jack frost – Coke & Comics

Tales of Suspense #67

Where Walk the Villains!

Featuring: Iron Man
Release: April 8, 1965
Cover: July 1965
12 cents
Written by our roguish writer: Stan Lee
Pencilled by our prankish penciller: Don Heck
Inked by our impish inker: Mickey Demeo
Lettered by our other letter: S. Rosen
12 pages

Previous		Next
Tales of Suspense #66, Story B	Reading order	Tales of Suspense #67, Story B
Tales of Suspense #66, Story B	Tales of Suspense	Tales of Suspense #67, Story B

The drama from last issue continues. Happy has quit; Pepper is sad; she blames Iron Man.

Count Nefaria of the Maggia returns, but with a new gimmick and identity. He now calls himself the Master of Dreams. Perhaps also Dream-Maker or Dream-Master; Stan can’t decide from one page to the next. He controls Iron Man’s dreams and sends old foes against him; if Iron Man dies in the dream, he will die.

PRELUDE: USA Comics #1, Story F

Jack Frost

Featuring: Jack Frost
Release: April 20, 1941
Cover: August 1941
10 cents
Story by: Stan Lee
6 pages

A bit of an interlude from our run of old Captain America Comics.

I’ve gotten in the habit of reading these Golden Age superheroes when their namesakes were introduced, but I missed this one. Iron Man fought the new Jack Frost in Tales of Suspense #45. Perhaps that would have been a good time to introduce the Golden Age superhero of the same name. But we didn’t.

I’d say I didn’t have the idea of going back to look at namesakes in my head yet, but that’s clearly not true. Our second post goes back to 1939 to meet the original Human Torch for no reason other than we’d just introduced the new one in Fantastic Four #1. And then a couple posts later, the introduction of the new Gorilla Man gave us all the excuse we needed to meet the original gorilla men. I guess I should admit that I just forgot about Jack Frost.

I thought of him now because we just read Stan Lee’s first Marvel story, and this features Stan’s first superhero co-creation.

Stan created Jack Frost along with the uncredited Charles Nicholas.

Also, I wanted to read the Captain America story from USA Comics #6, which had me anyway looking at the first issue of USA Comics.

And, man if that dude left suspended in a block of ice isn’t good foreshadowing for what’s coming…

Maybe this is a fine time to read this story. Or maybe I should rearrange things to place it back alongside Tales of Suspense #45. Plenty of time to decide that, I guess.

For now, let’s look to the comic.

Tales of Suspense #45

The Icy Fingers of Jack Frost!

Featuring: Iron Man
Release: June 11, 1963
Cover: September 1963
12 cents
Story plot: Stan Lee
Script: R. Berns
Art: Don Heck
18 pages

We meet a new villain, Jack Frost. His special suit covers himself in ice and he can freeze people. He isn’t the first ice-themed super character and won’t be the last. Though off the top of my head, I am not thinking of any earlier examples within Marvel. Over at DC, we met Captain Cold in Showcase #8 (1957) and Mr. Zero in Batman #121 (1959).

But Jack Frost is something of a footnote in the Marvel Universe. This is the first of 6 stories he’ll appear in, making him the most significant Iron Man villain we’ve met, but still not all that significant.

The bigger news is that Iron Man gets a supporting cast!

The writers must know that having a supporting cast is a good idea. This isn’t new. Superman has had Lois since his first issue. Jimmy and Perry followed eventually. Batman has had Alfred for a couple decades at this point. It’s just not a new concept. And it’s working really well for Spider-Man. Aunt May, J. Jonah Jameson, Flash Thompson… they help make the book. But the other stories have mostly not bothered with the concept. Thing has Alicia and Thor has Jane, but that’s the extent of it so far.