tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-44563752824054660532024-03-18T20:51:09.320-07:00All Jets Ablaze!Reviewing the adventures of the Marvel Comics superhero Iron Man!Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-54854324622541761172016-05-31T22:49:00.001-07:002016-05-31T22:49:01.220-07:00Tales of Suspense featuring the Power of Iron Man #54 (June, 1964)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"The Mandarin's Revenge" </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Writer: </b>Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Artist: </b>Don Heck</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis: </b>We
begin with Iron Man flying around town in a new armor variant - instead
of the "flip up faceplate" style he's now riveted the face to the
helmet to form a solid piece. This is Mark II Mod 1 by my count. He gets
an urgent call from Pepper asking him to find Tony to come in to Stark
HQ. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's a
big emphasis on power saving in this issue - Iron Man switches from
transistor powered flight to rocket skates often to save power. Arriving
at Stark Industries, Pepper tells Tony he's wanted at the Pentagon.
Even though it would be totally reasonable for Pepper to come as his
secretary and Happy to drive him there, he blows them both off under the
auspices of keeping them safe and goes there himself as Iron Man.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This
is a major dick move, and even he seems to recognize that, thinking to
himself that he can't get too close to Pepper because of his dangerous
life, but also feeling jealous of the attentions Happy puts on Pepper,
in a standard Marvel Comics romance melodrama subplot. It's at this
point that you wish he'd just come clean with everybody, it'd make
things a lot easier.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyways,
at the Pentagon it turns out that remote control surveillance missiles
designed by Stark for recon in Vietnam have been flying off course and
crashing. Tony denies the Reds have anything that can shoot them down,
so the military brass figures the missiles are defective. Tony won't
accept that answer, so he heads to Vietnam by strapping himself in the
Iron Man suit to an ICBM!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Arriving
in 'Nam, as Tony Stark he offers to oversee the launch of one of his
"observer missiles". On the scope they see it be pulled off course and
disappear -- Tony realizes this happens in fact right at the stronghold
of the Mandarin! Y'know, in Red China. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A quick flashback to <a href="http://ironmanreviews.blogspot.ca/2013/09/tales-of-suspense-50-february-1964.html">ToS #50</a> later, Tony is driving a Jeep right to the Mandarin's stronghold, rationalizing that if he goes as Iron Man that the defenses will be up, but that he can get inside if he allows himself to be caught as Tony Stark. How he manages to drive a Jeep from Vietnam deep into Red China without anything <i>else </i>happening to him is left totally unexplained.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Mandarin's guards take Tony prisoner, but when they try to examine his attache case it goes all <i><a href="https://youtu.be/5k_LOWBvWCw?t=36s">From Russia With Love</a> </i>on
them and explodes with sleeping gas, giving Tony an opportunity to suit
up and bust through a wall to take on the Mandarin as Iron Man.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">They
battle for the rest of the story, as the Mandarin offers Iron Man a
seat at his right hand and he turns it down, so the Mandarin throws
electrical traps and missiles at the Golden Avenger, and even comes at
him with a sword (drawn as a generic scimitar rather than anything
appropriately Chinese). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally
the Mandarin hits him with a Black Light beam from one of his rings
(think the Darkness spell in D&D) and unable to see anything, Iron
Man is trapped when a bunch of metal bolas wrap around him, trapping him
in metal cables suspended between electric dynamos.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iron Man is trapped and at the Mandarin's mercy...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts:</b></u> The awaited follow-up to ToS #50 is a good clash between Iron Man and Mandarin, even if it's light on substance. The most striking thing reading it is just what an unreasonable dick Tony is to Pepper and Happy. It makes no sense -- why even have them on the payroll if you aren't going to let them do their jobs? What's more, Tony's interior monologue shows that he <i>knows </i>he's
being a dick. This is an example of Stan falling on old tropes and then
trying to seem sophisticated by lampshading it. You see it again in the
fight with Mandarin. Stan writes Iron Man as very quick witted and
snarky, with lots of snappy banter. He writes Mandarin with very
melodramatic stereotypical villain dialogue. I think Stan really enjoyed
that kind of bombastic villain monologuing, but he hangs the lampshade
on it by having Iron Man quip about how corny it is. Whether that comes
off as knowingly funny or undercutting his own writing is up to you.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art:</b></u> One thing that the simple story really helps is the art. Heck gets a full 6/13 pages for the battle with the Mandarin, so he gets to use large panels and more open layouts. It's not Kirby level dynamic, but it still feels exciting and impactful, bringing home the idea that fighting the Mandarin is a big deal. <br /><u><b>The Story: </b></u>The
story? What story? It's just an excuse to get us a rematch between Iron
Man and the Mandarin, this time spread into two parts so we can have a
more exciting fight scene! Other than continuing the Tony/Pepper/Happy
romantic subplot, there's not much to the story this month, which
otherwise hangs on old movie serial tropes. Get captured, get to the
villain's lair, bust out, fight, get captured again, cliffhanger!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b><u>Stark Science:</u></b>
It's cool that a lot of the tech stuff in this issue focuses on Tony
trying to conserve power, mainly because it means that when he runs out
of juice at a key moment as Iron Man it feels earned instead of pulled
out of Stan's ass. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The main bit of Stark tech this ish is these "observer missiles". Now, in a modern story these would be spy satellites, and indeed they are in Joe Casey's modern retelling of these issues in <i>Enter the Mandarin. </i>Observer
missiles are a kind of weirder idea, and an interesting way of Stark
making weapons that aren't offensive in nature. Now, the reason Stan
went this route instead of the more reasonable recon satellites is that
the existence of such satellites was top secret until 1972, when info on
the original US Corona program which had been in place since 1959 was
released to the public.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Mandarin's rings continue to be unexplained, their nature hinted to be technological but still uncertain. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The
idea of Iron Man strapping himself to an ICBM for speedy travel to
Vietnam is hilarious and impractical, but actually more believable than
the spyplane flight he took to China in ToS #50. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Notes and Trivia:</b></u> First appearance of the Mark II Mod 1 armor, ditching the pointy hinged faceplate for a one piece helmet, establishing more or less a baseline for Iron Man's appearance from now on. At the moment Heck draws it with visible rivets between the red and gold segments and also down the middle of the face. We'll see how long that detail lasts. This issue was adapted into <i>Enter the Mandarin #</i>4-5, by Joe Casey and Eric Canete. I strongly recommend this excellent series. </span>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-54177851773293718942016-05-14T22:41:00.002-07:002016-05-14T22:50:50.000-07:00RIP Darwyn Cooke 1962-2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgodBQwYAU-Z2GEds2kfBhGShBlkwGitJ_VIBT53T8ke85Eqei8ZjBS-GJBNWiAnI_KiKxzHGLe95yVaKj24yFMkhs4BCeQH4dcLgtCWqy5Kxo9ldyz37PUeBDsQuktvkUSnGqTYVnl_GxW/s1600/ffffe9b11290e3476042fc2a4df06490.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgodBQwYAU-Z2GEds2kfBhGShBlkwGitJ_VIBT53T8ke85Eqei8ZjBS-GJBNWiAnI_KiKxzHGLe95yVaKj24yFMkhs4BCeQH4dcLgtCWqy5Kxo9ldyz37PUeBDsQuktvkUSnGqTYVnl_GxW/s1600/ffffe9b11290e3476042fc2a4df06490.jpg" /></a></div>
<br />Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-27136834510903196962014-07-29T18:31:00.000-07:002014-07-29T18:31:38.337-07:00Tales of Suspense featuring The Power of Iron Man #53 (May, 1964)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The Black Widow Strikes Again!"</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Plot: </b>Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Script: </b>Don Rico (as "N. Korok")</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Art: </b>Don Heck</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis: </b>Tony's been working on an anti-gravity device for months with no success. He decides to try arranging the circuits of the device at random and it just happens to work! However an accident results in the wires fusing, meaning Tony will never be able to analyse the circuit patterns and figure out how it worked!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tony presents his new invention at the Pentagon the next day, but the brass aren't pleased to hear it can't be replicated. Somehow, a newspaper photographer sneaks into the presentation and takes pictures, and then gets out and gets them to the press! Like, the Pentagon allows this!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So the Russians hear about the fantastic new weapon of the Americans, and so does the exiled Russian spy, Natasha Romanov, aka The Black Widow.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Natasha figures stealing the anti-gravity machine might earn her ticket home, and so she shows up at Stark Industries all sultry and sexy and batting her eyelashes like "I'm so sorry I tried to kill you last time, I want to redeem myself, really!" and then she gases Tony and steals the anti-grav device and Pepper's so ready to bust out an "I told you so!"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In her hotel room, Natasha somehow makes an Trans-Atlantic phone call direct to the Kremlin (seriously, the CIA wouldn't be ALL over that shit?) and tells Khrushchev she's got the anti-gravity device. Khrushchev orders her to use the device to destroy Stark and Iron Man.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so with Stark's loyalty being questioned for allowing the device to fall into Soviet hands, the Black Widow begins her reign of destruction, using the anti-grav device to destroy Stark Industries industrial factories and production plants. Iron Man always arrives too late, and never knows where she will strike next.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, Black Widow is joined by two more Russian agents - Igor and Stansky, who have been ordered to "assist" her in <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5t9FbEGZQp8">stealing all the gold from Fort Knox!</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stansky wants to try out the device, and uses it to lift up a car, just as Iron Man happens to be flying by and spots it! So he busts into their... apartment?.. and they tussle, but Natasha uses the anti-grav device to collapse the building around Iron Man, while the Russians escape (somehow?).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Luckily, Iron Man survives because his armour is super tough, although presumably everyone else in the building died? Anyways, Natasha and the others hightail it to Kentucky to rob Fort Knox, using the anti-grav device to lift up the mountain the gold is buried under which... wait... what? Stan, have you ever been to Kentucky? Ever seen Fort Knox? And even with the mountain lifted up, how would you get the gold out...??</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyways, US army tanks show up like WTF but Natasha just anti-gravs 'em. Luckily, Iron Man shows up, because he was able to track the Soviets by adjusting his radar to the frequency of the anti-grav device (why didn't you do that before??) and so he rescues the tanks, then shoots a "photon electric charge" at the anti-grav device which "destroys the output" of the device. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The mountain falls again, but Iron Man swoops in and saves the Russians from certain death, leaving the Black Widow amazed at a man who would risk his life to save others.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The spies are arrested by MPs, while Stark still finds himself criticized by the military authorities.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts:</b></u> Last month's team of Stan Lee and the two Dons returns to bring us a second tale of the Black Widow. Frankly, it's just all right. It's a gimmick driven tale that doesn't make much effort to develop its characters. Natasha doesn't get much to do besides use her feminine wiles to take advantage of Tony. One thing that is made clear however, is that she still can't go home. That was the most promising element of last month's ending - this enemy alien alone in a foreign land, but this month didn't do much with it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art:</b></u> Another fine effort from Heck this month, with Pepper and Natasha looking smokin' hot as usual, Tony his usual suave self, but as usual the action is a little stiff and uninvolved. Stan's constant captioning is actually pretty useful because Heck's panels and compositions actually make it hard to ascertain just what Iron Man is doing in some of the fight sequences. i mean, the artwork is good, but Heck's sense of movement and action need work.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Story:</b></u> Cut and dried stuff this month. Tony invents something, villain steals it, Iron Man gets it back. Simple as i comes. The Fort Knox thing at the end is kind've crazy considering <i>Goldfinger </i>wouldn't come out for a few more months so I can't even accuse Stan of ripping off the zeitgeist again like that awful Cleopatra issue. But yeah, the whole thing just feels perfunctory. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It also continues to feel weird that Stan keeps using Khrushchev as a villain in these issues, the same way one would expect Hitler to be used in WWII propaganda comics. I mean, not only was Khrushchev one of the more liberal Soviet leaders, instituting reforms and trying to thaw relations with the West, but by this point in 1964 the Communist party leaders were actively plotting to get rid of him and replace him with a more hardline leader -- not that Lee would know that, of course. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Stark Science:</b></u> Gravity is one of the four fundamental forces of nature, but we don't really know a lot about it, because of the limitations of reconciling general relativity and quantum mechanics. It is theorized that the attractive force of gravity results from the exchange of gravitons between atoms, similar to the way electromagnetic forces result from the exchange of photons. Presumably anti-gravity could be generated by anti-gravitons, but this is all highly theoretical and would probably take an absurd amount of energy. Luckily Stan lampshades all that by having Stark create the anti-gravity device by accident and then making it impossible to replicate so he doesn't have to deal with any repurcussions of Stark inventing it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As for the "photon electric charge" Iron Man uses to short circuit the box, heck your guess is as good as mine. I mean, those are all words, all science-y sounding words, but Stan's operating on the Star Trek technobabble means of basically having this stuff be all so advanced that it just needs to <i>sound </i>technical because no one can really call him on it. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stan's biggest science flub in this issue is Fort Knox. There are no mountains there! The bullion depository is not buried under a mountain! It's Kentucky, Stan. And then, of course, there's the old problem of how three Soviet spies, even with an anti-gravity device, were going to remove the largest gold reserve in the United States. As James Bond once said, "</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">15 billion dollars in gold bullion weighs 10,500 tons. Sixty men would take twelve days to load it onto 200 trucks."</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In other words, the Fort Knox thing is the stupidest part of a story about a Russian femme fatale stealing an anti-gravity machine from a billionaire in a flying metal suit.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Notes and Trivia:</b></u> After this, Iron Man would next appear in <i>The Fantastic Four </i>#25-26, leading right into <i>The Avengers </i>#5-6, in which the Hulk battles the Fantastic Four and the Avengers, then teams up with the Avengers against the Lava Men, before the Avengers battle Baron Zemo and the Masters of Evil, which includes Iron Man's old nemesis The Melter. It is in <i>The Avengers </i>#6 that Iron Man begins wearing the new helmet which will properly debut in his own series next issue. </span><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></i>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-69602950465385921942013-12-30T14:34:00.001-08:002013-12-30T14:40:26.350-08:00Tales of Suspense #52 (April, 1964)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"The Crimson Dynamo Strikes Again!"</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Plot: </b>Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Script: </b>Don Rico (as "N. Korok")</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Art: </b>Don Heck</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis: </b><a href="http://ironmanreviews.blogspot.ca/2013/09/tales-of-suspense-46-october-1963.html">Last we saw Anton Vanko,</a> the brilliant Russian scientist had defected to America and become an employee of Tony Stark. Now he works tirelessly developing the new "laser light", which if it could be perfected would be a powerful new weapon for Stark's defense contracts.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Vanko believes he can test the last using his Crimson Dynamo armour, but the weapon is still unstable and Stark has to rescue him at the last moment, trying to convince the Russian that he does not need to sacrifice his life to redeem himself.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, in Soviet Russia, Khruschev wants Vanko <i>so dead</i>, that he calls in his top spies to "eliminate" him -- Boris, a hulking brute, and Natasha, a beautiful femme fatale otherwise known as the Black Widow. Yes, two Russian spies named Boris and Natasha -- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rocky_and_Bullwinkle_Show">get it? Get it??</a> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyways, the plan is for the Black Widow to seduce Tony Stark while Boris finds and kills Vanko. Thus, they are dropped off in New York by a secret Soviet spy sub, and show up at Stark's munitions plant in Flushing claiming to be science teachers from Soviet Ukraine (so, still should be pretty suspicious and probably not allowed anywhere near a munitions plant in America in 1964) -- so of course Stark agrees to give them a full tour of the plant.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Natasha manages to distract Stark with her sultry Russian hotness in order to give Boris a chance to find Vanko. Boris paralyses Vanko with a ray gun Vanko himself had designed, then kidnaps him and steals the Crimson Dynamo armour -- Boris seeks to use the armor to destroy Stark and Iron Man both and thus become a national hero back in the USSR.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He starts using the armor to blow up the plant, which causes Stark and Natasha to come rushing back from the swanky nightclub they'd apparently gone off to when the plot wasn't looking.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the smoke and confusion of the firefighters and security men, Stark changes to Iron Man and discovers Boris in the Crimson Dynamo armour, causing him to believe Vanko has betrayed him. Boris zaps Iron Man with an electrical charge which shorts out his systems, and takes him back to the sub where he lies prisoner along with Vanko. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Luckily, the Russkies were foolish enough to leave Iron Man locked in a room with a power outlet, and thus one extension cord and charging period later he's back to full power, rescuing Vanko, smashing up the sub, and heading back to Flushing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Back at the factory, Iron Man confronts the Crimson Dynamo and the two do battle. However, the Crimson Dynamo has the upper hand on Iron Man, and so in that moment Anton Vanko grabs the laser prototype, firing it at the Crimson Dynamo, destroying both of them in the unstable surge of energy that follows, giving his life to the ideals of freedom.