Iron Man is Born!
Featuring: Iron Man
Release: December 10, 1962
Cover: March 1963
12 cents
Plot: Stan Lee
Script: Larry Lieber
Art: Don Heck
13 pages
I read this story in Invincible Iron Man Omnibus vol. 1.
Don Heck is the artist on this issue, but the cover is by Jack Kirby. The cover was drawn first, and Jack Kirby is thus responsible for designing this version of the Iron Man armor. Heck claims credit for the look of Anthony Stark and generally the interiors. I’ve read conflicting reports on how much input Kirby had to the interior art and storytelling.
Recall that Kirby had been drawing every ongoing Marvel superhero series prior to this month. One week earlier, Don Heck took over as artist on the Ant-Man feature, and now Heck will also be the artist on the Iron Man stories. And a new Marvel superhero title premieres this same day which will be drawn by Steve Ditko, so the load is getting shared now.
That’s right! It’s Iron Man! The character nobody had heard of in 2007 who was everybody’s favorite superhero by 2009.
As we discussed, December 10, 1962 is a day with four big milestones in Marvel superhero history. This is the second.
- Milestone #1 of December 10, 1962:
Fantastic Four meet the Hulk! - Milestone #2:
Iron Man
Anthony Stark is a rich, handsome, glamorous playboy, a bachelor and socialite. Also a brilliant scientist helping out the US military. He’s invented a tiny transistor that increases the force of any device, which he’s helping the military deploy in South Vietnam.
Wong-Chu is described as a “Red Guerilla” conquering villages is South Vietnam. I assume the implication is he is with the Việt Cộng, but that is not explicit.
The depictions of Asian people remain awful, with Wong-Chu as racist a caricature as General Fang.
Modern reprintings and digital versions of comics often recolor them to use modern coloring. At the same time, they can correct some of the mistakes of the era, like choosing a better skin color for Vietnamese people. So you need to find comics with original coloring to fully appreciate how bad it was. A lot of the art I’m finding for this blog comes from modern reprintings.
While in South Vietnam, Anthony trips over a wire, setting off an explosive trap. He has shrapnel nearing his heart, days to live, and is a prisoner of Wong-Chu. Wong-Chu offers to operate and save his life if Stark will build him a weapon. He is given a lab and an assistant in Professor Yinsen, a brilliant physicist believed to be dead, who had long been a prisoner and slave of the Reds.
The two scientists take the opportunity to build a suit of armor, which will help them defeat the Reds, but also serve as life support for Stark, keeping his heart beating even after the shrapnel reaches it. Yinsen sacrifices himself to buy them the time they need to finish powering the suit. And now Wong-Chu must face Iron Man!
I am a little surprised at just how blithely Iron Man kills Wong-Chu at the end. I mean, he had it coming, but such callousness isn’t what I associate with superheroes from 1962.
As I remarked in the last post, most of this new crop of Marvel heroes are scientists. That wasn’t always the case. In classic stories such as Human Torch or Captain America, there’s a scientist responsible for the hero’s creation, but it’s not the hero themself. Let’s take a peek at this new crop.
Reed Richards– brilliant scientist. Johnny Storm–high school engineering whiz. Dr. Henry Pym–Top scientist and inventor. Dr. Bruce Banner–brilliant atomic physicist. Dr. Don Blake–brilliant physician. Peter Parker–high school science whiz. And now Anthony Stark, another brilliant scientist. That’s most of the heroes we’ve met. It’s also an extremely common trait amongst the super-villains.
Iron Man is a tragic hero. His suit is a powerful weapon, but also his prison. He needs the armor to keep his heart beating. A tragic edge is another commonality amongst many of these Marvel heroes. The Thing is a hero with the body of a monster. Bruce Banner has a monster inside him he battles for control. Spider-Man blames himself for the death of his uncle.
Thor and Ant-Man lack this tragic edge, and generally have the least interesting origins and characters so far.
This is a great and famous origin story. It’s iconic. The 2008 Iron Man film stuck very closely to it.
In fact, a bit of compare/contrast with the film might be fun.
One thing absent in this comic, but present in later versions of the character, and emphasized in the film, is negative personality traits for Anthony Stark. The movie sets him up as a flawed person learning to be better. There are reasons for this.
