Marvel Platinum: the Definitive Iron Man Reloaded


By Stan Lee, Archie Goodwin, Mike Friedrich, Tony Isabella, Len Kaminski, Matt Fraction, Don Heck, George Tuska, Greg LaRocque, Kev Hopgood, Salvador Larroca, Carmine di Giandomenico, Nathan Fox, Haim Kano & various (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-529-1

With Summer Movie Blockbuster season hard upon us Marvel has again sagaciously released a wealth of film-inspired tie-in books and trade paperback collections to maximise exposure and cater to those movie fans wanting to follow up the cinematic exposure with a comicbook experience.

Produced under the always intriguing Marvel Platinum/Definitive Editions umbrella, this treasury of tales gathers a few of the more impressive but happily less obvious landmarks from the Steel Sentinel’s extensive canon; this time cannily focusing on sinister mastermind, ultimate arch-enemy and movie menace the Mandarin.

Contained herein are high-tech hi-jinks from Tales of Suspense #50, Iron Man volume 1, #21-22, 68-71, 291 & 500, Marvel Team-Up #146 and Iron Man volume 5 #19, (listed on Marvel’s Database as Invincible Iron Man volume 1 #19), spanning 1964 to 2011, which offers a fair representation of what is quite frankly an over-abundance of riches to pick from…

Arch-technocrat and supreme survivor Tony Stark has changed his profile many times since his debut in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963) when, as a VIP visitor in Vietnam observing the efficacy of the munitions he had designed, he was critically wounded and captured by sinister, cruel Communists.

Put to work building weapons with the dubious promise of medical assistance on completion, Stark instead created the first Iron Man suit to keep himself alive and deliver him from his oppressors. From there it was a simple jump to full time superheroics as a modern Knight in Shining Armour…

Since then the inventor and armaments manufacturer has been a liberal capitalist, eco-warrior, space pioneer, Federal politician, affirmed Futurist, Statesman and even Director of the world’s most scientifically advanced spy agency, the Strategic Hazard Intervention Espionage Logistics Directorate, and, of course, one of the world’s most prominent superheroes with the Mighty Avengers…

For a popular character/concept lumbered with a fifty-year pedigree, radical reboots are a painful but vital periodic necessity. To keep contemporary, Stark’s origin and Iron Man’s continuity have been drastically revised every so often with the crucible trigger event perpetually leapfrogging to America’s most recent conflicts. As always, change is everything but, remember Man, these aren’t just alterations, these are upgrades…

After the now-mandatory introduction from Stan Lee, the star-studded action begins with ‘The Hands of the Mandarin!’ from Tales of Suspense #50 wherein the wonderful Don Heck returned as regular penciller and occasional inker after a brief absence, and Lee introduced The Golden Avenger’s first major menace: a modern-day Fu Manchu who terrified the Red Chinese so much they tricked him into attacking America in the hope that one threat would destroy the other.

In response Iron Man invaded the mastermind’s oriental citadel where, after a ferocious but futilely inconclusive fight, he simply went back home to the Land of the Free.

The furious Mandarin held a grudge however and would make himself arguably Iron Man’s greatest foe.

Of course whilst Stark was the acceptable face of 1960s Capitalism – a glamorous millionaire industrialist, scientist and a benevolent all-conquering hero when clad in the super-scientific armour of his alter-ego – the turbulent tone of the 1970s soon relegated his suave, “can-do” image to the dustbin of history. With ecological disaster and social catastrophe from the myriad abuses of big business manifestly the new zeitgeists of the young, the Golden Avenger and Stark International were soon confronting a few tricky questions from their increasingly politically savvy readership.

With glamour, money and fancy gadgetry not quite so cool anymore, the questing voices of a new generation of writers began posing uncomfortable questions in the pages of a series that was once the bastion of militarised America…

Iron Man #21-22 (January & February 1970, by Archie Goodwin, George Tuska & Joe Gaudioso) found the multi-millionaire trying to get out of the arms business and – following a heart transplant – looking to retire from the superhero biz.

African-American boxer Eddie March, became ‘The Replacement!’ as Stark, free from the heart-stimulating chest-plate which had preserved him for years, was briefly tempted by a life without strife. Unfortunately, unknown to all, Eddie had a major health problem of his own…

As Stark pursued a romantic future with business rival Janice Cord, her chief researcher and would-be lover Alex Niven was revealed as a Russian fugitive using her resources to rebuild the deadly armour of the Crimson Dynamo. The renegade easily overcame the ailing substitute Avenger and, when Soviet heavy metal super-enforcer Titanium Man resurfaced with orders to arrest Niven, a three-way clash ensued. Stark was forced to take up his metal burden again – but not before Eddie was grievously injured and Janice killed in #22’s classic ‘From this Conflict… Death!’

Stark’s romantic liaisons always ended badly. Four years later he was ardently pursuing Roxie Gilbert, a radical pacifist and sister of his old enemy Firebrand. She, of course, had no time for a man with so much blood on his hands…

Iron Man #68-71 (June to November 1974) was the opening sortie in a multi-part epic which saw mystic menace The Black Lama foment a war amongst the World’s greatest villains with ultimate power and inner peace as the promised prize. Written by Mike Friedrich and illustrated by Tuska & Mike Esposito, it began in Vietnam on the ‘Night of the Rising Sun!’ as the Mandarin struggled to free his mind, which was currently trapped in the dying body of Russian villain the Unicorn.

