Featuring: Iron Man
Release: February 12, 1963
Cover: May 1963
12 cents
Plot: Stan Lee
Script: R. Berns
Art: Jack Kirby
Inking: Dick Ayers
13 pages
Confession time. I just made a dumb mistake here. Got confused by numbers and dates. This post should have come before my previous Journey Into Mystery post, as this issue is from February and the Thor story is from March. It’s a little confusing because both are cover-dated May. The Thor stories always seem a month out of sync in terms of their cover dates for some reason.
Robert Bernstein returns on scripting duties. He will be the regular scripter for a while. This is the first Iron Man story without Don Heck involved with the art (either as primary or finisher). This is perhaps why Tony looks so radically different from the previous 2 stories.
Though part of the problem is that his hair is brown in my omnibus (scanned above). Other modern recolorings make it black. It’s hard to speak intelligently to the coloring of these comics because of how wildly it varies between reproductions.
Iron Man is falling into a somewhat familiar pattern 3 issues in. After a very good origin issue, we get a sequence of pretty forgettable stories. Last issue, he fought Gargantus, and this issue introduces Dr. Strange. Neither of whom am I expecting to show up any time soon in a major motion picture.
Another familiar trope is that we’ve skipped the establishing of the hero. In this issue, the third Iron Man story, the first of which was set in a Vietnam jungle, we learn that children idolize Iron Man. So he, like the rest of the heroes, has fast become a sensation.
The blonde girl on a date with Tony appears to be Marion from the last issue. Hard to be certain as we’ve seen Tony dating so many women already. Either way, this will be the last time the character appears. She talks of marriage, but he insists he’s too busy with work to settle down. To confuse matters further, she’s a redhead in some modern recolorings out there, like the version pictured above, but she’s blond in the omnibus, as pictured below.
Now, what is the relationship between Anthony Stark and Iron Man that led Mr. Stark to be able to arrange Iron Man’s presence? I guess money talks.
We get a montage of various inventions of Anthony Stark’s…
Followed by a montage of the recent heroic deeds of Iron Man…
The reporter claims the only person who could equal Iron Man’s feats is Dr. Strange. What about Thing? Thor? Spider-Man? And Dr. Strange is just an ordinary guy locked in a cell. How does he even rate a comparison to Iron Man? What is that reporter thinking? I guess they’re both scientific geniuses. But so is Mr. Fantastic, Dr. Banner, Dr. Pym…
The battle with Dr. Strange is 2 pages long, only made interesting because Carla Strange betrayed her father. Not because Dr. Strange keeps imitating Bela Lugosi with his cloak.
Dr. Strange is a lame villain and we will never see him again. A pet peeve of mine is when writers talk up their obviously lame villains like they did this one, giving characters dialogue about how awesome this new villain is, and then having the villain fail to live up to it.
That said, he has a cool name. Doctor Strange. Would be a shame to let it go to waste…
Rating: ★★½, 40/100
Characters:
- Anthony Stark/Iron Man
- Marion
- Dr. Strange
- Carla Strange
- Nikita Khrushchev
Story notes:
- Stark recognized at Children’s Hospital Charity event for donating $100,000.
- Tony had Iron Man visit the children in the hospital; we learn the kids idolize Iron Man.
- Anthony manages munitions plants all over the world.
- Anthony Stark inventions: atomic naval cannons able to fire a nuclear salvo more than 500 miles; flesh-healing serum which closes any open wound in 2 seconds with synthetic, liquid tissue; alloy shell that might be able to resist penetrations from all radiations a capsule might encounter in space; blurp gun features artillery shells reduced to the size of 50 calibre machine gun bullets that can be fired at a rate of 1000 bullets/minute.
- Montage of Iron Man battling gangsters, communist spies, and aliens (presumably the aliens from the last issue).
- Stark wears metal plate constantly around his chest.
- If Iron Man plate isn’t regularly recharged by booster-shots of electricity, shrapnel-pierced heart will stop beating.
- Armor carried in attaché case.
- Iron Man’s transistor-energized magnets allow him to juggle 7 cars.
- Cannonball capable of destroying 2-foot brick wall doesn’t scratch Iron Man.
- Dr. Strange arrested after being struck by lightning.
- Dr. Strange remotely hypnotizes Iron Man from prison; a hypnotized Iron Man helps Dr. Strange escape.
- Dr. Strange explodes 200-Megaton bomb in outer space then issues demand that the world surrender to him.
- A world leader listening to Dr. Strange appears to be Nikita Khrushchev.
- Dr. Strange invented atomic-proof forcefield around island.
- Dr. Strange vanishes.
#66 story in reading order
Next: Journey Into Mystery #92
Previous: Amazing Spider-Man #2, Story B