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In the excitement of the explosion, the Black Widow escapes justice, but with her true identity revealed to the authorities she is a fugitive in America, and with the failure of her mission she can never return to the Soviet Union, and thus she must wander the country in constant fear of discovery.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts: </b></u>Amazing what small beginnings big things can have, isn't it? In this issue, we are introduced to Natasha Romanov, aka the Black Widow. Today we all know Black Widow as a badass member of the Avengers with flaming red hair played Scarlet Johansson in a skintight catsuit on the big movie screens, but in this initial story she's an dark auburn haired femme fatale cliché with a name that's essentially an early 60s pop culture reference joke. She has very little role in the story beyond distracting Stark, and yet Stan still gives her a cool, mysterious personality and an interesting ending that highlights the tragic lonliness of the life of a spy. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even though she's not the focus of the story (which is the return of the Crimson Dynamo and the death of Anton Vanko), she manages to steal the show.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art: </b></u><b></b>Good stuff from Don Heck this month. I don't really get Black Widow's fur boa or her veiled hat but I guess this was early 60s visual shorthand for "femme fatale" the same way a black catsuit became visual shorthand for "badass spy". Good action panels in this issue, but my favourite element of Heck's art is the human one, the expressions on his characters. Most affecting of all is the look on Tony's face when his friend sacrifices his life for what he believes in. Heck's art really sells the melodrama of the moment.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Story:</b></u> While the meat of the plot is the two Russian spies and the stealing of the armour and the action and the fights, the meat of the drama is Anton Vanko. Convinced somewhat conveniently to defect to America in the closing panels of <i>ToS </i>#46, Vanko is now trying to redeem himself for past sins and develop weapons for the American military complex. But it's also clear he has a bit of a death wish, given that he wants to dangerously testfire a deadly weapon at <i>himself </i>(while wearing his armour) even when Tony explains that it is totally not necessary.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's an interesting philosophical difference between Tony and his friend -- Stark believes one can redeem themself and become a hero <i>without</i> the need for sacrifice and loss, while Vanko clearly believes the only path to redemption is in death for the sake of others. Even though Vanko has defected to the capitalist side, his philosophical values remain rooted in communist thinking.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What I'm saying is that with all these elements in play and with only thirteen pages to play with, Stan delivers a very compelling tale. In this, he is helped along by former Timely/Atlas/Marvel writer Don Rico, operating under the pseudonym of "N. Korok" because by the early 60s Rico's comics career was largely over and he had become a successful paperback writer, likely writing the script for this and next month's issue as a favour to Stan.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Stark Science: </b></u>Light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation, or "laser" technology, had been under serious development since 1957 in both the US and the USSR, in conjuction with other radiation emission technologies such as masers and rasers. In the US, a legal battle between Gordon Gould and Bell Labs had been raging since 1960 over intellectual ownership of the technology. The first functional laser was developed at Hughes Research Laboratories in California in 1960 (Howard Hughes of course being one of the primary inspirations for Tony Stark).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most lasers are dangerous because fired into human eyes their strong light can be blinding, but what Vanko is working on here is a high powered laser to burn through solid objects, a very 1960s sci-fi kind of laser such as in the movie "Goldfinger", which has persisted as a pop culture idea to this day. The first laser was capable of burning through a Gillette rasor blade, and class 4 industrial lasers today can burn skin. However, truely effective laser weapons are still beyond the capability of modern technology largely due to the immense power such weapons would require.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Boris fires a "jet paralyser" gun at Vanko, which sprays "magnetic artificial fibers" which wrap around the target and immobilizes them. Needless to say, this is all comic book scientific mumbo jumbo, a lot of impressive sounding words put together to say a gun that fires a net at a dude.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iron Man's batteries must be hella efficient to recharge to full power in such a short amount of time from the power of a Soviet submarine -- also, he must have a voltage adapter somewhere in that suit of his to transform the 220V power used in Europe to his American 120V system.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Notes and Trivia: </b></u>First appearance of the Black Widow, first and last appearance of the second Crimson Dynamo, death of Anton Vanko.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This issue was adapted into<a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/Iron_Man:_Enter_the_Mandarin_Vol_1_3"> issue #3 of <i>Enter the Mandarin.</i></a></span>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-15392914233390064232013-10-05T19:25:00.002-07:002013-10-05T21:33:19.203-07:00Tales of Suspense #51 (March, 1964)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://cache.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/51-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://cache.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/51-1.jpg" width="209" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"The Sinister Scarecrow"</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Writer: </b>Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Artist: </b>Don Heck</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis: </b>Iron Man is pursuing a thief through a vaudeville theatre when he's assisted by a contortionist called the Uncanny Umberto who figures helping Iron Man collar a crook would be goo publicity. Iron Man makes a remark that he's glad Umberto is on the side of the law with abilities like his, which <i>of course</i> immediately inspires Umberto to abandon his career as a vaudeville contortionist and become a criminal! Which was probably a good move since I can't imagine how he was making a living as a vaudeville performer in the <i>1960s.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course he can't become a criminal without a costume, and so he decides to be a scarecrow after seeing a scarecrow costume in the window of a costume store. Luckily it fits since he's as "flexible as a scarecrow anyway", but can you imagine if the first costume he saw was Sexy Nurse or something?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then he steals some trained crows from one of the other acts (don't worry, he was retiring) and figures that since they're familiar to him they'll listen to him and act like accomplices like he was in a Disney cartoon or something. Then he decides his first target will be the New York penthouse apartment of Tony Stark (he'd been renting his mansion to the Avengers for a while by now) because Stark is always out with girls so he's an easy target.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seriously this guy is the most slapdash crook I've ever seen.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile a model named Veronica Vogue shows up at Stark Industries to pick up Tony but Pepper lies to her and tells her Tony is out of town. With no one to go out with, Tony has Happy drive him to the apartment, where they find the Scarecrow trying to rob Stark's wallsafe.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Happy starts to fight the Scarecrow, but is outmatched. However it gives Stark the opportunity to change into Iron Man, but Scarecrow stages a diversion and escapes, sending Iron Man on a wild chase by making him follow his trained crows while he slips away.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Scarecrow manages to steal some new weapons plans Stark is designing for the Defense Department, which he plans to ransom from Stark. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stark decides to meet Scarecrow at the pier with the money alone (so to best transform into Iron Man), against Happy's objections. However when the Scarecrow shows up he merely steals Stark's briefcase full of money and jumps on a boat headed for Cuba to sell the plans to the Reds as well!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Scarecrow rendezvous with a Cuban gunboat to turn over the plans, but Iron Man shows up, grabs the plans, knocks the Scarecrow and the Cubans into the water and sinks their boat. Scarecrow has his crows <i>tow him on a line </i>to Cuba, an escape that would only take about 40 hours to make, and yet Iron Man lets him go because his transistors are almost out of power. Uh-huh.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Back in the States, Tony needs to do something with two tickets to a Broadway show he was going to attend with Veronica, and Pepper is hoping he'll ask her but instead he gives them to her and Happy so they can go <i>together! </i>Meanwhile, Scarecrow plots revenge on the Cuban shore.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts:</b></u> In the previous issue, Iron Man battled one of his greatest foes for the first time. In this issue, he fights a Batman villain. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, to be fair, while the Scarecrow is best known today as a member of Batman's Rogues Gallery, that character hadn't appeared in a comic since <a href="http://goldenagebat.blogspot.ca/2013/09/detective-comics-73-march-1943.html">1943</a>, and wouldn't appear again until 1967, so using the persona again wouldn't have confused any kids of te time, it just demonstrates Stan Lee scraping the bottom of the barrel for villain ideas. I mean, the comic tries it's best to justify that a guy wearing burlap and straw who can do gymnastics <i>really well </i>is a worthy adversary for a genius in powered armour, but it really never takes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art:</b></u> Good stuff from Don Heck this issue, although at times the backgrounds get a little vague and stylized and Tony's penthouse suite seems to be made up of a lot of non-descript Kirbyesque machinery for no reason. Pepper's looking more and more glamourous with each appearance.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Story: </b></u>The Scarecrow is a lousy villain. His motivation to become a supercriminal seems to be simply because we need one this issue, and the whole adventure feels very perfunctory. Stealing Stark plans to sell to Cubans is a good idea and rings topical to when this comic was published, but it's also very similar to <a href="http://ironmanreviews.blogspot.ca/2013/08/tales-of-suspense-42-june-1963.html">recent issues</a> and Stan could've used a character like the Chameleon who's already established as a Soviet spy. On the whole the issue isn't <i>bad,</i> so much as it is ho-hum and utterly forgettable between last issue (first Mandarin) and next issue (first Black Widow).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Stark Science:</b></u> We learn that the Mk II armour can stand up to small arms fire but would have a problem with machine guns, and that it's flight power is limited by the transistorized batteries such that flying to Cuba from New York is out of the question.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Honestly the most scientifically dubious thing in this issue is the Scarecrow's trained birds. Crows are very intelligent birds, but they are also stubborn and independant and are not easily trained at all. So the fact that our villain has taken crows <i>someone else </i>has trained to perform <i>vaudeville tricks</i> and is using them to commit crimes and steal <i>precise things</i> and do a whole bunch of exact stuff seemingly via telepathy from him (like flying him to Cuba), is kind've ridiculous.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Notes and Trivia: </b></u>The first appearance of the Marvel Comics version of the Scarecrow, who will go on to menace other Marvel heroes but never will get that revenge on Iron Man he's contemplating. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While fighting Iron Man, the Scarecrow mentions that it's widely known Stark employs the Golden Avenger as a bodyguard. While past villains have noticed that Iron Man is always around to protect Stark's stuff, I believe this is the first time the idea of him being explicitly employed as Stark's bodyguard has been mentioned. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This issue's story would be adapted into issues <a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/Iron_Man:_Enter_the_Mandarin_Vol_1_2">#2</a> and <a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/Iron_Man:_Enter_the_Mandarin_Vol_1_3">#3</a> of <i>Enter the Mandarin.</i></span>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-522227760501234462013-09-29T18:28:00.003-07:002013-10-05T19:28:35.821-07:00Tales of Suspense #50 (February, 1964)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/50-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/50-1.jpg" width="211" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Classic Marvel comics overhype themselves so much on their covers that it can sometimes be hard to tell which issues actually are important milestones and which issues are utter trash.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, hold on to your hats, merry Marvelites, because this truly is "another mighty milestone in this, the Marvel Age of Comics!"</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"The Hands of the Mandarin!"</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Writer: </b>Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Artist: </b>Don Heck</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis:</b><i> </i>Our story opens with a pageload of Stan Lee hyperbole building up the bold new threat of the Mandarin, the most feared man in all of Red China and in no way a rip-off of <a href="http://www.google.ca/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&docid=WzH3Qb1sWJhIhM&tbnid=wQ-Kk7_mS-K-mM:&ved=0CAUQjBwwAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdcairns.files.wordpress.com%2F2009%2F08%2Fface_of_fu_manchu_poster_01.jpg&ei=F6NIUtHZK_OEygGf9YG4BQ&psig=AFQjCNGYNInxyOVO5thQxHM_xzLq0ELd_A&ust=1380578455811150">an outdated racial stereotype character</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In his castle in Red China, he is visited by soldiers in the Red Chinese army, who request that he share his atomic science secrets with them so that the communist government can possess the bomb, as well as share with them the secret of his power rings -- ten rings he wears on each finger that seem to grant him magical abilities.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Mandarin refuses, he serves no man and shall one day rule the world for himself, and so the Red Chinese soldiers flee in terror from his castle.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, back in America, the CIA have requested that Iron Man fly a dangerous reconaissance spy mission into Red China to gather information about the Mandarin, whom the CIA perceive as a threat but do not know much about.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Back at his factory in Flushing, Tony tells "Bill", the head of the factory's employee's association, that he'll be unable to attend the employee's dinner that night, but that he's appointed Happy Hogan to go in his place. Bill grumbles about how the boss can't be bothered to associate with the hired hands, and Happy decks him one for the comment. Tony gives Happy a stern dressing down for this impulsive action, and apologizes to Bill -- at which point Pepper Potts becomes very annoyed that she's been standing there this whole time and no one's noticed her <i>make-over! </i>With a new hair-do, colour, and make-up, she's gone from a Peggy Olson to a Joan Holloway! Tony admits he didn't even notice her, while Happy remarks he liked her better the old way.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Flying over mainland China, a US spy jet drops Iron Man into enemy territory. Approaching the Mandarin's castle, he's jumped by the warlord's private guard, but of course they are no match for Iron Man!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seeing Iron Man's approach on one of his monitors, the Mandarin draws him into the castle with a magnetic beam, depositing Iron Man in an empty room where...<a href="http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TheWallsAreClosingIn"> the walls are closing in!</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Flying out through an air vent, Iron Man finds himself in the control room of the Mandarin, where an epic battle of abilities begin, as the two exchange a flurry of beams, rays, and waves until finally the Mandarin locks Iron Man with a paralysis ray!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Back in the States, Pepper is so desperate for a date to the employee's dinner... she actually asks Happy!! The chauffeur figures that without the boss there to "cramp my style" he can "really operate!"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">His transistor power weakened by the effort to escape the Mandarin's paralysis ray, Iron Man finds himself at the mercy of the Chinese sorceror, who reveals that he had weakened the hero to the point where he could indulge in his favourite pasttime... karate! (An odd choice for a Chinese aristocrat, wouldn't kung fu be more appropriate? Oh right, it's the early 60s, Stan Lee wouldn't have heard of kung fu).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Mandarin proves to be remarkably strong, capable of breaking iron bars with a karate chop, making him a formidable opponent for Iron Man, who resorts to using a wrist-installed calculator to calculate the ideal angles to block the Mandarin's blow -- the pain of hitting Iron Man's armour at the wrong angle causes the Mandarin to pass out, and so Iron Man beats a hasty escape, meeting up with his pick-up plane back to the states.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Somehow this all happens within a space of a day, because Tony Stark shows up in his tux for that employee's dinner after all, charming the girls -- while all the men have been charmed by Pepper! Happy is afraid that Tony will steal Pepper from him, while Pepper is afraid that Tony will never ask her out if he thinks she's dating Pepper! Oh, the soap opera!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But back in Red China, the "Oriental menace" of the Mandarin plots his next move, his revenge against Iron Man!!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts: </b></u>So here it is, the debut of The Mandarin -- Iron Man's archnemesis! His Lex Luthor, his Joker, his Moriarty, his Red Skull, his Green Goblin, his Fu Manchu --</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Right, so here's the thing about the Mandarin. He's a really, really great villain. Even in this introductory story, you can see the elements that make him the best antagonist for Iron Man. Stark's science versus Mandarin's "magic", capitalism versus communism, freedom versus dictatorship, etc. Not only that, but of all the villains Iron Man's met so far, Mandarin has the most personality, the most pizzazz, the most threat -- but then, he's borrowing a lot of that characterization from Fu Manchu.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Okay, so he's a good character in an exciting story, but the fact of the matter is that he's a rip-off, and the character he's a rip-off of is a notorious <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_peril">"Yellow Peril"</a> racist caricature stereotype. So does that make the Mandarin a racist caricature stereotype? Well, yes it does. But does that make him a bad character?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'd argue no, no more than Fu Manchu is a bad character. Fu Manchu was created by Sax Rohmer as a menacing "supervillain", in many ways the first of his kind, playing on the fears of the "Yellow Peril" common in the early 20th century. Patterning his villain after the fears of his readers makes him no different than any other effective author, while his creation proved immensely popular -- spawning radio shows, comic strips and books, film serials, and features. Fu Manchu was also immensely influential on the pulp magazine writers and comic writers of the time, defining in many ways the character of the "criminal mastermind" and thus the supervillain - no Sax Rohmer, no Walter Gibson, no Ian Fleming, etc.