Roxie had dragged Stark to the recently “liberated” People’s Republic in search of Eddie March’s lost brother, a POW missing since the last days of the war. Then the Americans were separated when Japanese ultra-nationalist, ambulatory atomic inferno and sometime X-Man Sunfire was tricked into attacking the Yankee Imperialists. The attack was abruptly ended when Mandarin shanghaied the Solar Samurai and used his mutant energies to power the mind-transfer back into his own body.

Reinstated in his original form, the Chinese Conqueror began his campaign in earnest, eager to regain his castle from rival oriental overlord Yellow Claw. Firstly though, he had to crush Iron Man who had tracked him down and freed Sunfire in ‘Confrontation!’ That bombastic battle ended when the Golden Avenger was rendered unconscious and thrown into space…

‘Who Shall Stop… Ultimo?’ found the reactivated giant robot-monster attacking the Mandarin’s castle as the sinister Celestial duelled the Claw to the death, with both Iron Man and Sunfire arriving too late and forced to mop up the sole survivor of the contest in ‘Battle: Tooth and Yellow Claw!’…

‘Hometown Boy’ (September 1984, by Tony Isabella, Greg LaRocque & Esposito) comes from the period when Stark succumbed to alcoholism and lost everything and his friend and bodyguard Jim Rhodes took over the role of Golden Avenger.

As Stark tried to make good with a new start-up company, this engaging yarn from Marvel Team-Up #146 sees the substitute hero still finding his ferrous feet whilst battling oft-failed assassin Blacklash at a trade fair in Cleveland, as much hindered as helped by visiting hero Spider-Man…

Despite successfully rebuilding his company, Stark’s woes actually increased. Iron Man # 291 (April 1993) found the technocrat trapped in total paralysis and using a neural interface to pilot the armour like a telemetric telepresence drone. He had also utterly alienated Rhodey who had been acting as his proxy in a tailored battle suit dubbed War Machine…

Concluding an epic saga, ‘Judgment Day’ by Len Kaminski & Kev Hopgood explosively revealed how the two feuding friends achieved a tentative rapprochement whilst battling a proverbial army of killer robots and death dealing devices programmed to hunt down Rhodes at all costs…

Invincible Iron Man #19 comes from December 2009 by Matt Fraction &Salvador Larroca. During this time the Federal initiative known as Superhuman Registration Act led to Civil War between costumed heroes and Stark was appointed the American government’s Security Czar – the “top cop” in sole charge of a beleaguered nation’s defence and freedom. As Director of high-tech enforcement agency S.H.I.E.L.D. he was the last word in all matters involving metahumans and the USA’s vast costumed community…

However his mismanagement of various crises led to the arrest and assassination of Captain America and an unimaginable escalation of global tension and destruction, culminating in an almost-successful Secret Invasion by shape-shifting alien Skrulls.

Discredited and ostracised, Stark was replaced by rehabilitated villain and recovering split-personality Norman Osborn (the original Green Goblin), who assumed full control of the USA’s covert agencies and military resources, disbanded S.H.I.E.L.D. and placed the nation under the aegis of his new umbrella organisation H.A.M.M.E.R.

Osborn was still a monster at heart however and wanted total power. Intending to appropriate all Stark’s technological assets, the “reformed” villain began hunting the fugitive ex-Avenger. Terrified that not only his weaponry but also the secret identities of most of Earth’s heroes would fall into a ruthless maniac’s hands, Stark began to systematically erase all his memories, effectively lobotomising himself to save everything…

‘Into the White (Einstein on the Beach)’ reveals the conclusion of that quest as Stark, little more than an animated vegetable wearing his very first suit of armour, faced his merciless adversary in pointless futile battle, whilst in America faithful aide Pepper Potts, the Black Widow and S.H.I.E.L.D.’s last deputy director Maria Hill raided Osborn’s base to retrieve a disc with Tony’s last hope on it and simultaneously engineer the maniac’s ultimate defeat…

The comics portion of this winning compilation concludes with the lead tale from Iron Man volume 1 #500 (March 2011) wherein the generally recovered Stark is plagued by gaps in his mostly restored memory.

‘The New Iron Age’ by Matt Fraction, Carmine di Giandomenico, Nathan Fox, Haim Kano & Salvador Larroca, is a clever, twice-told tale which begins when Stark approaches sometime ally and employee Peter Parker in an effort to regain more of his lost past.

Stark is plagued by dreams of a super-weapon he may or may not have designed, and together they track down the stolen plans for the ultimate Stark-tech atrocity which has fallen into the hands of murderous anti-progress fanatics resulting in spectacular showdown of men versus machines…

Contiguously and interlaced throughout the tale are dark scenes of the near future where the Mandarin has conquered the world, enslaved Tony Stark and his son Howard and, with the ruthless deployment of Iron Man troopers and that long-ago designed super weapon, all but eradicated humanity.

With Earth dying, rebel leader Ginny Stark leads the suicidal Black Widows in one last charge against the dictator, armed with primitive weapons, aided by two traitors within the Mandarin’s household and guided by a message and mantra from the far forgotten past…

The book is rounded out with pertinent covers from Jack Kirby, Tuska, Esposito, Jim Starlin, Dave Cockrum, Ron Wilson, John Romita Sr., LaRoque, Bob Layton, Hopgood & Larroca, plus a dense and hefty 21 pages of text features, including ‘The Origin of the Mandarin’ by Mike Conroy and history, background and technical secrets of Crimson Dynamo, Justin Hammer, Happy Hogan, Mandarin, Pepper Potts, Stark Industries, Titanium Man and War Machine.

This thoroughly entertaining accompaniment to the cinema spectacle is also a well-tailored device to turn curious movie-goers into fans of the comic incarnation and another solid sampling to entice the newcomers and charm the veteran Ferro-phile.
© 2013 Marvel. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.