Marvel Comics Presents #169

There are 3 new segments in this issue. 

First up, fans get the answers to some of their long posed questions about the history of Iron Man's arch-enemy, the Mandarin. As with the back story of any good villain, it's tragic and maybe a little sad. It's enough to elicit a little sympathy above all else.

The other two stories are single-issue 8-pagers. 

The first one stars It, the Living Colossus. I always thought that the character was a golem. But there's a bit more to that. It is a construct of Communist Russia that was imbued with powers after an aborted alien invasion. Somehow after that episode (and probably countless others), the Living Colossus wound up at a Hollywood movie studio and became a sci-fi B-movie star. In this issue, a disgruntled SFX wizard claims to have the newest greatest thing in movies and has his creation challenge It!

The second one-and-done issue has the Force Works team back on duty. The last story was supposed to have the Julia Carpenter Spider-Woman as the feature but the rest of the team had as much a part of the story as she did. Here, Force Works is listed as a featured player on the cover. But again, that's just not quite right. The main feature is a new character called Century. He's an alien construct that claims to be ageless and may know the future. There's a lot of action in this story but it has a ending that requires buying the latest issue of Force Works and those kind of gimmicks irk me to no end!

Rounding things up is the latest Vengeance multi-parter. So I remembered a part of this story wrong. The Revengers aren't in New York. They're in LA and they're causing so much havoc, that War Machine, whose base of operations is in the City of Angels, has taken on the gang himself. Badilino has traveled to Cali in hopes that Vengeance can reel his gang of devotees in. But in true Marvel fashion, War Machine thinks that the Ghost Rider is their leader and a battle of titans ensues.

I would probably rate this issue higher if not for the staff behind the Force Works story requiring readers to get the rest of the story in another book. MCP kinda did this with the 4-issue Midnight Sons epic crossover. But I understood that premise from the start. Here, I was unceremoniously told of needing to buy whatever corresponding issue of Force Works for the rest of the story. I just hate such surprises! It's one of the few things about comic books that I absolutely loathe!

Worth Consuming!

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars.