Featuring: Iron Man
Release: January 10, 1964
Cover: April 1964
12 cents
Plot by: Stan Lee
Story by: N. Korok
Art by: Don Heck
Lettering by: S. Rosen
13 pages
N. Korok is an alias for Don Rico. Stan credits Rico with the story and himself with the plot. I would love to know what Stan thinks the difference between “plot” and “story” is. Rico had been working with comics, and Marvel Comics in particular, since 1939, as artist or writer or editor. By this time, he had mostly left comics behind and become a successful novelist– likely why he’s not using his real name on this comic work. Any comics work by Rico from this point forward will be quite uncommon.
Khrushchev decides it’s time to deal with the traitorous Crimson Dynamo. He sends for Russia’s best agents, Boris and Natasha.
No, not those two.
An atomic sub takes Boris and Natasha to America. I feel like we should be very concerned a Soviet atomic sub can get so close to our shores undetected.
Boris captures Professor Vanko and steals the Crimson Dynamo suit. We thus get our first legacy villain, where somebody new takes up the mantle of another character. We’ve seen plenty of name-recycling before. Of course, the new Human Torch is just a reworking of the original Human Torch, but there’s no explicit connection between them. What we see here draws from the fact that many super-villains have abilities that lie purely within their suits or arsenals. It is thus easy for somebody else to take over the identity. This will become very common. We have here the first Marvel Age example of the phenomenon.
Don Rico showed up for a notable issue. For a guy who would write only 3 Sixties Marvel Comics, helping introduce the new Black Widow is a pretty significant achievement. She’ll go on to be quite the major character, even getting solo adventures in 1970, the first female Marvel superhero to do so in decades (with a caveat about the Wasp and her solo “adventures”). She’s shown up in several films played by superstar actress Scarlett Johansson and would have starred in her own feature film a few months ago had the whole world not turned upside down.
She is portrayed as a redhead in the interior of the comic, but the colorist for the cover didn’t get that memo, and she has black hair on the cover. This may be explainable as she is a top espionage agent and likely a master of disguise.
Her introduction is unfortunately underwhelming. She does no fighting herself. In fact, she does almost nothing in this story. She lets Stark take her to dinner to distract him while Boris does the work. That’s her entire role. A humble beginning for a notable Marvel character.
The comic requires a lot of stupidity on the part of a lot of characters. Tony just goes on his date and lets the mysterious Soviet named Boris tour his factory. Boris defeats Iron Man but then leaves him alone in a room on the sub, still with his armor, unguarded. Why? Even after all that happened, Iron Man apparently still hadn’t figured out Boris was a bad guy and had to be told. He then continued to remain not suspicious of Madame Natasha.
The original Crimson Dynamo, Professor Vanko–who had reformed and defected to America–bravely sacrifices himself for his adopted homeland. A touching ending to our tale.
This story was released one week after Captain America’s return in Avengers #4, and I wished to read them in that order. I didn’t want to meet Black Widow before Captain America, as I like to keep a sense of what order major characters were introduced (or reintroduced). That said, chronologically, this story likely takes place before Avengers #4.
Rating: ★★½, 45/100
Significance: ★★★★★
I read this story in The Invincible Iron Man Omnibus vol. 1. You can also find it in the Iron Man Epic Collection vol. 1 or Marvel Masterworks: The Invincible Iron Man vol. 2 or Women of Marvel: Celebrating Seven Decades. Or through Kindle.
Characters:
- Iron Man/Anthony “Tony” Stark
- Professor Vanko/Crimson Dynamo
- Nikita Khrushchev
- Black Widow/Madame Natasha
- Boris/Crimson Dynamo
- Pepper Potts
- Happy Hogan
Story notes:
- Vanko working on laser light; editor’s note explains science: “…parallel photon rays of equal force, not diffused like ordinary light.”
- Khrushchev described as short and pudgy.
- Boris poses as Ukranian science teacher and gets tour of Stark’s factory; Tony takes Natasha to dinner.
- Vanko had built “jet paralyzer” for Soviets.
- Boris captures Vanko and dons Crimson Dyanmo suit himself.
- Vanko and Boris both die.
#174 story in reading order
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