Tales of Suspense #76

Here Lies Hidden… The Unspeakable Ultimo!

Featuring: Iron Man
Release: January 1, 1966
Cover: April 1966
12 cents
Tenderly written by: Stan Lee
Lovingly pencilled by: Adam Austin
Gently delineated by: Gary Michaels
Finally lettered by: Sam Rosen
12 pages

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Tales of Suspense #75Reading orderSgt. Fury #26
Tales of Suspense #75, Story BTales of SuspenseTales of Suspense #76, Story B

Look at you! Bedraggled and red-eyed! Too much celebrating last night, eh? I always said you were nothing but a playboy!

Marvel has given up on the idea of clean story breaks, which makes reading tricky when I’d like to put the stories together. This is part 3 of the Happy-as-The-Freak arc, but also part 1 of the Ultimo arc. Essentially they seem to want to end every issue on a cliffhanger, so they begin the next story now. I can’t just keep reading Iron Man. We already are getting ahead of the Captain America stories he shares the title with, because I need to align those with the SHIELD arc. And there’s a whole Marvel Universe to check in with. Which means I need to either break last issue with the Freak saga unresolved, or break after this issue with the Ultimo saga unresolved. The Freak saga resolves in about 2 pages, but the Ultimo saga really only takes up the last 2 pages. The ongoing Senator Byrd subplot dominates the middle bit. I don’t know. We’re reading this now, then we’ll take a break. And see what happens with Ultimo at a later date.

Where were we. The experimental treatment on Happy turned him into a Freak. Iron Man had a thing that might save Happy, at risk to himself.

Well, it worked.

This was all a fallout from the Titanium Man battle. That’s when Happy was injured saving Iron Man, and revealed he knew (or suspected) Tony’s secret. This is their first chance to talk since then.

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