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The Good: I may be a little biased because this happens to be my favorite age in comics since it was my introduction. The breakdown on the history of Iron Age is fantastic! It accurately goes down the finer points of what led to the Iron Age, and covers its ideals in an organized manner. On the mechanics side of things, there are plenty more options opened up. Everything is pointed in the direction of grittiness - big guns, leather, chains and spikes. The hero and villain archetypes we saw over and over again in the Iron Age are well represented. Lastly, the helping hands toward GM's are actually pretty good. I found Chapter 4 to be a decent guide. The writers did a great job of being specific, but not pushy (if you know what I mean).
The Bad: Most of the extra content in this book is merely recycled - and most of that from the Mastermind's Manual. Just about the only crunch I didn't see from other books are the extra skills, and I'm not personally attached to the idea of increasing my skills list. All the different gun types are good for the age, but they really didn't require to be listed out. People can make a sub-machine gun's damage modifier one point less than an assault rifle without any help. A lot of the content just seemed like they were pressed to fill out this book's mere 130 pages. The Bad Medicine adventure towards the back is bland and laid out horribly. They should've ditched some of the recycled content for the sake of improving the adventure.
The Ugly: A lot of this art is so bad that it hurts; featuring inconsistent colors, horrid proportion, and almost no perspective. In contrast, there is some quite stunning art (see the Force Ops team starting on page 97). And, retouching on something I brought up before, I place a hex on the writers and layout designer for thinking these were good tables. Why were half of them even necessary, beyond just covering page space?
Overall: If you dig the Iron Age of comics and want a little push in the right direction with running the game, this is certainly a good buy. If you're a player seeking out more options for your character, I wouldn't recommend getting this book. Perhaps it could be a good buy if you're looking for inspiration on your characters. But, you'd probably be better off just picking up some old Image Comics titles.
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