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, Stan Lee was a teenager at the height of Fu Manchu's popularity, and was a big fan of Sax Rohmer, and had apparently always wanted to create an "inscrutable" Asian villain as an homage. So in that way, I can't say that the Mandarin was coming from an evil place in terms of racism. Maybe a lazy place in that he's not so much "inspired" by Fu Manchu as he's a direct copy, but I don't think it's an evil one.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We can't change the place of casual racism that characters like Fu Manchu, and thus the Mandarin, came from -- what matters is how these characters are used today. The Mandarin became Iron Man's premiere villain, and writers like John Byrne and Joe Casey have used the character fantastically in recent years, maintaining his Chinese heritage instead of whitewashing it, while not devolving into racial caricature. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art: </b></u>It feels good to have Don Heck back on art duties. As much as I think Steve Ditko could've made an ideal Iron Man artist philosophically, Heck really has a great sense of Tony Stark and his world -- Heck inking Ditko might be ideal, but I would rather keep Heck on Iron Man so I could get all those great Ditko Spider-Man issues. Heck draws The Mandarin as a standard Fu Manchu type, except with the addition of a bizarre mask, and of course his trademark ten rings. Heck also updates Pepper's appearance this issue -- she's a redhead officially now and looking quite glamourous.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Chinese characters in the story are drawn in a somewhat caricatured way, but it doesn't feel malevolent or negatively stereotyped in nature.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Story:</b></u> It's clear that this story was merely meant to introduce the Mandarin, with Lee intending to bring the character back as a regular basis. He knew he'd hit on an archenemy for Iron Man, and so this story is mostly about establishing the Mandarin as a major threat -- we don't get an origin for the character, merely a lot of scenes and dialogue establishing how powerful he is. We don't know the source of his power, whether magic or technology, or what the deal with his ten rings are -- the rings being the main thing distinguishing Mandarin from his inspiration.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What's interesting is that he doesn't even have a specific evil plan -- he's a presence, pre-existing, already powerful. Iron Man wanders in to find out who this Mandarin character is and his victory is simply in getting out alive. It's a good story, but it's also very simplistic, intended as it is merely as an intro, and it's only thirteen pages -- supported by some standard Marvel Comics soap opera love triangle stuff. It's an overture to a series of Mandarin appearances coming up that will climax with <i>Tales of Suspense </i>#55.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">These issues would be retold in Joe Casey's <i><a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/Iron_Man:_Enter_the_Mandarin_Vol_1">Enter the Mandarin</a> </i>mini-series, an excellent story that makes the implicit themes in the battle of Mandarin and Iron Man explicit in very well written dialogue. I love those issues, and I thought about reviewing them alongside the originals here before deciding to stick to publication order -- however for fans of the Mandarin who wish to see his first encounters with Stark told in a more Modern Age style, it's a great book to pick up. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Stark Science: </b></u>Because Stan doesn't give us an origin or explanation for the Mandarin's power, it's hard to comment on his ten rings, which at this point could be magic, science, or "science so advanced it appears as magic." </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The communists want the Mandarin's atomic research, which implies he's a scientist or technological expert of some kind. Red China's nuclear program had begun research in 1959 after Soviet Russia cut off their support -- they would succeed in detonating their first atom bomb on October 16, 1964.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We discover the Mark II armour's chest mounted "ultra-beam" is capable of dispelling any ray of "less than cosmic intensity", which makes it a pretty powerful defense.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Without commenting on the comic book technological powers of Iron Man and Mandarin, the most implausible element of the whole story is the spyplane that gets Iron Man to the Mandarin's castle. While we aren't given much context on the location of the Mandarin's castle, most of China is in fact just outside the range of the CIA's Lockheed U2 spyplane which would have been used for such an operation, if it had left from and returned to Idlewild Airport as the text suggests. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But let's assume the U2 makes it, that the Mandarin's Castle is in range (when it most likely isn't) -- Tony is at the Pentagon when the story starts, flies 250 miles to his plant in Flushing (no way of knowing how long that takes), then takes the U2 from Idlewild to China - a journey which even at maximum speed would take the plane 15 hours, then he battles the Mandarin and gets on another plane for another 15 hour U2 flight back to NYC -- all in time to arrive at the employee dinner that was going on the very evening of the day he left!! Even with international time zones and day barriers and such, that seems <i>highly impossible</i>!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Notes and Trivia:</b></u> First appearance of The Mandarin. First appearance of "post-makeover" Pepper Potts. This issue takes place after <a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/Avengers_Vol_1_3"><i>The Avengers </i>#3</a> and <a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/Avengers_Vol_1_4">#4</a>, in which The Hulk left the team and became a menace alongside the Sub-Mariner, and the Avengers discovered and revived the frozen form of Captain America, who then became the new team leader.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This issue's story was adapted into issues <a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/Iron_Man:_Enter_the_Mandarin_Vol_1_1">#1</a> and <a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/Iron_Man:_Enter_the_Mandarin_Vol_1_2">#2</a> of <i>Enter the Mandarin.</i> </span>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-9808552400131881792013-09-17T13:42:00.000-07:002013-09-17T14:23:23.848-07:00Tales of Suspense #49 (January, 1964)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/49-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/49-1.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well, we're 11 issues in and we've got our first <i>cross-over!</i> The novelty will wear off by the time we hit the 90s, let me assure you.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"The Angel"</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Writer:</b> Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Pencils</b>: Steve Ditko</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Inks: </b>Paul Reinman</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis: </b>The Angel, a member of the fledgeling <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men#1960s">X-Men</a>, decides to fly over the Stark Industries factory in Flushing as "shortcut" to Professor Xavier's mansion in Westchester.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, at that moment Iron Man is guarding <i>an atomic explosion test</i> and when he sees Angel he tries to warn him off from the blast zone. How the hell does Stark get the permits for these things?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyways, if a scientist trying to warn a teen away from an atomic blast test <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DlUOuZgnFXs">sounds familiar to you,</a></span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">then you can guess what happens next. Iron Man is unsuccessful in warning the Angel and the bomb goes off -- luckily the Mk II Iron Man armour can withstand the force of the blast and radiation but Angel is hit with the full force of the radioactivity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And instead of killing him, it turns him evil. Yes, you read that right, he <i>turns evil.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, to be fair, personality changes are a possible side effect of radiation to the brain, but Iron Man's reaction that this is <i>just what he feared would happen</i> is so completely ridiculous.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyways, the now-evil Angel flies to the X-Mansion where he announces to the rest of the X-Men (Cyclops, Marvel Girl, Iceman and Beast) that he is quitting the X-Men to go join the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brotherhood_of_Evil_Mutants">"evil mutants"</a>.<i> </i> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The X-Men try to stop him, but fail, because <a href="http://comicsalliance.com/tags/x-men-episode-guide/">as Chris Sims has taught us</a>, the X-Men are terrible at being superheroes. With this being a major emergency, Professor Xavier sends a call out to the Avengers to assist them in taking down Angel before he joins the "evil mutants". However, none of the team gets the signal except... Iron Man!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile Angel has been flying around New York City dropping dynamite on people thinking that this will get the evil mutants' attention and let them know he's on their side, but they all think it's a trap and stay home and do not appear in this comic.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Instead, Iron Man shows up and the two have a battle in the skies for four pages, narrating to themselves every action they do in the best Silver Age tradition, that ends up overtaxing Iron Man's transistor batteries and so he begins to plummet to his death -- which causes the inner good in Angel to come out just in time for him to <i>snap out f being evil</i> and rescue Iron Man.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At this point it is revealed that Iron Man<i> planned </i>to run out of batteries (uh-huh, sure Tony) and force Angel to save him because he knew that this would cause Angel to snap back to his old self as well as demonstrate to the NYPD watching the situation that Angel wasn't really evil. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Angel goes back to the X-Men and Professor X promises to do Iron Man a favour in return some day.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts:</b></u> It's hard for us to understand the impact that the shared Marvel universe had in the early 1960s. Today corporate comics are almost defined by their incestuous interconnectedness, opague continuity and untangleable storylines. But in the early 60s the idea that characters from one comic existed in the same world as characters from another was radical.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Now, to be fair DC had pioneered the concept with <i>Justice Society of America, World's Finest, Brave and the Bold, </i>and finally <i>Justice League of America</i>, but the DC universe was still very nascent and disconnected -- sure Batman and Superman hooked up in some books, but their solo series where still very much contained.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stan Lee changed everything when he started having his major characters start appearing in each other's books on a regular basis, weaving a web of storytelling that drew tighter and tighter until to readers of the time it really did seem like the Fantastic Four, Ant-Man, the Hulk, Thor, Spider-Man, Iron Man, Dr. Strange and all the rest really did all live a few minutes drive away from each other in a bizarrely crowded and event-filled New York City.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">You can see how unusual this was by the blurb at the start of this story which states that the X-Men and the Avengers appear by permission of the owners of their respective magazines, a bizarre notice considering <i>they're all owned by Martin Goodman. </i> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, the biggest hurdle for any cross-over story, even today, is justifying just why these characters are together in the same book. Sometimes it seems like a natural extension of the story, building the universe these characters live in, other times it feels like shameless cross-promotion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hmmm... which one is this?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art:</b></u> Paul Reinman inks over Steve Ditko this ish, which makes sense because Reinman was Kirby's inker on the original <i>X-Men </i>and so the idea was probably to retain the look of the characters in the cross-over. But Reinman <i>really</i> isn't suited to ink Ditko - the story looks rough, it lacks polish and subtlety, Reinman's lines are thick and really drown Ditko's pencils. It's not a pretty issue to look at.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Story:</b></u> Oh, man, Stan. I'm willing to give a lot of leeway for Silver Age ridiculousness, but "Angel shows up and turns evil because of radiation and fights Iron Man" is NOT one of your best ideas, nor does the execution make up for it. This whole comic is just so useless -- we learn nothing about the characters, there's no meaningful interaction between Iron Man and the Angel other than chases and fights, and Angel turns evil just as arbitrarily as he turns good again.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Consider how one of the central themes of the X-Men is protecting a world that fears and hates them, and how early on it was in the book's history (only <a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/X-Men_Vol_1_2">two issues</a> had come out), so it would be easy to justify that people wouldn't trust the X-Men and would perhaps lump them in with all the "evil mutants" given that we're building up towards the height of anti-mutant hysteria in <a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/X-Men_Vol_1_15"><i>X-Men </i>#15</a>. It would be interesting to see if Tony would give in to that prejudice, if he'd assume all mutants are bad. How could we compare and contrast Tony and Angel -- who is also a rich white guy named Warren Worthington III, who like Tony has a physical condition (heart defect, wings) that he must hide from the public but is also connected to his secret identity. But nope! None of that. To be fair, with the X-Men being as new as they were at this point I can concede that they aren't being characterized very deeply -- but that doesn't change the fact that Angel has always been the least interesting of the original X-Men, except for that other time that <a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/X-Factor_Vol_1_24">science turned him evil</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Usually the way hero cross-overs go is that there's a contrived reason for the heroes to fight, then they realize they are on the same side, and team up. In this issue, all we get is the contrivance.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Stark Science:</b></u> Stark Industries is setting off an experimental nuclear device in Flushing Meadows??? How the hell did they manage that??</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A nuclear bomb small enough ("refined" is the word Stan uses) that it could be set off in a controlled explosion amidst the most populous city in America and only radioactively affect people in the very nearby vacinity would have to have a yield as small as, say, 3 kilograms. Which is, of course, waaaaaaay smaller than the minimum theoretical yield of 10 tons for a fission weapon. Then again, maybe that's what Stark was testing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even assuming a nuclear weapon that small (which, even if you could do it, what would be the point? 3 kilograms is a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCthJUtS5a4"><i>small</i></a> explosion)<i>, </i>it's amazing that this comic isn't about Iron Man and Angel slowly dying of radiation poisoning. Iron has to be 5.2mm thick to withstand 100 keV of radiation, which is about how much an x-ray at the doctor's tends to be -- even an nuclear explosion <i>below the minimum yield</i> <i>limit</i> has more keV of radiation than that, especially absorbed at the meager distance our heroes were at, meaning Tony's armor would have to be significantly thicker than the "wafer-thin" it was described as being last issue. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As for the Angel, who takes all of the radiation with none of the protection, well, granted, the trope of "radiation gives you superpowers instead of cancer" was <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantastic_four">fantastically</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incredible_Hulk">incredibly</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spider-Man">amazingly</a> common in early Marvel Comics, but usually it manifested in the form of mutations and physical transformations. The idea that radioactivity <i>makes you evil</i> and that this is such a common thing that Stark was expecting it, and then that the effect of the radioactivity that would cause such a change in brain chemistry can be shaken off a few hours later through the strength of inner morality?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yeah, this isn't a great issue of Iron Man for science.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then again, the story sees the debut of Iron Man's "magnetic repellers" -- devices in his boots and gloves that he uses to slow his descent and push off from the ground a few times in this story in tandem with his "air jets". These devices will slowly evolve into "repulsor rays", the most significant of Iron Man's gadgets.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because the focus of this blog is Iron Man, not the X-Men, I'm not even gonna try on the science of mutations in the Marvel Universe.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Notes and Trivia:</b></u><b> </b>Iron Man meets the X-Men, who now owe him a favour.</span>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-46803747515318086382013-09-13T15:26:00.001-07:002013-09-13T15:34:20.608-07:00Tales of Suspense #48 (December, 1963)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Based on the Jack Kirby cover art, we can already tell this is an issue to be excited about. Red-and-gold, baby!</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"The Mysterious Mr. Doll!"</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Writer: </b>Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Pencils: </b>Steve Ditko</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i> </i><b>Inks: </b>Dick Ayers</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis: </b>A Mr. Carter unexpectedly reneges on a deal to supply Stark Industries with steel. Tony heads over to Carter's residence to find out what's going on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On arrival he spots a costumed criminal entering Carter's house, and so changes into Iron Man to confront him. The costumed individual's name is "Mr. Doll" and he has been torturing Carter with sympathetic magic, harming a fetish in Carter's image and causing him pain until he has finally agreed to sign over all of his money, estate and business over to Mr. Doll.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iron Man moves to attack Mr. Doll, but the villain is able to dextrously alter the features of his clay doll to resemble Iron Man, and thus apply pressure to cause the Golden Avenger great pain. Iron Man ends up having to retreat, the strain of fighting Mr. Doll's attack was too much for his heart and he must rush home to recharge. Carter signs his forture over to Mr. Doll.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stark is only able to just barely reach his private office in time to plug in, and spends an entire day unconscious on the floor, recharging. When he awakes, he realizes that he's been having to recharge more and more, that he's becoming increasingly vulnerable as Iron Man because the suit is so heavy, bulky and inefficient that it's taking so much charge to run the suit that his heart is in danger of failing on him. (Apparently replacing all the iron in the suit with aluminium last issue wasn't enough to help!)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And so Tony resolves to build a brand new model of the suit that will be lighter, faster and more efficient, so that he can defeat Mr. Doll before the strain on his heart grows too great. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile, the police implore Mr. Carter to swear out a complaint against Mr. Doll, as Carter is the third millionaire to be threatened into signing over his forture but the law cannot move against him -- and Carter won't sign a complaint out of fear against Doll. Who, at that moment, is planning his next victim - millionaire Tony Stark!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But Tony has completed the Mark II Iron Man armor, it's brand new features introduced to us in a THREE-PAGE, twenty-two panel suiting up sequence: </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDwAqm9oDSvlXiB2BrcPlvw9IBH-3tG9XGqfXsKCwDklRLj_y8I-BBmN3QVvXwIUzFO17dq_R629pW5cEEi3_fTgJVsC0MLrXEET8SVGUAYJGLsU7ho1VWIIDf1qejZZfNaZXnZ7MShSVH/s1600/ironman2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDwAqm9oDSvlXiB2BrcPlvw9IBH-3tG9XGqfXsKCwDklRLj_y8I-BBmN3QVvXwIUzFO17dq_R629pW5cEEi3_fTgJVsC0MLrXEET8SVGUAYJGLsU7ho1VWIIDf1qejZZfNaZXnZ7MShSVH/s400/ironman2.png" width="400" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, even though the new armour is undoubtably sweet, I'm not sure how it's supposed to defeat a dude with vodoo magic.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Luckily it turns out that Stark has been asked by the police to act as bait so they can catch Mr. Doll, as he's the next logical target. Stark agrees, but needs to shake the tail he's been given so he can change into Iron Man. So he does the rational thing and takes Pepper on a <i>date </i>in a <i>sealed room</i> where the guard agrees to leave the two of them <i>alone</i> because no one could get in or <i>out. </i>Instead of realizing this is very creepy behaviour for her employer, Pepper is overjoyed her crush has finally noticed her and jumps on Stark to start making out like she's got no time to spare!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Of course, Tony's actually planned this so he can access a secret door in the room to get out and change to Iron Man, but thanks Pepper for her energetic "performance" that will "convince" the guard. Ew.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mr. Doll shows up at Stark's factory, which he declares will make an excellent headquarters (for what? What is he after, anyway?) before promptly using his doll to inflict pain upon Iron Man. He reveals to Iron Man that he learned this magic in Africa from a witch doctor and he will now inflict pain on Stark so that he will sign the factory over to him!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iron Man must now not betray any sign that he feels the pain that is being inflicted upon him or else give away his secret identity. Luckily Doll orders Iron Man to retrieve Stark and bring him there on pain of death, giving Iron Man a chance to escape.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He still feels the intense magical pain, so once in his workshop he <i>disconnects the power from his heart</i> so that his nerves will deaden and not feel the pain long enough for him to complete a weapon to use against Mr. Doll. He manages to do it within the four minutes the brain can survive without oxygenated blood, and flies off to face Mr. Doll.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Doll changes his talisman to resemble Iron Man and then prepares to drop it, the force of which might kill him, but Iron Man fires a small force beam at the clay figurine which actually changes the doll's appearance to that of Mr. Doll <i>himself!</i> The doll drops, and so does Mr. Doll.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Doll is arrested, and Tony Stark reappears, where Happy Hogan reminds him that the totally forgot about Pepper Potts left waiting in the storage room. She's so mad she won't speak to either of them!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts:</b></u> As I mentioned in the previous review I am a huge fan of Steve Ditko, and one of his greatest strengths is costume design. Spider-Man is one of the all-time classic designs, up there with Superman and Batman, and I think part of the reason The Question has lasted so long is his visual distinctiveness. So here we have the debut of the classic red-and-gold look for Iron Man, designed by Ditko, which will last in variations of some form or another up until this very day. It's hard to really grasp how HUGE this is. Stan always knew that Iron Man would be constantly upgrading his armour, but this is a MAJOR change in look, and in 1963 superheroes didn't channge their costumes every six issues like they do now. This really was a NEW Iron Man. Too bad it happens in such an otherwise lame story.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art:</b></u> Great stuff from Steve Ditko this month, with of course an absolute classic new look for our hero debuted. And clearly Marvel knew this was a huge improvement since they let Ditko have three pages out of an eighteen page story to introduce it. On the other hand, Ditko's being inked by standard Kirby collaborator Dick Ayers, and I'm not sure if it's a great pairing. In the previous issue Don Heck had been inking and this helped keep characters like Tony, Pepper, and Happy "on-model" as it were with their appearances as Heck had created them. Ayers' alters Ditko far less, and as a result the figure work is classic "quirky" Ditko, which renders characters like Pepper as "less attractive" than normal. On the (third?) hand, Ditko's talent for expressive faces really serves him well, especially with Tony's pained eyes seen through the eye-holes of his mask.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Story:</b></u> Of course, none of this should hide the fact that this is really a fifteen-page story about a boring one-note villain that is only "book-length" because it got three extra pages to introduce the "New" Iron Man. Now, it's true that putting science-based Tony Stark up against a villain who uses magic is a good idea because Tony can't just science his way out of things (except when he does), but Mr. Doll is so freakin' dumb. I mean, yes, he was originally supposed to be named "Mr. Pain" until the <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Comic_book_code_of_1954">Comics Code Authority</a> nixed that idea. And a more menacing name like that may have helped, but at the end of the day he's still just a crazy guy in a stupid hat extorting money out of rich people using vodoo dolls because... ?? What's the motivation? What's the scheme?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also, and maybe this is just me, but when Iron Man had to rebuild his entire suit to fight against the Melter last issue, maybe that would've been the time to intro the New Iron Man, instead of against a magic-based foe for whom the change in armour really affects nothing.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Stark Science: </b></u>Mr. Doll's powers work on the premise of <i>sympathetic magic, </i>and he might have learned it in West Africa among the religions of voodoo and juju, where it could have something to do with the "nkisi" figures. In other words, this is magic, not science.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stark's new armour has a ton of new features and gadgets. It's made of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ductile_iron">ductile iron</a>, and consists of boots and gloves that then expand magnetically to form the greaves and sleaves of the outfit. There are back-up transistor batteries in all the individual pieces, but it still plugs-in for recharging if all the back-ups run out. The new helmet slides into place and allows Stark's expression to show to "strike fear into his enemies". Right, because you weren't similar <i>enough</i> to Batman, Stark.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The force beam that reshapes the clay figurine is left so vague that we can't really question the science behind it, but let's just say a remote beam that can reshape clay into exact forms is fairly implausible. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Notes and Trivia:</b></u> Debut of the Iron Man Armour MARK II, otherwise known as the classic red-and-gold look. This issue is set after Iron Man's appearance in <a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/Avengers_Vol_1_2"><i>The Avengers #</i>2</a>, wherein he grants the Earth's Mightiest Super-Heroes permission to use his mansion in the Upper East Side of Manhattan as their base of operations. When he next appears in<i> Avengers </i>#3 he'll be wearing his new red-and-gold armour.</span>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-91016489514645820762013-09-07T17:47:00.001-07:002013-09-13T13:50:08.244-07:00Tales of Suspense #47 (November, 1963)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"Iron Man Battles the Melter!"</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Writer: </b>Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Pencils: </b>Steve Ditko</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Inks: </b>Don Heck</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis: </b>In recent army demonstrations, Stark tanks have been failing, falling apart. Looking into the problem personally, Tony Stark is attacked by a costumed saboteur called The Melter, whose melting ray has been causing the sabotage.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a flashback, it is revealed that the Melter is in actuality Bruno Horgan, a former competitor of Stark's.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Horgan's military technology used inferior materials and ultimately his defense contracts were taken away and given to Stark. As he was closing down his factories and plants, Horgan accidentally discovered a ray that melts iron instantly (but doesn't seem to affect other materials - it's not just an intense heat ray, but seems to affect iron atoms directly). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Horgan figures that the power to melt iron at will makes him invinicibly powerful and so creates a costume and mask so he can "plunder at will". As The Melter, he begins his attacks on Stark's factories so to get back at him and the US army both.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Melter leaves Stark alive for some reason, and so when Stark awakes he returns to his office and changes into Iron Man in order to fight him. The Melter takes out the generators for Stark's plant, and when Iron Man attempts to intervene the Melter melts his armour's arm, so the Golden Avenger is forced to make a hasty retreat -- however he smashes the factory's steam pipe on the way out, forcing the Melter to retreat as well.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Changed back to Stark, he inspects the damage and orders his men to work around the clock at triple pay to repair the damage. Meanwhile, Tony puts all his other commitments on hold so he can work on a way to defeat the Melter. Tony knows that if the beam were to melt his mask, or his chest plate, during battle it would be disastrous. But he's not helpless, he's "got the greatest weapon in the world... a human brain!"</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, even Tony Stark can't ignore a summons to Washington, where he learns that the brass believe Tony has <i>made up </i>the Melter as an excuse for why his production has fallen behind. And if production is not straightened out, he'll lose his cushy government contracts!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stark is called back to Flushing for an emergency at the plant. The Melter is attacking again, threatening Pepper and Happy and the lives of everyone else at the plant. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However this time when he attacks Iron Man... nothing happens! The Melter flees but Iron Man knows the plant's layout far better and confronts him at every turn. The terrified Melter melts the floor beneath his feet and flees into the water mains beneath the plant.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Without knowing if the Melter is alive or dead, Tony changes out of his suit -- now made of "tough extruded aluminum"! Soon he's back to giving orders to his employee - and Happy wonders if things are better or worse when everything's back to "normal"!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts:</b></u> The third of three great stories in a row, this story is helped out immensely by it's longer, 18-page length, by the face that Stan is actually scripting as well as plotting, and by introducing a villain who, like the Crimson Dynamo, is unique and feels specific to Iron Man in both motivation and method. This is really the first Iron Man story where I can feel the personalities of the characters coming through, and you really appreciate the addition of Pepper and Happy to the cast. Also, like the last two stories, I really enjoy that we see how the villain threatens both Iron Man <i>and </i>Tony Stark, giving him ample motivation to defeat him. This story feels like the culmination of the promise of the previous two -- it's the first really good Iron Man story.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art:</b></u> Pencils here are being handled by one of my all-time favourite comics artists - Steve Ditko! Ditko was one of Stan's main collaborators in the early days of Marvel, an amazingly idiosyncratic artist with a very quirky style all his own, very unique from that of Jack Kirby's. To this day, "Kirby or Ditko?" is a question much akin to "Beatles or Rolling Stones?" or "Pepsi or Coke?" At the time of this issue, Ditko was eight issues into a 38 issue run on <i>Amazing Spider-Man</i>, a character he co-created with Lee, and was also illustrated the adventures of Dr. Strange in <i>Strange Tales. </i>Eventually Ditko would have a falling out with Lee and leave Marvel to create characters such as Blue Beetle, The Question, The Creeper, and Hawk and Dove over at DC. About midway through the 1960s Ditko discovered the works of Ayn Rand and became an ardent Objectivist, a belief system that began to heavily influence his art. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm not sure if Ditko had discovered Objectivism by 1963, but it doesn't appear so as it's values hadn't begun influencing his storytelling yet. Either way, I love Ditko's work in this issue and I wish he had become a regular artist for Iron Man -- he might've stayed at Marvel longer, as Tony Stark is almost an ideal Objectivist hero, basically Hank Rearden in an iron suit! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ditko's style is often described as "quirky", his faces have great expressive qualities which reveal a lot of character and his panels are often very dynamic and effective while working solely on variations of a regular six-panel grid layout. He's being inked by Don Heck, presumably to lend a feeling of continuity to the feature similar to Heck's inking of Jack Kirby - but while Heck keeps the cast on model and recognizable, his inking doesn't temper Ditko's essential flavour as much as it tempered Kirby's -- it's still very clearly Ditko.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Story:</b></u><b> </b>By presenting a simply one-villain tale in 18 pages Stan is able to expand on his scenarios more and give more characterization. This is the first Iron Man script Stan's written himself, and as such it feels much more "alive", with that classic trademark Marvel characterization. Happy, Pepper and Tony grow from one-dimensional characters to, well, two-dimensional characters. All their essential qualities were already there, but Stan lets them shine. Iron Man develops a sense of humour, in the style of the standard Marvel "mock the villain" gags. The Melter, like Jack Frost and Crimson Dynamo, feels like the kind of villain Iron Man should be fighting - a technologically based villain with a mission to destroy Stark, which brings in Iron Man to defend.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> My absolute favourite element of the whole story however has to be that Stark explicitly is depicted as outthinking the villain -- using his mind, described as his greatest weapon, to conquer his foe. That is absolutely what Iron Man stories should be about and what Tony Stark represents as a hero: the triumph of reason and rational values. And Stan even remembers to let the Melter get away so he can return as a villain in the future! Excellent.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Stark Science: </b></u>The Melter's melting ray is just one of those piece of hogwash comic book science we have to accept - somehow it can heat up iron particles to 1538 Celsius (2800 Fahrenheit) without affecting anything else -- for example it doesn't light Stark's arm on fire when it melts his armour. It also clearly affects alloys of iron in addition to pure iron, as we know that the armour is an iron alloy that is (somehow) non-magnetic (which is ridiculous). So yeah, the ray only affects iron and nothing else, which is ridiculous but we just gotta buy it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which is why Tony's able to beat it by simply building his armour out of s<i>omething other than iron, </i>in this case <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extrusion">extruded</a> aluminium. Which is kind've a terrible replacement choice -- aluminium is very malleable much weaker than iron. There's a reason we make pop cans out of aluminium and not tanks. But I guess it got the job done. Although, does this make him Aluminum Man now?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Notes and Trivia: </b></u>First Iron Man story written solely by Stan Lee, Stark debuts the MARK I MOD 3 armour out of aluminium, first Iron Man armour not actually made of iron.</span>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-34334498724509088312013-09-02T13:04:00.002-07:002013-09-02T13:11:11.388-07:00Tales of Suspense #46 (October, 1963)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/46-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/46-1.jpg" width="210" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"The Crimson Dynamo!"</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Plot: </b>Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Script: </b>Robert Bernstein</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Artist: </b>Don Heck</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis:</b> In Soviet Russia, comic reads you!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nikita Khruschev, General Secretary of the Communist Party, enters the laboratory of Professor Anton Vanko. He is the world's greatest expert on electricity, and he has a new discovery to show Khruschev. Changing into a bizarre red powered armor suit, Khruschev declares that Vanko looks ridiculous, like a human dynamo. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And indeed, that is the point, for Vanko's suit gives him complete remote control power over electrical signals and circuits (somehow). Vanko sics a robot of Iron Man and a remote control tank after Khruschev before destroying them both with a remote rheostat (which only kinda makes sense). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Khruschev fears Vanko and privately wants him liquidated (maybe intimidating the leader of the country with your toys wasn't a great idea, Vanko?) but he also realises Vanko is powerful and useful and so he decides to send him to America to destroy Tony Stark and Iron Man.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So two weeks later in America Stark is launching a test flight of a new rocket design for space travel. The Crimson Dynamo is there, and using his "technology" he attacks the rocket and causes all of it's circuits to short out.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It begins to fall out of the sky, but luckily Iron Man is there to save the rocket and the astronaut crew within. But over the following weeks the Crimson Dynamo begins a campaign of sabotage against Stark's plants - and Iron Man isn't always there to stop them.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Soon, Stark's industrial empire is crippled, and the Pentagon is threatening to take away his defense contracts. Further more, Stark's loyalty is being questioned by senators in Washington -- after all, what better way to cripple American defense than the scoop up all the contracts and then allow them to be sabotaged because your a double agent? (Which is a completely ridiculous theory, but then people really were that paranoid back then).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Within three weeks Stark Industries is close to bankruptcy. Happy and Pepper vow to stay on with the boss, but Stark still has no idea who's sabotaging his plants. Luckily, Crimson Dynamo won't be satisfied until he has faced Iron Man, so he attacks Stark's main facility in Flushing. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stark changes into Iron Man and begins the battle with the Crimson Dynamo. He attempts to short out Iron Man's circuits like his other targets but Iron Man emits electrical interference that blocks the signal. Iron Man goads the Dynamo into revealing his identity as Vanko and taking responsibility for the sabotage, capturing it all on a micro tape recorder so as to clear Stark's name.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The fight ends when Iron Man picks up a signal from Russia of Khruschev telling his men that Vanko will be killed when he returns from America. Playing it to the Dynamo, Vanko realizes that communism is a double-dealing system that punishes success and intelligence - what he doesn't realize is that Iron Man actually faked the signal, recording it earlier during the fight when the Dynamo was distracted.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However Iron Man is successfully able to convince Vanko to defect to the US, to serve a system where men of genius are appreciated and his work can be used to "aid mankind". Vanko even agrees to come and work for Stark!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Back in Moscow, Khruschev throws a fit about how there's no one he can trust, but that he'll get Iron Man... <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_2_cJxYYhM">next time!</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts:</b></u> The introduction of the Crimson Dynamo gives Iron Man his first really challenging villain to fight against -- a Russian answer to Iron Man, a villain with his own powered armour suit, something that'll become something of a pattern in Iron Man villains. It took Stan a few stories to get it right, but he's also figured out what kind of villains Iron Man should be fighting -- villains who are directly threatening Stark and his interests, preferably communist ones.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I like the implied philosophical battle between Vanko and Stark, both men of science in armoured suits, serving very different systems. The ending where Stark actually convinces Vanko of communism's faults and gets him to defect is brilliant, even if it is a bit rushed and actually gets rid of Vanko as a villain, even though he's the best baddie in the feature so far.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although this kind of black & white "commies are the villains" schtick seems very hokey and featuring an actual world leader as the villain in a comic book may even strike modern readers as tasteless, this sort of thing was very common at the time, especially in the very early Marvel comics which were particularly anti-communist. It's essentially the same kind of thing that American comics had done with the Nazis during World War II - and at the height of the Cold War no one saw much of a difference between communists and Nazis. As far as I'm concerned it actually feels appropriate for Iron Man -- a capitalist industrialist weapons manufacturer kinda should be battling communist villains, philosophically speaking -- so it doesn't stick out so bad here as it does in, say, <i>Journey into Mystery</i> comics of the time that feature Thor battling the "Red Menace". </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art: </b></u>Heck hits it out of the park on this one. I love his character design for Vanko and his armour design for the Crimson Dynamo, which looks even better than Kirby's version on the cover. It's unique and gets across the idea that it's bigger, bulkier and less advanced than Stark's armour. Hecks sequences of Dynamo's destruction of various equipment and so on look fantastic. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Story: </b></u>Although Stan and Robert are back to thirteen pages this month they still deliver a cracking good story that's paced quite well. The addition of Pepper and Happy last month continues to help the feature as Tony now has a supporting cast to talk to and care about. A great addition to the story is the subplot about Tony losing his contracts and being suspected of sabotage himself. It not only raises the stakes, but gives a feeling of depth and realism - this is the kind of thing that set Marvel storytelling apart and above DC's at the time. It's also the kind of thing we should be seeing more often in Iron Man -- international intrigue, corporate drama, these are the hallmarks what the strip should be about. My only complaint is how quickly Vanko's about-face is achieved, although I can understand not really wanting to have a full adult debate about the virtues of capitalism vs. communism in a comic book for kids. That being said, I still have to give Stan kudos for recognizing that mistrust is an inherent flaw in the communist system - indeed, in all bureaucratic big government systems where doing your job well actually makes you a bigger target.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Stark Science: </b></u>I should call this segment "Vanko Science" this time around. In general the basic principles of Vanko's science aren't bad, but their execution can leave you scratching your head.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First up, a dynamo is an electrical generator producing direct current, and in some places a synonym for a generator. By the early sixties they were mostly obsolete as devices, but it's true that the design of Vanko's armour does in some ways resemble one. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How Vanko is able to wirelessly control electical circuits isn't really explained other than "he's really good at electrical science", which is fair enough and means we can't really question his methods. However we know he uses a rheostat to induce short circuits. A rheostat is a type of potentiometer that allows the user to vary the level of resistance in a circuit. Presumably Vanko is upping the resistance in the circuit to far above operating levels, thus causing the short circuit leading to violent explosion.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">One thing I don't understand is how was Tony able to fake the Khruschev recording? Can Tony speak Russian? Mimic Khruschev's voice? That bothers me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Notes and Trivia:</b></u> First appearance of the Crimson Dynamo, Anton Vanko defects to the US.</span>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-39535107456845356942013-08-30T23:18:00.001-07:002013-09-01T14:21:36.938-07:00Tales of Suspense #45 (September, 1963)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/45-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/45-1.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"The Icy Fingers of Jack Frost!"</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Plot: </b>Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Script: </b>Robert Bernstein</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Artist: </b>Don Heck</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis: </b>Having spent the morning assisting the FBI with rounding up a spy ring, Iron Man rushes to the track of the 500 mile Speedway Classic, where Tony Stark will be racing his own car - just like in the second movie!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He's off to a great start, winning every lap and on his way to setting a new track record... when the charge in his electric chest plate begins to run out! With his heart beginning to fail, he crashes the car and is sure to die.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But what's this? A man rushes out from the audience to save Stark, pulling him out of the wreckage before the car explodes. Stark weakly demands the man take him to the nearest motel room instead of a hospital, and with the amount of money Stark's offering he agrees.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once in the motel room Stark can plug in and is soon charged up with live saving electricity. Stark rewards the man with a job on his staff as his chauffeur/bodyguard, so that he'll always have someone to help him out if his heart conks out on him like that. The man's name is "Happy" Hogan, a washed up boxer who never won a bout because he could never bring himself to finish a guy off. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stark and Happy drive to Stark's plant - now established as being located in Flushing, Queens next door to the site of the upcoming 1964 World's Fair and the new Shea Stadium - where on arrival Stark introduces Happy to the site and to his staff, including his secretary, "Pepper" Potts. Pepper is a plain, mouse-y looking girl trying to find herself a husband at Stark Industries -- she has a crush on the boss but knows she can never land him. Happy is instantly smitten with her, but she finds him oafish, boorish and ugly. So now we have a love triangle on our hands.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In Stark's office, he changes into Iron Man to perform a systems check - and lucky he does, as the alarm for the vault goes off. Rushing down there, Iron Man discovers Professor Shapanka, a brilliant Stark Industries employee, attempting to raid it. Shapanka is attempting to steal the plans for Stark's transistors since they may hold the key to Shapanka's research in immortality. Wait - if Shapanka's a Stark employee, wouldn't he already have access to the transistors? Stark puts them in all his tech. And why does he need to steal anyway? If the dude is researching immortality, I think that might be research Stark would be willing to fund.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Nonsensical plot aside, Iron Man stops Shapanka, hands him over to Stark guards, and then changes back to Tony, who makes the really bone-headed decision of not having Shapanka arrested. Instead he just fires him, and tells him to get off the property before he gets "cold feet" about not having him arrested.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Shapanka suddenly realises this is the answer to his research and runs off. See, Shapanka believes he can freeze biological organisms and keep them alive in the ice indefinitely. But what use is immortality if you're just frozen in an ice block? Somehow Stark's comment has given Shapanka the idea of creating an "ice suit" that will regulate his body temperature to the lowest possible while keeping him alive, and also give him the standard comic book assortment of ice powers like the ability to encase himself in an icy form and shoot ice and freeze people with a freezing gun, like a mixture of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Cold">Captain Cold</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Freeze">Mister Zero</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceman_%28comics%29">Iceman</a>.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So now that Shapanka has, without even stealing those transistors, figured out a way to keep a human being cryonically preserved but NOT suspend their animation, does he patent it and sell it to the world and become famous and rich? No, he starts robbing banks and dreaming of revenge on Stark and Iron Man and being called "Jack Frost" by the newspapers because we're thirteen pages into this "eighteen page epic" and we need a supervillain, dammit!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Frost attacks Stark Industries, freezing the guards and Pepper Potts, whom he remarks was always "cold" to him. Happy comes at him with an assault rifle but is likewise frozen. Frost bursts into Stark's office, but finds... Iron Man!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At first Frost's powers seem a match for Iron Man, but then the Golden Avenger turns the "searchlight beam" into a "heat ray" for the first time and puts it full power on Jack Frost, whose ice melts and whose cold suit malfunctions and burns. Shapanka is arrested and everything's back to normal at Stark Industries.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts: </b></u>This is really the best Iron Man story since the origin. It gives us a lot of firsts for the feature. It's the first appearance of Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts, most significantly. These characters have gotten a lot of prominence lately due to their use in the Iron Man movies, and while Happy's role as Tony's chauffeur/bodyguard wasn't changed much, the Pepper seen in this comic is very different from Gwyneth Paltrow's confident, intelligent movie version. Pepper is characterized as a kind of shallow secretary with a crush on the boss looking for a husband, a very stereotypical and common female role in the 1960s. She's also portrayed as fairly plain in appearance. These attributes will change as the series goes on but "desperately trying to get Tony to notice her" will be a big part of her character for a while. This story is also the first to give us a proper costumed supervillain character, with an origin and powers and everything. He's also the first Iron Man villain to start out as a disgruntled Stark employee, which will become a running theme in Iron Man's enemies. It's the first story to establish and flesh out the location of Stark Industrie's munitions plant, and overall it's just the first story to really flesh out the characters in any real way. This is largely because it's five pages longer than all the previous Iron Man stories.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's also the first issue after Iron Man joined forces with Thor, Ant-Man, the Wasp and the Hulk to defeat Loki in <a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/Avengers_Vol_1_1"><i>The Avengers</i></a>, and thus the first issue after Iron Man has been firmly planted in the shared fictional universe of Marvel Comics. I thought long and hard about whether I wanted to review Iron Man's <i>Avengers</i> appearances, as he was a regular and vital team member up to <a href="http://marvel.wikia.com/Avengers_Vol_1_16"><i>Avengers #16</i></a> and has returned to the team many times over the succeeding years. But I decided that <i>The Avengers, </i>despite being really the first big cross-over of the Marvel universe, are really their own thing and if I included it I would be opening the doors to reviewing every appearance of Iron Man in every Marvel comic and that would drastically overcomplicate this review project, which is already insane enough as it is. So I'm only going to cover Iron Man appearances in comics not his own when storylines directly cross-over and intersect (like if Part 1 of a story is in Iron Man, Part 2 in some other comic, etc). I'll also cover other "Iron Man family" comics if I ever get that far into this to deal with such things.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art: </b></u>Good stuff from Heck. He of course creates here the visages for Happy and Pepper, although Pepper will go through a make-over in a few issues. His Jack Frost is sort've a spiky, icicle covered version of Iceman (who at this point in his design history is more like "Snowman"), with Mister Zero's freeze gun. Heck's action scenes are getting marginally better, but his strength is still people's faces, which he renders very individualistically. His use of shadow to create drama is also really effective in places.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Story:</b></u> Stan and Robert are really, really helped by those extra five pages. The pacing is enormously better and the characterizations that much more fleshed out. Heck, even when the first seven pages are devoted to introducing Happy and Pepper and the new set-up of the strip, the Jack Frost plot still gets another nine pages. It really helps the storytelling overall - even the ridiculous stuff seems slightly less so because there's enough time to pretend to justify it.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The love triangle set-up Stan has created is pretty standard - he'll repeat it almost identically in the Matt Murdock/Foggy Nelson/Karen Black triangle in <i>Daredevil </i>(ironically, Jon Favreau would go on to play both Happy and Foggy in the Marvel movies).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It makes utterly no sense as to why Professor Gregor Shapanka would decide to become a supervillain once he develops his powers, but then that's a pretty common problem with comic book villains in this era - heck, comic heroes too, after all Stan's given no reason for Stark to become a superhero instead of just turning his Iron Man suit into cash dollar as a defense contract.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Stark Science:</b></u> Stark's using those rocket-powered roller skates from <a href="http://ironmanreviews.blogspot.ca/2013/08/tales-of-suspense-40-april-1963.html"><i>ToS </i>#40</a>. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The big science thing in this ish isn't a Stark invention, it's Shapanka's cold suit. Now, to be fair, the general ideas he's operating under are pretty standard comic book conventions for a cold villain, but the specifics of his "science" are newer. His research is into suspended animation, specifically cryopreservation. The temperature required for this is 77.15 Kelvin (-196 Celsius, -320.8 Fahrenheit). However Shapanka is trying to do this while being able to move and live -- these two goals are mutually exclusive by the way. His suit lowers his body temperature to the "coldest possible", but that's really only between 28-20 Celsius (82.4-68 Fahrenheit) - any lower than that and your organs start failing and you die. And that's nowhere near the freezing point of water, which Jack Frost is obviously lower than given his "icy" form. So we must conclude that Shapanka's cryonic science is far beyond our own, although how Stark's transistors and their various degrees of bullshit would've helped him is beyond me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Notes and Trivia: </b></u>First appearance of Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts, Gregor Shapanka (Jack Frost), first time Stark Industries' location is established in Flushing, first time a Stark employee goes crazy and becomes a supervillain</span>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-31252483672640773862013-08-29T21:38:00.000-07:002013-08-30T23:23:06.009-07:00Tales of Suspense #44 (August, 1963)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/44-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/44-1.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0cm;">
“<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><i>The
Mad Pharoah”</i></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>Plot:
</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">Stan Lee</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>Script:
</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">Robert Bernstein</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>Artist:
</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">Don Heck</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis:
</b><span style="font-weight: normal;">Tony Stark is travelling to
Egypt and while the gossip columnists think it may be to start some
international romance, he is actually visiting an archeologist friend
of his to assist with a dig. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">When
he arrives the archeologist explains that they are searching for the
tomb of King Hatap, who was known as the “Mad Pharaoh” for his
knowledge of black magic and his ruthless crimes. They know it's in
the general area but not the precise location and hope Stark can use
his technological expertise to pinpoint the location so they don't
waste time digging around to find it.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Stark
suggests they call his... friend... Iron Man to assist due to his
many technological gadgets. Which are all Stark gadgets anyway, so
why Tony feels the need to “call Iron Man in Cairo” and then
return in costume eludes me.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">At
least until we find out that Tony is spending his time in Cairo
gambling at the casino, drinking champagne and watching belly
dancers. However his chest plate is running out of charge and so he
hurries back to recharge it, nearly drained. He damns the need for
the chest plate to keep him alive and needing to keep his Iron Man
identity a secret, which... wait, why is Tony keeping his identity a
secret, anyway? There's basically no reason for it other than that
he's a superhero and it's a trope of superheroes.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Anyways,
he returns to the dig site as Iron Man and uses portable
transistorized fluoroscope goggles to see through the tomb walls and
locate Hatap's burial chamber, digging to it easily with a
supercharged diamond drill (all the workers must be pissed. They
probably aren't being paid now).</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">They
find Hatap's mummy but the archeologist notes that it's very
peculiarly embalmed. The next day, it's missing! They search for who
the thief may be, but Stark is cornered by a strange figure... it's
Hatap himself, somehow still alive after 2,000 years!</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Hatap
explains that he had led a rebellion against Cleopatra, but his
forces were defeated (wait, so if he was a rebel, how was he a king
and a pharaoh?). But he faked his death by ingesting a serum which
placed him in suspended animation for two millennia. Now he is going
to travel back in time to defeat Cleopatra with Stark's help!</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Hatap
transports them back in time using a golden charm (you rub it twice
and it takes you back two millennia apparently) and as much as crazy
bullshit ancient Egyptian magic shouldn't really be in an Iron Man
comic, it totally works and the two find themselves in ~31 BC or so. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Tony
rolls down a sand dune out of sight of Hatap and changes into Iron
Man (because of course he brought the attaché case). When Iron Man
flies up into the sky Hatap believes that this strange armoured demon
has killed Stark and flees into the desert. </span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Instead
of, I dunno, attacking Hatap and trying to get the golden charm so he
can return to his own time, Iron Man flies off to meet Cleopatra.
Because, hey, why not?</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">She's
being attacked by Roman forces (presumably Octavian's) but Iron Man
shows no regard for the <a href="http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Temporal_Prime_Directive">temporal prime directive</a> and promptly </span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">wipes
them out</span></i><span style="font-weight: normal;"> to ingratiate
himself to the queen. Iron Man is regarded as a saviour from the
gods, and Cleopatra offers for him to stay with her as her consort
(wasn't she married to Marc Antony at this point, with like three
kids?). Iron Man offers simply to destroy Hatap's forces, which are
even now marshalling against her.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Iron
Man easily devastates Hatap's army because, y'know, he's a dude in a
powered armour from 2000 years in the future. He grabs the golden
charm from Hatap, who trips and falls on an upturned sword, killing
himself.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Despite
Cleopatra's protestations that her heart belongs only to him, Iron
Man rubs the charm and returns to the present. As Tony resumes
examining the tombs with his archeologist friend, they discover odd
hieroglyphics depicting Cleopatra embracing a golden armoured figure.
</span></span>
</div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Returning
to America, Tony attends the gala premiere of the movie </span><i><span style="font-weight: normal;">Cleopatra</span></i><span style="font-weight: normal;">.
When reporters question him whether he would've been able to woo the
“Siren of the Nile”. Stark replies that “stranger things have
happened.” </span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">~~~~</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><u><b>My Thoughts: </b></u>A valid question might be "why the hell is Iron Man travelling back in time and falling in love with Cleopatra, like a bad Silver Age DC comic?" The answer, of course, is to be found in the ending of our tale when Tony goes to the movies. 20th Century Fox's megaepic, <i>Cleopatra,</i> was <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktQiKglBG7A">released that summer</a>. The most expensive motion picture ever made to that point, it starred Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra and was definitely the most hyped film of the early 1960s. It nearly bankrupted the studio and was so costly that it only made back half it's budget... despite being the number one box-office hit of 1963! It's an overlong, overambitious, ridiculously over-the-top movie - so as much as Stan Lee jumping on the bandwagon strikes me as terribly unoriginal for the "Marvel Age of Comics", at least he kept it short at thirteen pages.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><u><b>The Art: </b></u>Heck is back by himself this issue, and his work is really great to behold. When I first encountered Heck's work I didn't like the style of it, but seeing it in these early Iron Men stories I've really taken a liking to it. It's almost completely different from the Kirby style that quickly became the "house style" of Marvel, but in that lies it's charm to me in a way. Even with it's somewhat "scratchy" nature, it feels refined and stylized in a way that fits the world of Tony Stark. Heck's Cleopatra is beautiful, his Hatap mad and evil, his Stark is handsome and dashing. That being said I prefer the way Kirby renders Iron Man himself. Heck's version is okay, but it just lacks a certain mechanical oomph that Kirby delivers. </span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">If this story were done today I would take Heck down a peg or two for rendering the Egyptians in styles and clothing from 13,00 years earlier than the time period the story takes place in -- Cleopatra's Egypt was a Hellenized society, so more likely everyone would be going around in white togas instead of crazy King Tut get-ups. But pretty much every cultural depiction of Ancient Egypt makes this mistake, taking 3,000 years of Egyptian history and culture and compressing it like it all happened at the same time. Even the <i>Cleopatra </i>movie this comic is desperately trying to cash in on does this.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><u><b>The Story: </b></u>Why did Hatap's serum put him suspended animation for 2,000 years? What would be the use of that, strategically? Why not a few days or a few weeks til the heat died down? If he had a magic fuckin' time travel charm on him the whole time, why not travel back in time and kill Cleopatra when she was a baby? Why is he rebelling against her, anyways? Was he actually a pharaoh or just some crazy usurper? How was Stark supposed to make advanced future weapons for him with Iron Age technology? How did Hatap know Stark was a weapons designer anyway? If the charm can transport multiple people, why not transport an army to the future, steal the weapons, and then come back? Why does Stark worry about maintaining his secret identity in 31 BC? And yet not worry about violating the timeline at all, using all kinds of modern weapons to destroy Roman and Egyptian armies? And how is Stark able to speak to Hatap and Cleopatra, who would be speaking Koine Greek? (Granted almost everyone always ignores language differences in time travel stories).</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">Wait, I'm not supposed to be analysing this so carefully, am I? Stan just wanted to do a comic where Cleopatra falls in love with Iron Man because there was a movie out.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">It's still nonsense.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><u><b>Stark Science:</b></u> Iron Man can see through walls with fluoroscope goggles - a fluoroscope is a device used to view x-rays in real-time, so it's use here is consistent and fits with Stark's penchant for miniaturization - the idea that it would let Stark see through stone walls is scientifically hilarious but consistent with the standard comic book (mis)understanding of how x-rays work. Likewise Iron Man's diamond drill fits the standard Stark gadgets introduced so far -- tiny and overpowered. Iron Man's other gadgets in this issue are pretty lowkey mechanical devices: a small rotor he can attach to propel himself through water, wheels he can attach to roll while lying down (an awesome idea), etc.</span></span></div>
<div style="font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">The idea that an Egyptian "pharoah" from the first century BC could make suspended animation serums and time travel devices is ludicrous, but "magic is real, but only in ancient societies" is another common comics trope and the "potion that only makes you seem dead" is as well, as much as I dislike seeing such things in an Iron Man comic. </span></span>
</div>
Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-51602003587561839492013-08-29T01:59:00.000-07:002013-09-13T13:44:09.076-07:00Tales of Suspense #43 (July, 1943)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/43-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/43-1.jpg" width="214" /></a></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Kala, Queen of the Netherworld!"</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Plot: </b>Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Script: </b>Robert Bernstein</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Pencils: </b>Jack Kirby</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Inks: </b>Don Heck</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis: </b>There's an accident at the wind tunnel at Stark Industries, but "luckily" Iron Man is on hand to save everyone. Changing back to Tony Stark, he then re-arrives on the scene to inspect the damage.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At this point Jim the security guard vanishes, followed quickly by a scientist named Evans. Then a clear polygon shape envelopes Stark and begins phasing through the ground, sinking him deep under the earth. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He drops down into an ultra-advanced society living below the surface of the Earth where he he greeted by Kala, Queen of the Netherworld. So yes, we're now in Jules Verne/Hollow Earth/<i>Batman: Odyssey </i>territory. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kala explains they were meaning to transport Stark and only transported his employees accidentally while trying to lock on to him. Of course the Netherworld is highly technologically advanced, years beyond the surface world (though I wonder how they survive without food, water, sunlight, etc) and thus their technology appears to us as magic.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Turns out they are the descendents of the lost city of Atlantis (ohboy). The ultra-advanced city was taken out by tidal waves which swallowed the city and sank it down to the ocean floor (not how geology works, guys). The scientists luckily saw this coming and covered the city with a giant dome which protected it. However with each passing year Atlantis sunk deeper and deeper until now it exists at the core of the Earth as the Netherworld! (That's<i> really</i> not how geology works, guys!)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So why do they need Stark? Well, Kala has decided now is the time to invade and conquer the surface world "which we alone once inhabited!" Wait, if the only humans were Atlanteans when it sunk, then how did the story get passed down? How is there a human civilization at all? Also, why now? Why not any time in the last ~11,526 years? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyways, they want Stark to design weapons for them because even though they are super-advanced they don't have Stark's transistor technology (this seems unlikely given their other advances) and so they want him to design new weapons for them or else! You may recognize this as the exact plot of the origin story, minus the utter insanity. What's the or else? Well, Kala has a machine that will reverse the axis of the Earth (holy shit!) which would utterly fuck the entire surface world, killing everyone, while those at the centre of the Earth would be unharmed. So Stark either builds her weapons to march on the surface world, or...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">...Wait... if Kala already has the capacity to kill everyone on Earth while her civilization remains unharmed... why not... just... do that? And then move in? Why instigate a costly war? Why do you need more weapons than the "one button pressed and my enemies are all dead and I'm fine" one?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyways, Stark agrees to help them and then when they give him a lab and equipment he just builds an Iron Man suit and kicks all their asses. Seriously? Did no one in the Netherworld read <i><a href="http://ironmanreviews.blogspot.ca/2013/08/tales-of-suspense-39-march-1963.html">ToS #39</a>?</i></span> <span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Kala throws a bunch of sophisticated sci-fi weaponry at him, but Iron Man is able to easily beat all of them in the most over-powered sequence this side of a Mort Weisinger Superman comics. Disintegrator ray? Iron Man has a "electronic reverse energy ray</span>"<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. A flamethrower cannon? He has crystals that transform the fire into ice! (How does that even work??) A machine gun with atomic bullets (what?)? His magnets send them hurtling harmlessly away (and into the dome that protects the city?!)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then Iron Man throws a bunch of mirrors on the ground and these... project... multiple images of him... that confuse Kala... and then he captures her and they journey to the surface as he digs up with a pair of... nuclear powered transistorized gardening shears?? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And then when they get to the surface the atmosphere ages Kala into an old woman, and she decides she can't stand not being beautiful and so returns to the Netherworld (this restores her beauty of course) where she agrees to marry her male general Bazu (because this whole problem was caused by her being a power-mad woman, you see) and then Iron Man returns to the surface.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">AND WE NEVER SPEAK OF THIS AGAIN.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts:</b></u> Why does this comic exist? This is definitely the dumbest issue thus far, and that's saying a lot. It's basically just the origin story again, only with more improbably science, a Hollow Earth society descended from Atlantis, and some casual sexism. Also -- ATLANTIS? Did Stan Lee just, like, forget that Marvel already has a version of Atlantis? And that one of their oldest characters rules it? Namor, the Sub-Mariner? Stan had already brought Namor back into Marvel continuity by this point, so there's really no excuse for this sloppy break in continuity. I mean, while the Iron Man stories haven't been explicitly brought into the nascent Marvel universe yet the fact of the matter is that Amazing Spider-Man, Hulk and Fantastic Four have all already had cross-overs at this point, establishing the interconnectedness of Marvel's superhero output. FUCK. This issue is DUMB.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art:</b></u> But, with Don Heck inking Jack Kirby again, I can't really complain about the art. It's not mindblowing or anything, but it's good. Heck keeps things looking like Iron Man, while Kirby gives us his trademark inventiveness. Kala's outfit is classic Kirby, even if it looks like something from the "Thor" Asgardian reject pile.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Story:</b></u> It's the origin story. But underground. And stupider. Like, that's it. It's everything an Iron Man story should not be, at this point. So, there's a huge underground civilization that wants to destroy us and totally can at any time and chooses not to because their leader is vain and her husband likes peace? Great longterm solution there, Iron Man.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also - Atlantis? Seriously, I knew Stan Lee's memory was bad but how bad is it when you forget about Sub-Mariner entirely. It's also a little weird considering our script writer, Robert Bernstein, was the primary writer of Silver Age Aquaman. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also also -- the entire "broken wind tunnel" action and rescue scene at the start. Two whole pages out of thirteen that have nothing to do with the story. At all. This is not good pacing, guys.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Ugh.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Stark Science:</b></u> So the Netherworlders get a pass since they're operating on a "science sufficiently advanced so as to be indistinguishable from magic" routine -- although yes reversing Earth's axis would severely fuck up everyone and everything on the surface (not reverse time, Superman!)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stark builds his second Iron Man armour underground using Netherworlder technology and maybe that's why it has all these hilariously overpowered attachments. The electronic reverse energy beam might as well be called "Anti-Disintegrator Spray", and let's all see if Iron Man remembers he has it at all next time he comes up against a beam weapon.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I don't know how Stan, who using at least attempts scietific plausibility, thinks you can turn flaming petrol into a wall of ice by throwing some crystal chemicals at it. That's just science word salad. You might as well have made Iron Man a sorceror at that point.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Atomic bullets seem like the stupidest and most impractical weapon of all time -- but at least Iron Man's ridiculous overpowered transistorized magnets are consistent with tech he's been using all along.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mirrors work by reflecting light, but it has to hit your eye for you to see the reflection, hence you must look at the mirror. Somehow Stark's mirrors are also projectors but Stan and Robert never call them that so instead we have some really sloppy optical science to go with everything else.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The very existence of Netherworld makes absolutely no geological sense at all, even by 1963 no one believed in a Hollow Earth (except maybe Neal Adams, who's still banging that drum), but the Hollow Earth is a standard adventure fiction trope so I'm also willing to concede it. But the idea that Atlantis kept sinking until it hit the Earth's core and then it sustained a population for 11,000 years? That's just silly.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm not even gonna touch the physics of digging from the Earth's core with a pair of <i>nuclear powered garden shears</i> -- other than to say it's obviously impossible and damned silly to boot.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While it's plausible that an unfamiliar atmosphere would have a debillitating affect on a person, if Netherworld's environment was so different from the surface's to turn Kala into an old crone, why didn't it do anything to Tony when he went down there? Also, returning Kala to her original environment wouldn't magically restore her, just as removing fire from a burning man doesn't cure his injuries.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Notes and Trivia:</b></u> Tony builds the advanced MARK I MOD 2 golden suit using Netherworld technology. </span>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-58570506568483683342013-08-25T22:42:00.001-07:002013-08-25T22:42:39.171-07:00Tales of Suspense #42 (June, 1963)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/42-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.coverbrowser.com/image/tales-of-suspense/42-1.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Trapped by the Red Barbarian"</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Plot: </b>Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Script: </b>Robert Bernstein</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Artist: </b>Don Heck</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis: </b>Iron Man stops a communist spy ring from stealing an American A-bomb through some ridiculous magnetism tricks, and gives the captured spies to the FBI</span><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. </span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As Tony Stark, he returns to his factory where he is working on a <i>disintegrator ray </i>for the US army capable of wiping out tanks, walls, perhaps even cities instantaneously - it's clearly the most powerful weapon ever developed and makes nuclear weapons look like firecrackers, oh and did I mention it can be installed in a flashlight casing and is totally handheld and portable?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Instead of reflecting on the horrors of science and technology, Stark and the army are mostly just worried about what will happen if the Reds get their hands on the plans.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />Meanwhile, "in a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_pact">Red Satellite country</a>", the Red Barbarian, the leader of the communist spy network in America, sits hearing reports from his subordinates (in reality Soviet foreign intelligence was controlled by the First Chief Directorate of the KGB, led at this time by Aleksandr Sakharovsky). They tell him of Stark's new weapon and he wants them to go steal the plans, but no one can get into Stark's factory because it's so heavily guarded by the US Army.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is one agent who can do it, however: The Actor! A master of disguise so talented he is able to even fool the Red Barbarian into thinking he's Nikita Khruschev! The Actor proposes that he disguise himself as Stark, get into the factory and then steal the plans. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The Actor successfully makes it to the US and gets Stark away from the factory by faking a summons to the Pentagon. However, while he is rooting around Stark's office he discovers spare Iron Man parts and makes the obvious deductions. He decides to sit on the knowledge so he can use it in the future to spare himself in case of some blunder or change in fortune. Leaving with the plans, he sets some assassins to kill Stark when he returns.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However the assassins are no match for Iron Man, and they are quickly defeated and spill the beans about the Actor's plans. Then Iron Man figures the only way to beat the Actor's plane to it's destination is to travel by ROCKET and this is either ridiculous or ridiculously <i>awesome</i>, I'm not sure which. It certainly makes it the most expensive counter-intelligence mission of all time - such a flight would've cost something like $24 million to execute (about $176 million in modern dollars).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">After being launched into orbit, the command capsule seperates and is guided into Red territory by US radio control, somehow not being shot down by the Soviets or detected by their radar. He catches the Actor in his car and traps him, heading to the Red Barbarian's headquarters (presumably he got the location from the Actor?)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Reaching the Red Barbarian, Iron Man pretends to be the Actor pretending to be Iron Man, and shows the Red Barbarian an attaché case which he claims contains the plans, which he claims cannot be opened for another four hours due to a timelock which would explode a miniature A-bomb if tampered with. "The Actor" tells the Red Barbarian he will change out of his Iron Man costume and return in four hours with the plans, which Red Barbarian seems to think is totally reasonable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iron Man then returns to The Actor and lets him go, then flies off to "the nearest Western country." The Actor heads to the Barbarian and begins explaining how Iron Man took the plans from him but it doesn't matter because he knows Iron Man is really Tony Stark, but the Barbarian thinks the Actor is trying to trick him, he thinks the Actor went off and delivered the plans himself in the interim and took all the glory and is trying to stall the Barbarian finding out. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So he orders the Actor killed. The End.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts: </b></u>So, it's not great, but this is actually a huge improvement over the past two issues. Espionage, international intrigue, fighting against communist enemies, these feel like natural things to find in an Iron Man story based on the set-up and premise. The Red Barbarian isn't a great villain, he's pretty generic actually (Soviet general, he just looks kinda caveman-ish in appearance), but he also feels like a villain I wouldn't <i>mind </i>seeing again and perhaps seeing develop into something better (the Red Skull was pretty shallow to begin with after all). Although I have to wonder why Stan Lee decided to make up a new Soviet spy who's a master of disguise character <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chameleon_%28comics%29">when he already had one?</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art:</b></u> Don Heck is back on solo art duties and I like it. The soul of the feature is in Heck, I think. I mean, I like Kirby as much as the next guy but the more of him you put into Iron Man and less of Heck and the thing became very awkward and generic feeling. Heck draws Iron Man's world of high-class international intrigue very well. Despite being a romance artist, or more likely because of that background, Heck brings Tony Stark to life, whereas I haven't been really satisfied with Kirby's version. Good art this time around, is what I'm saying.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Story:</b></u> It's a pretty standard story with a pretty standard structure but at least it's <i>competent</i>, which puts it miles above the last two issues. We get right into the action, even opening with a kind of James Bond esque "end of the last mission" sequence (even though the Bond movies hadn't even started doing that at this point) and then we get a nice focused plot. I can forgive it's somewhat generic and shallow nature because after all it's only thirteen pages. My only nitpick is the disintegrator ray -- what happened with it? Did Stark perfect it? That's a pretty devastating loose end to leave! Stan has had a bad habit, as seen in my Stark Science section, of having Tony invent all kinds of really over the top gadgets to cement his reputation as a genius, but then forget about them soon after and never deal with any real repurcussions from them. And<i> why the heck isn't the Actor the Chameleon?</i> I mean, "The Actor" has gotta be among the worst villain names ever, and even at this early stage Stan was already laying the groundwork for the unified Marvel universe in his other books.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Stark Science: </b></u>First up, early on Iron Man uses super-powered "transistorized" magnets to lift up the guns of some crooks, but when asked why he himself isn't affected explains that his armour is made up of alloys that reject magnetic attraction. Which means Tony must've changed the composition of his armour since IRON is pretty fucking magnetic. It's also a weird exchange because it shows that Stan Lee does understand that NOT EVERYTHING IS MAGNETIC, which isn't what you'd think from reading most of his other comics.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tony's disintegrator ray is science fiction to an insane degree, as mentioned earlier. It's basically a ray of light that just annihilates stuff. It's totally outside the way the laws of physics work and if it existed it would drastically change the balance of power and totally fall under the "too dangerous to ever use" category.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As mentioned earlier, using a rocket to send just one man over the Iron Curtain is the most expensive and least subtle counter-intelligence method ever.</span>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-39101475051587522072013-08-25T15:52:00.001-07:002013-08-25T15:52:35.525-07:00Tales of Suspense #41 (May, 1963)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">May 1963 saw the debut of image logos on Marvel Comics covers. Previously Marvel Comics were distinguished only by a small "MC" on the cover -- now a full Iron Man logo (showing him as the main feature of <i>Tales of Suspense) </i>is displayed accompanied by the legend "Marvel Comics Group". This concept will become a trademark of Marvel books and endure for decades, becoming adopted by other companies as well.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i>"The Stronghold of Doctor Strange!"</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Plot: </b>Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Script: </b>Robert Bernstein</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Pencils: </b>Jack Kirby</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Inks: </b>Dick Ayers</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis: </b><i></i>On a date to a hospital charity dance with Marion, Tony Stark donates $100,000 to the hospital and announces that he has arranged for Iron Man to perform a demonstration for the children at the hospital. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Marion asks Tony when he's going to settle down and get married, but Tony doesn't want to be an absentee husband, being that he's so busy running his company, doing scientific research and assisting the US military -- examples given this issue include <i>atomic naval cannons,</i> <i>flesh-healing serum, </i>radiation protection for space capsules (where was Stark Enterprises when Reed Richards needed them?), and finally machine guns that can fire .50 calibre artillery shells that can annihilate pill boxes and dug outs in a single shot (I don't think Stan & co. know how artillery shells work).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">He's also Iron Man, of course, but he can't tell Marion that - examples are given of Iron Man fighting gangsters, communist spies, averting disasters and <span id="goog_1244496174"></span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1244496173">warding off aliens </a>, continuing this weird habit of insisting that Iron Man has totally been doing a ton of superheroing off-panel between issues. Finally, we get another reminder that Stark can't even let anyone see him shirtless since he has to wear the armour chest plate all the time to keep his heart beating, and continually recharge it or he'll die.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyways, with the recap out of the way, Iron Man heads to the hospital to entertain the children by juggling cars with his transistorized magnets while flying in the air with his air pressure jet boots and taking cannon balls to the gut and crushing them in his arms. The journalists covering the event believe the only man who could possibly equal Iron Man is the villainous Dr. Strange, who is currently behind bars.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Which conveniently leads us to the villainous Dr. Strange, working in the prison machine shop to create an electronic radio hypnosis machine, which he uses to override Iron Man's brain and make him come to the prison and bust him out!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">During the jailbreak Strange exposits about himself -- how he was captured when US paratroops surrounded his mountain laboratory, at which point he was struck by lightning, which had the effect of "increasing the electrical energy" of his mind, whatever that means. Now his plan is to conquer the entire world so that his daughter will... be proud of him? Yes, Strange regrets that his life of crime caused him to neglect his daughter but once he rules the world she'll have her pick of "kings and billionaires" to marry and then she'll love him! Say, Strange, ever try <i>not </i>being an evil criminal? Maybe that'd work too?</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyways, Strange lets Iron Man out of his hypnotic spell once he's successfully ensured Strange's freedom, which seems like Supervillain Mistake #1 to me, but whatever -- at least the authorities all instantly realize Iron Man was being hypnotized and don't consider him as abetting a felony - how nice of them!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Strange and his daughter journey to his secret island lair in the Atlantic Ocean (no shit -- there's ready made elaborate Jack Kirby buildings on it and everything!), where he is met by "the most cunning scientists and power-mad military men on Earth!" For some reason, his daughter is unimpressed and unhappy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Strange's ultimatum to the world is "unconditional surrender or extinction" and to prove he means it he detonates a 200-megaton S-bomb in orbit around the earth (this would be a bomb four times more powerful than the most powerful bomb <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_bomba">ever,</a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">) and he threatens to destroy all life on Earth in 24 hours if not made ruler of the world. (I find myself wondering how Strange is doing all of this -- was all this firepower sitting around while he was in prison just waiting to be picked up and used again or did he somehow acquire the resources to create it all just in the last few days?)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The armies of the world attack Strange with A-bombs, but Strange has designed a protective force field <i>capable of resisting 20 kiloton explosions apparently. </i>Iron Man has the US army bring him to the island by submarine and fire him out a torpedo tube, reasoning that Strange wouldn't have thought to extend his force field under the water. Luckily, Iron Man is right -- he drills up through the rock and into Strange's fortress.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Strange and his daughter Carla are arguing because she can't understand how he could possibly be so evil and he can't understand how she can't see that he's doing it all for her! Uh-huh. Iron Man shows up and smashes all of Dr. Strange's generators which kills the power to his lair and somehow all of his devices... and also somehow drains all of Iron Man's power too? (This is not how electricity works, Stan). </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Strange boasts that Iron Man has destroyed himself as there is no electricity left on the island, but Carla tosses Iron Man a couple of D batteries out of a flashlight that was lying around, which Iron Man uses to recharge his armour (somehow...) but Strange manages to escape before he is fully charged. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The army arrests everyone else and Carla tragically wonders why Strange uses his scientific genius against the world instead of for it. The audience wonders too, among other things.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts:</b></u> Who the hell is <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doctor_Strange">Dr. Strange</a>? No, not that one! Who is this stereotypical mad scientist villain featured in this issue? The story implies he's a villain who has previously appeared and has a developed history, since he starts the story in prison after a previous defeat and has all these resources already and a backstory and a supporting cast and so on. So what Marvel comic had he appeared in previously? What corner of the Marvel universe did he crawl out of? Turns out - none of them! This is his first appearance! But he escapes at the end, to terrorize Iron Man again, right? The saga of his "tragic" relationship with his daughter will continue, yeah? Nope. This is his last appearance as well. So he's a nobody villain copied cookie-cutter from the "standard comic book villain" mold who only appears once and who's greatest claim to fame is having the same name as a later successful Marvel hero. Altogether it makes this issue feel very, very forgettable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art: </b></u>This time Kirby's pencils are being inked by his regular collaborater Dick Ayers. As opposed to Don Heck's fine lines and "attractive" reworking of Kirby, Ayers' has a much thicker line and preserves the innate Kirby style of the artwork, only softening him just a little. This results in a very different looking Tony Stark than Heck's -- he's still Tony, but way more Clark Gable than Howard Hughes in appearance. Can't say much more about the rest of it - Dr. Strange is drawn as the stock character he's written as, with a widow's peak, bushy eyebrows, and purple cape that just scream "He's A Villain" in the least interesting way possible.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Story: </b></u>"Generic", "cliché", "trite", and "underdeveloped" are words that come to mind to describe this story. Like last month, we spend a lot of time recapping who Iron Man and Tony Stark are and unrelated escapades before we actually get to the story so that when we do it's rushed and underwritten. Doctor Strange is completely uninteresting, despite a typical Stan Lee effort to give him a touch of "human drama" with his relationship with his daughter, and I have to wonder just what his deal is. He seems to have infinite resources and scientific knowledge, but Iron Man defeats him basically without a fight, and he's got the worst reason for wanting to rule the world ever. It's basically the same story structure as last month, but I can't decide whether the stock villain here is worse than the utter nonsense of Gargantus. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I could describe this ish as eminently skippable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Stark Science: </b></u>Tony develops atomic naval cannons for battleships, capable of firing nuclear salvos at a range of 500 miles. To my knowledge tactical nuclear devices were never mounted on battleships (military historians can correct me in the comments) but the ASTOR nuclear anti-submarine torpedoes had been developed in 1960 and were being put into service in 1963 -- to be fired from submarines at submarines, and with a range of only 5 miles.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stark's "flesh healing serum" is described as closing wounds with synthetic liquid tissue, an advancement that I do believe is still on the outer boundaries of what medical science is capable of today. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stark also invents "artillery shells" miniaturized down to be fired from .50 calibre machine guns (which Kirby incorrectly draws as something closer to an assault rifle) -- an artillery shell is effective and does what it does because it is filled with explosives and is big. An explosive shell you can fire as a bullet is just an incendiary bullet and it's effectiveness limited by how much explosive you can pack in there. What Stark has invented is essentially very very effective Hi-Ex rounds for .50cal.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The idea that device emitting ultra-frequency waves could tamper with the electrical signals in the brain enough to grant mind control is obviously balderdash, but at least plausible in a "comic book science" kind of way.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Strange's 200-megaton "S-bombs" would be utterly devastating -- dropped on Washington, D.C. it would utterly annihilate the city and essentially light the entirety of Maryland state aflame. No nuclear bomb has ever been made this big, not even close. As to what an "s-bomb" is, it could either be a purely egotistical name ("Strange" bomb) or refer to a salted bomb lined with Sodium or Strontium -- a theoretical device that would be designed to increase radioactive fallout, rendering a large area uninhabitable (it's called a salted bomb in reference to a "salted earth" policy). This would be consistent with the intent of Strange's threats.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The idea of a force field, especially one capable of deflecting A-bombs, is pure classic science fiction. The idea that destroying the island's generators would render Iron Man without electrical power displays a really poor knowledge of how electricity works on the writers' part, and the idea that his armour can be recharged with a couple of dry-cell batteries isn't something I can disprove, but I do find it fairly laughable.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Notes and Trivia: </b></u>First and only appearance of the "other" Dr. Strange </span>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-15943592154448180972013-08-24T23:25:00.004-07:002013-09-13T13:42:39.655-07:00Tales of Suspense #40 (April, 1963)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGDyVrYESYiXcAhWsp6ZSAJXOSb47MDKfO-ngPerVbqkcdMrcRx3XpL6FDWkpW7zTOKq2w5xWxSfBm2bmSMEghgJGrHZi0BPIR2FdC9fWXtBiKq8S8izDlK8oGR6o5d31PV9qSMhzvAX4/s1600/talesofsuspense40.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGDyVrYESYiXcAhWsp6ZSAJXOSb47MDKfO-ngPerVbqkcdMrcRx3XpL6FDWkpW7zTOKq2w5xWxSfBm2bmSMEghgJGrHZi0BPIR2FdC9fWXtBiKq8S8izDlK8oGR6o5d31PV9qSMhzvAX4/s320/talesofsuspense40.jpg" width="219" /></a></div>
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Iron Man versus Gargantus!"</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Plot:</b> Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Script: </b>Robert Bernstein</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Pencils: </b>Jack Kirby</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Inks: </b>Don Heck</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis: </b>Our story opens with a short summary of the life of Tony Stark, who lives "three lives": He's a genius scientist who develops military technology for the US army (the ridiculous example given being "transistor" powered rocket skates for infantry -- the most useless thing ever if they're going to be deployed in Vietnam) but he's also a millionaire playboy constantly dating movie stars and society debutantes. He can't let anyone get close to him, however, because he must constantly wear an iron chest plate containing an electromagnet to keep pieces of shrapnel from digging into his heart -- and he must periodically charge the plate by plugging into wall sockets! This is because Tony Stark's third life, of course, is as IRON MAN -- who for no reason at all has become a superhero, fighting mobsters and mad scientists on a regular basis. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On a date to the circus with a woman named Marion, the jungle cats get loose of their cage and so Tony absconds to change into Iron Man to deal with the menace. The cast iron metal in the Iron Man suit is apparently collapseable and foldable "thanks to my knowledge of micro-transistors" (which makes no sense) and thus he carries it around in his attaché case.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Changed into Iron Man, he makes quick work of the cats, but when changes back to Tony Stark and meets with Marion she remarks that Iron Man looks just as terrifying as a monster in his big ugly grey suit. She suggests that if he's going to be like a modern day knight in shining armour, he should dress the part and look heroic. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tony takes her suggestion and spraypaints the armour with "untarnishable" gold paint, somehow this doesn't lead to Marion instantly figuring out Tony's secret identity. Marion makes plans to meet Tony that Saturday, but her plane from <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granville,_New_York">Granville </a></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">never arrives</span>. Upon reading a damned newspaper, Tony discovers that Granville has shut itself off from the outside world with a wall. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Looks like a job for Iron Man, and so with a miniature transistorized drill he burrows under the wall and pops up in the town, where the populace immediately begins attacking him! They all seem to be under a kind of mass hypnosis, and have taken to worshipping a being called Gargantus, who resembles a giant Neanderthal. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Iron Man calls out Gargantus to fight, when the beast tries to hypnotize him by reflecting bright light from his eyes at Tony (this is not how hypnotic induction works). However Tony realizes something is up because there's a dark cloud covering the sun so there's nothing for his eyes to reflect -- and the cloud isn't moving despite there being a strong breeze. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">From this Tony realizes what's up and throws out three top-hat transistor powered magnets at Gargantus, pulling his body apart and revealing him to have been a robot all along. With the Gargantus robot destroyed the people in the town come out of their hypnosis, wondering what's been happening. Iron Man directs his searchlight (emitted from the circle on his chest where we are used to his unibeam coming from) up to the dark cloud, revealing it to be a... flying saucer!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yes, turns out aliens from outer space built Gargantus as a plan to rule the Earth, based on their mistaken assumption that humanity was still like it was the last time they visited 80,000 years ago -- seeing that humanity has evolved and has protectors like Iron Man, they decide to leave and never come back. Iron Man deduced this all from his realization that Gargantus was emitting the hypnotic light from within himself, leading to a fit of crime-fighting apophenia so extreme I'm sure even Silver Age Batman would be impressed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tony is reunited with Marion and jokes to himself that no one has ever gone to so much trouble to find out what happened to a date.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts: </b></u>Seriously? What the fuck was this? Maybe it's the thirteen page limit, maybe it's the fact that the Iron Man feature is still fairly new, but this really feels like a story more in line with the old Atlas Comics "monsters and aliens" style of doing things than a real follow up to "Iron Man is Born". The opening of the story is actually pretty good, setting up the status quo for the feature, but something about seeing Iron Man doing, well, any of the things he does in this issue just rubs me the wrong way. Gangsters? Circus animals? A robot neanderthal built by aliens? Marvel Comics made its name by having better stories than what DC was publishing at the same time, but this story feels like just the kind of by-the-numbers nonsensical gibberish you'd find in a 1963 <i>Batman</i> or <i>Superman. </i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I'm disappointed that we don't really pick off from where the last issue left off. We don't see how Tony got back to America, how he realized he only needed the chest piece to survive, and most importantly we don't get ANY reason as to why he then decides to start fighting crime as Iron Man. We just get a montage of sequences and references to offpanel adventures that establishes that since we last saw him yep, he decided to start superheroing because... he can, I guess? It's as if Stan figured since he was clearly a superhero, what does he need with motivation? Forgetting that in the superhero game the hero's motivation is often what sets them apart and defines what makes sense for them to fight -- we can see the problem with this hands-off approach here. What is cool, however, is Stan realizing that Tony would likely improve and modify his armour as time went on and technology improved, rather than just stick with the version he built in Vietnam. The "Golden Avenger" look that debuts here will be the first of many, many, variations on the armour.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art: </b></u>This time we got Don Heck inking over Jack Kirby. It's not a bad combination, actually. Kirby's dynamite in the "superhero" action scenes, with powerful layouts, while Heck appears to be redrawing Kirby <i>heavily</i> in the civillian scenes, delivering more "attractive" looking people more in line with the way the characters looked last issue. As a team it really works for the book, keeping Stark looking suave and handsome but Iron Man looking powerful and dynamic.<i> </i>Gargantus is obviously a Kirby design, he's like a non-rocky version of The Thing, but the aliens are very generic and weak -- little green men in a cliché flying saucer. Oy.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Story:</b></u> The Kirby art almost makes this thing readable, but on a story level it really fails. It spends the first couple of pages giving us the new status quo, then a few pages on the adventure that inspires Iron Man to repaint his armour, and so when we finally get to Gargantus we only have seven pages left, just over half the story. And once we do the whole thing just falls apart on any kind of sense-making level. You can see they are still ironing out the kinks in the Marvel Bullpen, sort've taking a "throw everything at the wall and see what sticks" approach, but it doesn't excuse how lame this is. I mean, at least Stan realized that a giant hypnotizing Neanderthal trying to take over the world is a little farfetched -- but were generic UFO aliens the best explanation you could muster? And the fact that Iron Man deduces it all so easily just because Gargantus tried to hypnotise him on a cloudy day? And everyone reacts to "oh, it was just aliens" as if that was the most reasonable thing in the world when really you think that would be waaay freakier. Once again Stan's plot is scripted by someone else, this time Robert Bernstein, who's credited as "R. Berns" for probably much the same reason we don't call the man "Stanley Lieber". Bernstein was actually the main writer of the Silver Age Aquaman and a really talented guy, but his script here is just workmanlike, doing an amiable job of fleshing out Stan's plots and Jack's pencils, but nothing more.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Stark Science: </b></u>Stan's misunderstanding and exaggeration of "transistors" continues here, and with Bernstein's help they basically just become magic -- I have no idea how electrical current amplifiers, even miniaturized, can cause solid metal to become foldable and collapseable. Other gadgets introduced on the suit this issue are pretty standard: public address speakers, a drill, the ability to electrify the skin of the suit, etc. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I have no idea where Stan got the idea that hypnosis works by the hypnotist reflecting light from their eyes into the eyes of their subject. Classical hypnotic induction actually works by getting the subject to focus on a bright object so that their mind is focused while their eyes and sense actually wear out from the strain.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Notes and Trivia:</b></u> Based on a suggestion from a girlfriend, Tony spraypaints the Mark I gold, beginning the "Golden Avenger" look for Iron Man (although he won't be an Avenger for five more months). The suit also gains a metal miniskirt that goes unremarked upon, completing the look of the MARK I MOD 1.</span>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4456375282405466053.post-14778442392867291122013-08-24T16:11:00.003-07:002013-09-13T13:41:08.649-07:00Tales of Suspense #39 (March, 1963)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">By early 1963, the Marvel Age of Comics had exploded - a revolution in Silver Age storytelling </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">masterminded by writer Stan Lee and a cadre of talented artists led by Jack Kirby. Joining the resurgence of the superhero genre in 1961 with the groundbreaking <i>The Fantastic Four, </i>they soon followed their success with <i>The Incredible Hulk, The Amazing Spider-Man, </i>and characters Thor and Ant-Man appearing in old anthology series <i>Journey Into Mystery </i>and <i>Tales to Astonish</i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The key to Marvel's storytelling success was a more "mature" style of characterization mixed with ongoing story-arcs and serialized subplots populated with flawed, human characters that appealed to an older (read: teenage) readership compared to the Distinguished Competition. Always seeking to push boundaries and try new things, Stan Lee decided to create a character that would be purposely designed <i>not</i> to appeal to Marvel's teenage, liberal, counter-culture audience... and <i>make </i>the readers like him anyway. And so the idea came for a billionaire, alcoholic, warmongering, arms manufacturing, womanizing, capitalist industrialist superhero powered by technology... IRON MAN! Due to a bizarre publishing situation that limited how many books Marvel could put out in a year, many new characters debuted and were published in shorter 13-page stories in anthology series... and so Iron Man made his debut in March 1963 in the pages of sci-fi/monster anthology <i>Tales of Suspense.</i></span><br />
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Iron Man is Born!"</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Plot: </b>Stan Lee</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Script: </b>Larry Lieber</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Artist: </b>Don Heck</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Synopsis: </b>Millionaire industrialist Anthony Stark is a 1960s Howard Hughes: a brilliant genius scientist inventor bachelor playboy with lucrative military contracts supplying the United States Army with new military technology. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In 1963 the United States had 16,000 military personnel in Vietnam assisting the South Vietnamese troops in their war against the communist north and the Viet Cong guerillas, but had yet to actually send in combat troops -- these were merely "advisors". Inside the the US Defense Perimeter, Stark has arrived to give a demonstration of his new "transistors" -- transistors are electronic signal amplifiers designed to give a higher controlled output than the controlled input signal, but Stark's are immensely more powerful (to an exaggeratedly ridiculous extent) than regular models: by applying one to a magnet he can smash a steel vault (what?!) and so the US army believes they can be used to create immensely powerful weapons to give to the South.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Meanwhile Viet Cong guerillas led by Wong-Chu continue a reign of terror through the villages of the South -- Wong-Chu is a sadistic tyrant who gives villages a chance to free themselves if a single man can defeat him in hand-to-hand combat -- but none ever do.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stark accompanies the South Vietnamese troops through the jungle to ensure his new weapons function properly, but while the transistor mortars (small as a flashlight!) are super effective, the company falls prey to tripmines and are taken out in the explosion. Stark is captuerd by Wong-Chu's guerillas, who recognize the famous American weapons designer.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Wong-Chu's doctors reveal that shrapnel from the mine has lodged itself near his heart and will soon find it's way into his heart and kill him. Wong-Chu tells Stark that his surgeons can save him... if he will build weapons for the guerillas. Stark is smart enough to realize that this is a bluff, that if the doctors could save him they would've done it already, and that he'll be dead in a matter of days.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Stark decides to spend his time and the resources Wong-Chu has given him to instead build a weapon for <i>himself, </i>to prolong <i>his </i>life and to destroy Wong-Chu. In this he is assisted by the famous Professor Yinsen, a brilliant physicist whom the Reds kidnapped years ago. With Yinsen's help, Stark designs and builds the Iron Man, a cast iron suit of armour packed full of transistorized gadgets and an electromagnet in the chest plate to keep the shrapnel out of his heart. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Eventually the guerillas realize that Stark and Yinsen aren't building any weapons, and send some troops to investigate. Yinsen straps Stark into the armour, but it'll take some time for their generator to cycle enough power into its batteries for it to operate. Realizing the need to stall, Yinsen heads out into the hallways to confront the soldiers -- and all Tony can do is lie in the armour as it powers up and listen as Yinsen is gunned down... dying just to help Tony live.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The armour fully charged IRON MAN stands up, takes a step forward... and falls flat on his face. It takes Tony a while to get used to controlling the armour, whose transistorized circuits are controlled by electric impulses from his brain -- but once he does he's ready to take on Wong-Chu! Tony also realizes that so long as the sharpnel is in his body... he'll never be able to take the armour off. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Tony finds Wong-Chu in the courtyard about to fight another villager -- when he is challenge to one on one combat with IRON MAN! With the power of technology Iron Man is able to easily defeat Wong-Chu and his troops, achieving victory by dowsing their ammo dump in oil and then lighting it aflame, causing a huge explosion that presumably kills all the Viet Cong.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Protected by his iron armour, Stark puts on a fedora and trenchcoat (a hilarious sight) and sets off into the jungle for a long trek back to civilization...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">~~~~</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>My Thoughts:</b></u> Like many people, I became a fan of Iron Man after his absolutely excellent 2008 debut feature film starring Robert Downey, Junior. I've been a reader of Marvel Comics ever since I was a kid, but I'd never really been into Iron Man -- my favourites were Spider-Man and the X-Men. The first time I really became aware of Iron Man was in the <i>Civil War </i>cross-over event, where he was portrayed as a liberal artist's idea of a straw-man Bush-era Republican: an oppressive, Orwellian, "for the greater good and national security" destroyer of human rights and civil liberties. In other words, not a very likeable character. But <i>Civil War </i>raised the character's visibility in the Marvel Universe enough that it more or less directly led to the production of the movie, which was immensely succesful and lead to the current renaissance of excellent Marvel Studios motion pictures we're currently enjoying.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What I loved about the character I saw played by RDJ in movies was he was a hero who really reflected some of my own values and stood out from the crowd of superhero tropes: a hero who enjoyed being heroic, who chose to be heroic, who solved problems with his mind and with science and technology, a heroic capitalist, a heroic industrialist, who fought for himself and the people and ideals he held dear, who fought to protect his <i>ideas, </i>his <i>creations </i>from falling into the wrong hands, and a hero who didn't lie to the people around him and instead reveled in revealing his heroism to the world. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I enjoyed the <i>Iron Man</i> movies so much it turned me on to the comics. I started in the usual places: <i>Extremis, Demon in a Bottle, </i>the <i>Armor Wars</i>, and the more I read the more I got into it. And so we arrive here, with the first of my retrospective review series of the original Iron Man stories, starting from his beginning in <i>Tales of Suspense.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even in thirteen pages, it's pretty amazing to see how much of the modern concept is here. Although it's set forty years earlier and in Vietnam, the origin is still pretty much exactly the same as the one presented in the movie -- although here Stark must wear the entire suit to save his heart, the ARC reactor being an invention of the movie universe.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Art:</b></u> The iconic cover of this issue is by Jack "The King" Kirby, and as was standard practice at the time at Marvel the cover was done before the interior art and so Kirby designed Stark's Mark I grey Iron Man armour. For coming up with the look of the original armour, Kirby is often awarded a co-creator credit on the character. The interior art is by Don Heck, a veteran artist from the Atlas Comics days (the 1950s precursor of Marvel), who was most known for his strengths as a romance comics artist. This background in romance makes his depiction of superhero action a little awkward and not as powerful as Kirby's, but on the other hand it makes Heck perfect for portraying the handsome Tony Stark and his jetsetting lifestyle as an international playboy. Stark looks exactly like a comic book Howard Hughes -- or at least, the Howard Hughes of thirty years earlier when he was a dashingly handsome Clark Gable lookalike with a pencil moustache. What struck me looking at the art this time around was it's relative "photorealism" by 1963 standards, as well as it's scratchy line-work. It looks unusual for a superhero book, but if you've ever read <i>Millie the Model</i> or other Silver Age Marvel or Atlas romance comics, you'll find the style very familiar.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>The Story:</b></u> In the early days of the Marvel Comics revolution, Stan Lee was writing basically all of the company's output. By '63 he had co-created and was writing <i>Fantastic Four, The Incredible Hulk, The Amazing Spider-Man, Journey into Mystery, Tales to Astonish, Tales of Suspense, Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandoes, </i>and other series. So while Lee created the concept of Tony Stark and Iron Man, developed the character, and plotted his origin story, he was too busy and overworked to actually script the issue. So his brother, Larry Lieber, stepped in and took over the scripting duties. While I'll give Stan immense credit for coming up with the character and his fantastic origin story, there's not much I can say about his brother's script. In thirteen pages you have to cram a lot of story in a very small space -- the script does an amazing job of it, communicating everything it needs to without ever feeling unnecessarily rushed. The pacing is great, but in this short space there's not a lot of room for character. Stan often does a great job of putting in characterizing details in his dialogue, but Larry goes for the more standard route of giving us almost purely plot-driven dialogue. It's fine, it does the job, it's not <i>bad</i>, per se, but I gotta give Stan more credit for the successful elements of the story than his brother -- who because of his scripting duties on this first story also often gets credit as a co-creator of Iron Man. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Lee's plot contains many elements that mark it as following the successful formula of the early Marvel comics. Although Tony Stark <i>seems </i>more like a DC hero on the surface (handsome, wealthy, genius-level intellect), the addition of the heart problem, the fact that he needs to wear the suit or he'll die, is the classic note of ironic tragedy that Lee had already used to great effect in almost all his previous Marvel Age creations. Although by 1963 it seemed clear the superhero trend was back to stay, it's also worth noting that this origin story keeps things fairly simple and has an ending that is fairly ambigous -- for all we know, the series could've become something like the Hulk, with the bulky disguised Iron Man wandering the world, searching for a way to remove his armour/the shrapnel without killing himself and getting in adventures. Not the way things went, but the fact that Lee doesn't set up the status quo of the series in this story, instead leaving it open for him to decide later, is a mark of how clever he was at playing the trends of the time and giving himself space and room to adapt to them. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Stark Science:</b></u> Much is made in this story of <i>transistors,</i> but it's pretty clear that Stan and Larry had only the most basic understanding of the technology. Transistors in the early sixties were electrical components that amplified current, so that small changes in input voltage produced large changes in output voltage, allowing complex mechanical devices to be built in smaller and more efficient packages, allowing for devices such as radios, televisions, speakers, and much later the microchip and personal computers. All the Lieber brothers seem to get out of that is "small input, large output, for use in miniaturization", so we get mortars the size of flashlights, and magnets and air pressure jets that can cause the Mark I armour to fly and smash through steel doors. In my favourite moment, Stark slaps a transistor onto an ordinary U-magnet giving it the ability to <i>deflect rockets </i>being fired at him! I mean, I know Stark's a genius, but you still need electrical input and output for a transistor to function! </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Attachments seen in the Mark I suit include suction cups in the hands, air-pressure jets in the feet (no repulsors yet!), and a flamethrower. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><u><b>Notes and Trivia: </b></u>First appearance of Tony Stark/Iron Man, Yinsen and Wong-Chu, debut of the Iron Man armour, MARK I.</span><i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span></i>Rowerowe Fightthepowerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11503302574562989315noreply@blogger.com0