By Stan Lee, Don Heck, Jack Kirby & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-0886-3 or 978-0-7851-1771-1
There are a number of ways to interpret the life and moonlighting career of Tony Stark, glamorous millionaire industrialist/inventor and his armoured alter-ego, Iron Man.
Created in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis and at a time when “Red-baiting†and “Commie-bashing†were American national obsessions, the emergence of a brilliant new Thomas Edison, using Yankee ingenuity and invention to safeguard and better the World, seemed inevitable. Combine the then-common belief that technology could solve any problem with the universal imagery of noble knights battling evil and the proposition almost becomes a certainty. Of course it might simply be us kids thought it both great fun and very, very cool…
This glorious full colour deluxe hardback compendium of the Golden Avenger’s early days reprints his further early adventures, with a smattering of feature pages and pin-ups from Tales of Suspense #51 (cover-dated March 19664) through #65 (May 1965), a period when Marvel built steadily and irresistibly on their creative inspiration and began scoring solid commercial successes: a time that would see them start to topple DC Comics from a position of dominance, but before the flashy underdogs became the darlings of the student counter-culture. In these tales Tony Stark is still very much the patriotic armaments manufacturer, and not the enlightened capitalist dissenter he would become.
Behind the first of fifteen fabulous Jack Kirby covers the wonderment begins with TOS #51 and ‘The Sinister Scarecrow’ (by Stan Lee & Don Heck) wherein the Golden Avenger tackled a tricky contortionist who quickly became a major menace after stealing vital weapons plans, after which Soviet femme fatale The Black Widow debuted with a savage partner who almost destroyed Iron Man in a Russian-made armour-suit when ‘The Crimson Dynamo Strikes Again!’ scripted, as was the next issue, by the enigmatic “N. Kurokâ€.
She was back in #53 when ‘The Black Widow Strikes Again!’ a far deadlier threat on her own after stealing an anti-gravity ray but nevertheless still failed to hit her gleaming target and the oriental mastermind who would become Stark’s greatest enemy returned in Tales of Suspense #54 to exact ‘The Mandarin’s Revenge!’; a two-part tale which concluded in ‘No One Escapes the Mandarin!’
Happily Iron Man did, and after bonus factoid-featurettes ‘All About Iron Man’ and ‘More Info About Iron Man’, plus pinups of devoted friends and confidantes Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts, our hero was attacked by Commie super agent ‘The Uncanny Unicorn!’
The Widow resurfaced to beguile budding superhero ‘Hawkeye, the Marksman!’ into attacking the Golden Avenger in #57, before a true landmark event occurred in the next issue. Iron Man had monopolised Tales of Suspense since his creation but ‘In Mortal Combat with Captain America’ (inked by Dick Ayers) an all-out battle between the two heroes – resulting from a clever impersonation by evil impressionist The Chameleon – hinted at a big change in the title.
The clash was a primer for the next issue when Cap would begin his own solo adventures, splitting the monthly comic into a shared anthology featuring Marvel’s top patriotic heroes.
Iron Man’s outing in TOS #59 was against high-tech bandit ‘The Black Knight!’ as a result of which Stark was unable to remove the armour without triggering a heart attack, a situation which hadn’t occurred since the initial heart injury forced Stark to devise his iron-shod alter-ego. Up until this time he had led a relatively normal life by simply wearing the life-sustaining chest-plate under his clothes but now he was a trapped by his own tech…
The introduction of soap-opera sub-plots were a necessitated by the shorter page counts, as were continued stories, but this seeming disadvantage worked to improve both the writing and the sales.
With Stark’s “disappearance,†Iron Man was ‘Suspected of Murder!’ – a tale which featured the return of Hawkeye and the Black Widow – leading directly into ‘The Death of Tony Stark!’ and after another stunning pin-up, ‘The Origin of the Mandarin!’.
After that extended epic, a change of narrative pace occurred as short, complete exploits returned. The first was #63’s industrial sabotage thriller ‘Somewhere Lurks the Phantom!’, followed by the surely self-explanatory ‘Hawkeye and the New Black Widow Strike Again!’ (inked by Chic Stone and disclosing the sultry spy’s conversion into a wall-crawling super-character), before this gold-plated triumph ends with ‘When Titans Clash!’ (inked by Mike Esposito under the pseudonym Mickey Demeo) as a petty thief steals the new armour and Stark must defeat his greatest invention clad only in his clunky old suit.
Iron Man developed amidst the growing political awareness of the Viet Nam Generation who were the comic’s maturing readership. Wedded as it was to the American Military-Industrial Complex, with a hero – originally the government’s wide-eyed golden boy – gradually becoming attuned to his country’s growing divisions, it was, as much as Spider-Man, a bellwether of the times.
That these tales also remain such a thrilling rollercoaster riot of classic super-hero fun is a lasting tribute to the talents of the superb creators who worked on them and this sturdy invincible tome is absolutely the best way to review these masterpieces of Marvel mettle.
© 1964, 1965, 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved.