 2022's Hellfire Gala, so I read it to see if it was relevant, and actually it was. Also, we get to see Tony and Steve in their (admittedly not great) Hellfire Gala outfits. Anyway! Having now read all the relevant parts of Fall of X, I can conveniently just highlight the stuff that I know is important. So! This is the Hellfire Gala that came BEFORE Fall of X's Hellfire Gala. We open with the world learning that mutants are able to resurrect their own. This news is of great interest to many people, including Steve and Tony, apparently, so everyone wants to go and I guess see drama happen. (For those who don't know, the Hellfire Gala is held on the X-Men's island nation of Krakoa, and it's used both for PR purposes and to also elect the new X-Men team. Though don't quote me on any of that; this is just what I've gleaned from context.)

Steve has a little subplot in which he encourages Emma to make amends with Firestar, because they have bad blood for reasons I don't know. So Emma nominates Firestar to join the X-Men. Steve is proud. (Also worth mentioning: Firestar was an Avenger back in Avengers Vol 3, which I'm guessing is why Steve and later Tony have interactions that involve her.) Also yes, that's Tony standing between Steve and Firestar in the fourth panel above. I like to imagine Steve and Tony spent most of the gala together.

Tony has a meatier role (when he's not hanging out with Steve). He has a testy interaction with Feilong, who crashed the party, and also speaks to Reed, who tells him that Xavier and Magneto took knowledge out of his head. Tony is concerned.

He slides in next to Emma and starts talking at her. She's like, do I know you? Tony's like, you know who I am. She apologizes for not recognizing him out of his suit and he says suits aren't even what he does best, at which point Feilong crashes the card game too and is like, that's right, Tony's thing is that he's a futurist. Tony leans into it, saying that this resurrection technology is going to spell trouble for the mutants. Emma brushes off his concerns and leaves; Tony snarkily tells her thanks for letting him remember this conversation, referencing his and Reed's earlier exchange about Xavier and Magneto.

Also, the above happens: foreshadowing for Feilong becoming Tony's primary antagonist in the Invincible Iron Man Vol 5 run.

Anywho, after Firestar is elected to be an X-Man, Tony congratulates her and tells her that if there's anything she thinks the Avengers need to know, she's got his number. Then he says his goodbyes to Emma, who begrudgingly appreciates him trying to warn her about things, and says he won't be back for the next gala. (And indeed, neither he nor Steve are in attendance next time - did Steve decide not to go when he found out Tony wasn't going? That is certainly what I'll tell myself!)

The rest of the issue has some other X-subplot stuff, and we also run into other familiar characters who will be prominent during Fall of X, including Doctor Stasis and Moira, plus plenty of mentions of Orchis... but yeah, clearly I was mostly here for Steve and Tony. :p