By Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Robert Bernstein, Don Rico, Al Hartley, Don Heck, Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko & various (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-8863-6 (TPB/Digital edition)
There are a number of ways to interpret the creation and early years of Tony Stark, glamorous millionaire industrialist and inventor – when not operating in his armoured alter-ego of Iron Man.
Created in the immediate 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-all-pervasive belief that technology could solve any problem with the universal imagery of noble knights battling tangible and easily recognisable Evil and the proposition almost becomes a certainty.
Of course, it might simply be that we kids thought it both great fun and very, very cool…
This fabulous full-colour compendium of the Steel Shod Sentinel’s early days reprints all his adventures, feature pages and pin-ups from Tales of Suspense #39 (cover-dated March 1963) through #72 (December 1965), revisiting the dawn of Marvel’s rise to ascendancy.
This period would see the much-diminished and almost bankrupt comics colossus begin challenging DC Comics’ position of dominance, but not quite become the darlings of the student counter-culture. In these tales, Stark is still very much a gung-ho patriotic armaments manufacturer, and not the enlightened capitalist liberal dissenter he would become…
Scripted by Larry Lieber (over brother Stan Lee’s plot) and illustrated by the criminally unappreciated Don Heck, ToS #39 reveals how and why ‘Iron Man is Born!’, with engineering and electronics genius Stark field-testing his latest inventions in Viet Nam before being wounded by a landmine.
Captured by Viet Cong commander Wong-Chu, Stark is told that if he creates weapons for the Reds he will be operated on to remove the metal shrapnel in his chest that will kill him within seven days.
Knowing that Commies can’t be trusted, Stark and aged Professor Yinsen – another captive scientist – build a mobile iron lung to keep his heart beating. They also equip this suit of armour with all the weapons their ingenuity can covertly construct whilst being observed by their captors. Naturally, they succeed and defeat the local tyrant, but not without a tragic sacrifice.
From the next issue, Iron Man’s superhero career is taken as a given, and he has already achieved fame for largely off-camera exploits. Lee continues to plot but Robert Bernstein replaces Lieber as scripter for issues #40-46 and Jack Kirby pencils for Heck. ‘Iron Man versus Gargantus!’ follows the young Marvel pattern by pitting the hero against aliens – albeit via their robotic giant caveman intermediary – in a delightfully rollicking romp.
‘The Stronghold of Doctor Strange!’ (Lee, Bernstein, Kirby & Dick Ayers) features a gloriously spectacular confrontation with a wizard of Science (not Lee & Steve Ditko’s later Mystic Master), after which Heck returns to full art for the espionage and impostors thriller ‘Trapped by the Red Barbarian’.
Kirby & Heck team again for science-fantasy invasion romp ‘Kala, Queen of the Netherworld!’, but Heck goes it alone when Iron Man time-travels to ancient Egypt to rescue the fabled and fabulous Cleopatra from ‘The Mad Pharaoh!’.
New regular cast members proper – bodyguard “Happy” Hogan and secretary Virginia “Pepper” Potts – and the first true supervillain then arrive as the Steel Sentinel must withstand ‘The Icy Fingers of Jack Frost!’ before facing (and converting to Democracy) his Soviet counterpart ‘The Crimson Dynamo!’
Tales of Suspense #47 presaged big changes. Lee wrote ‘Iron Man Battles the Melter!’, and Heck inked the unique pencils of Steve Ditko in a grudge match between Stark and a disgraced corporate rival, but the big event came with the next issue’s ‘The Mysterious Mr. Doll!’
Here Lee, Ditko & Ayers scrapped the old, cool-but-clunky golden boiler-plate suit for a sleek, gleaming, form-fitting red-and-gold upgrade to aid the defeat of a sadistic mystic blackmailer using witchcraft to get ahead. The new suit would – with minor variations – become the symbol and trademark of the character for decades to come.
Paul Reinman inked Ditko on Lee’s crossover/sales pitch for the new X-Men comic book when ‘Iron Man Meets the Angel!’, before the series finally found its feet with Tales of Suspense #50.
Heck became regular penciller and occasional inker as Lee delivered the Armoured Avenger’s first major menace and perpetual nemesis in ‘The Hands of the Mandarin!’: a modern-day Fu Manchu derivative who terrifies the Red Chinese so much that they manipulate him into attacking America, with the hope that one threat will fatally wound the other. The Mandarin would become Iron Man’s greatest foe.
Our ferrous hero made short work of criminal contortionist ‘The Sinister Scarecrow’, and also the Red spy who appropriated a leftover Russian armour-suit and declared ‘The Crimson Dynamo Strikes Again!’ – scripted, as was the next issue – by the enigmatic “N. Kurok” who was in truth Golden Age veteran Don Rico). The issue also premiered a far more dangerous threat in the slinky shape of Soviet Femme Fatale The Black Widow.
With ToS #53 she became a headliner as ‘The Black Widow Strikes Again!’: stealing Stark’s new anti-gravity ray but ultimately thwarted in her sabotage mission, after which ‘The Mandarin’s Revenge!’ began a 2-part tale of kidnap and coercion that concluded by disproving in #55 that ‘No One Escapes the Mandarin!’…
It’s followed by a “Special Bonus Featurette” by Lee & Heck, revealing ‘All About Iron Man’ detailing how the suit works and even ‘More Info about Iron Man!’ including a ‘Pepper Potts Pin-Up Page’…
‘The Uncanny Unicorn!’ promptly attacked, only to fare no better in the end, his power-horn proving pointless in the end, but segueing neatly into another Soviet sortie as Black Widow resurfaced to beguile a budding superhero. ‘Hawkeye, The Marksman!’ was gulled into attacking the Golden Avenger in #57 during his debut moment: briefly making him the company’s latest and most dashing misunderstood malefactor.
Another landmark occurred with the next issue. Formerly, Iron Man had monopolised Tales of Suspense but ‘In Mortal Combat with Captain America!’ (inked by Ayers) depicted an all-out battle between the Avengers teammates resulting from a clever substitution by evil impersonator The Chameleon. It was a tasty primer for the next issue when Cap would begin his own solo adventures, splitting the monthly comic into an anthology featuring Marvel’s top two patriotic paladins.
Iron Man’s initial half-length outing in #59 was against technological terror ‘The Black Knight!’, and as a result of the blistering clash, Stark was rendered unable to remove his own armour without triggering a heart attack: a situation that hadn’t occurred since the initial injury. Up until this time he had led a relatively normal life by simply wearing the heartbeat regulating breast-plate under his clothes. The introduction of such soap-opera sub-plots were a necessity of 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 that saw the return of Hawkeye and Black Widow, leading directly into an attack from China and ‘The Death of Tony Stark!’ (complete with a bonus pin-up of ‘The Golden Avenger Iron Man’). The sinister ambusher then provided ‘The Origin of the Mandarin!’ before being beaten by Stark’s ingenuity once again.
After that extended epic, a change of pace occurred as short complete exploits returned. The first was #63’s industrial sabotage thriller ‘Somewhere Lurks the Phantom!’ (by Lee Heck & Ayers), followed by the somewhat self-explanatory ‘Hawkeye and the New Black Widow Strike Again!’ (inked by Chic Stone and with the Soviet agent abruptly transformed from fur-clad seductress into a gadget-laden costumed villain), after which ‘When Titans Clash!’ sees a burglar steal the new armour, forcing Stark to defeat his greatest invention with his old suit (inked by new regular Mike Esposito as “Mickey DeMeo”).
Mike stuck around to see subsea tyrant Attuma as the threat du jour in ‘If I Fail, a World is Lost!’ and crime-lord Count Nefaria uses dreams as a weapon in ‘Where Walk the Villains!’, returning in the next issue to attack Stark with hallucinations in ‘If a Man be Mad!’: a rather weak tale introducing Stark’s ne’er-do-well cousin Morgan. It was written by Al Hartley with Heck & Esposito in top form as always.
Issues #69-71 form another continued saga: a one of the best of this early period. Inked by Vince Colletta, ‘If I Must Die, Let It Be with Honor!’ sees Iron Man forced to duel a new Russian opponent called Titanium Man in a globally-televised contest both national super-powers see as a vital propaganda coup. The governments are naturally quite oblivious of the cost to the participants and their friends…
DeMeo inks ‘Fight On! For a World is Watching!’ which amplifies the intrigue and tension as the Soviets, caught cheating, pile on the pressure to at least kill America’s champion if they can’t score a publicity win, before final chapter ‘What Price Victory?’ affords a rousing, emotional conclusion of triumph and tragedy made magnificent by the super-glossy inking of troubled artistic genius Wally Wood.
That would have been the ideal place to end the volume but there’s one more episode included here: ToS #72 – by Lee, Heck & Demeo – deals with the aftermath of victory as, whilst the fickle public fête Iron Man, his best friend lies dying, and a spiteful ex-lover hires diabolical super-genius the Mad Thinker to destroy Stark and his company forever.
‘Hoorah for the Conquering Hero!’ closes the book on a pensive down-note, somewhat leavened by bonus features including a house ad promoting two new titles out the same month – Tales of Suspense #39 and Amazing Spider-Man #1 – and another plugging all the heroes extant as of May 1963. That one also announced the company rebrand as “Marvel Comics Group”.
We close with a selection of pre-correction original art covers and pages: 8 wondrous treats by Kirby, Heck Wood, Colletta & Ayers.
The sheer quality of this compendium is undeniable. From broad comedy and simple action to dark cynicism and relentless battle, Marvel Comics grew up with this deeply contemporary series.
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 Industrial-Military 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 it remains such a thrilling romp of classic superhero fun is a lasting tribute to the talents of all those superb creators that worked it.
© 2020 MARVEL.