One of them is the changing attitude toward the defense industry and the military-industrial complex. From the comic’s perspective, using genius to build weapons for the military is a purely noble calling, so it presents Anthony Stark in a heroic light. The movie takes a more nuanced attitude toward a weapons manufacturer. The culture and attitude was starting to change already in 1962, but Stan and Jack are a little behind the times. A few months after this comic was released, Bob Dylan would sing “Masters of War”. Anthony Stark was likely the type of person Dylan was referring to as “you that build the big guns”, of whom he claims, “all the money you made will never buy back your soul”.
Then there’s the womanizing. The movie shows Stark in a one-night stand with a woman he’s abandoned in the morning. That’s not that different from what’s in the comic. The comic is just more polite in its phrasing. A “glamorous playboy”, it calls him.
The movie transplants the setting from South Vietnam to Afghanistan, a fairly simple update to better reflect the current global state. Whereas the comic is happy to demonize the “Red Guerillas” in South Vietnam, the movie goes out of its way to avoid offending anybody. I would imagine an original draft of that script called for Islamic terrorists to capture Tony, but the movie instead attributes it to an international terrorist organization called the Ten Rings. Yinsen makes it a point to list all the languages he has heard, making it clear the group is a mix of nationalities, and tied to no one faith.
Yinsen’s heroic death is translated pretty directly into the film, buying time while the suit powers up.
Absent from the comic is the iconic shot of Tony Stark hammering metal used in the film and in the intro to the ’90s animated series.
But the basic story of Stark getting captured, being tasked to build a weapon, and building himself life-saving armor instead is kept pretty intact in the film.
The armor in the movie was designed to keep the shrapnel away from his heart; in the comic, it is clear that it is to keep his heart beating even with shrapnel in it.
An addition to the film is that it was a Stark Industries bomb which hurt Tony. There is no hint of that in the comic; it is of course a key feature of the origin of the Hulk, a bomb-maker caught in the blast of his own bomb.
The film has a character arc about an arrogant man learning humility; there’s no real hint of that here. Again, Anthony Stark is presented as purely noble in the comic. We will see character arcs along those lines in upcoming Thor and Dr. Strange comics.
And, of course, movie aficionados may notice the lack of goatee, as comic Anthony Stark just has a moustache. Fashion styles changed somewhere between 1962 and 2008. Also, he’s never referred to as “Tony” in this particular comic.
The two other stories in this comic are: “The Last Rocket” (which reprints a 1958 Don Heck story) and “Gundar”. The Gundar story features Odin, so I’d like to include it in our canon. We’ll read it next.
Rating: ★★★½, 67/100
Significance: ★★★★★
Iconic story. Also pretty racist.
Much better writing than anything else to yet have Larry’s name on it.
Characters:
- Anthony Stark/Iron Man
- Wong-Chu
- Professor Yinsen
Story notes:
- Spider-Man is mentioned on the cover, despite not having appeared for many months
- “Invincible Iron Man” — first page establishes his nickname
- Tiny transistor — increases the force of any device, e.g. magnet, thousandfold
- Anthony Stark a “rich, handsome, glamorous playboy”. Compared to Rock Hudson for attractiveness. A “sophisticate and scientist” and “millionaire bachelor”.
- Set in South Vietnam. Wong-Chu, a Red Guerrila tyrant
- Stark on mission with army to use experimental technology; he’s there in case anything needs fixing.
- Stark trips over string, triggering booby trap
- Shrapnel near heart; less than week to live; shrapnel inching toward heart
- Stark thought Yinsen was greatest physicist; believed dead; really captive of Reds
- Enemies always called “Reds”
- Iron man suit will keep heart beating–even after shrapnel reaches it
- Yinsen sacrifices himself to buy time for the suit to charge.
- Brain controls suit transistors directly; suit soars with air pressure jets; small arms fire cannot penetrate cast-iron suit; armor able to take over speaker remotely; miniature buzz-saw in armor finger
- Iron Man kills Wong-Chu
#48 story in reading order
Next: Tales of Suspense #39, Story C
Previous: Fantastic Four #12
I wonder if the recent production of transistor radios may have inspired this. Fans would also have a basic grasp of the technology. Never cared for the whole playboy vibe.