Featuring: Iron Man
Release: October 11, 1966
Cover: January 1967
12 cents
Story: Stan Lee
Pencilling: Gene Colan
Inking: Frankie Giacoia
Lettering: Artie Simek
12 pages
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| Tales to Astonish #85, Story B | Reading order | Tales of Suspense #86 |
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From this moment on, Iron Man is more invincible than ever before!
In a plot greatly echoing a recent Daredevil story, Mandarin now believes Happy to be Iron Man, because Happy had been going around in the suit. In the Daredevil analog, Foggy had put on the Daredevil suit to impress Karen. Here, Happy was a bit more noble. He was trying to help preserve the secret identity, as the press was starting to suspect that Tony Stark was Iron Man. On the basis of the fact that it’s ridiculously obvious to anybody paying attention.
Flash Thompson has also gotten himself into similar trouble by wearing the Spider-Man outfit.
Unfortunately, Tony is still recovering from his recent heart attack. It’s not clear he’s in any shape to help Happy after the Mandarin captures him. And even wearing the armor, Happy is no match for Mandarin. He just doesn’t have the practice with it.
The door is activated by Stark’s fingerprint. Stark intends to patent this futuristic fingerprint-reading technology. I like to imagine Tony makes a few pennies whenever I unlock my macbook.
We get a montage of Tony redesigning his armor to be more invincible than ever before. We haven’t had a good redesigning armor scene since Ditko did it in issue 48. This might be the first splash page montage devoted to it.
The new armor looks the same. It’s just more invincible.
We’ve gotten some good character moments for Senator Byrd recently. For a while, he was just the thorn in Tony’s side. When Tony had a heart attack, Byrd showed sympathy and even defended Stark, with whom he has clashed a lot. Now he’s being advised that his attacks on Iron Man are not particularly popular.
But Byrd is a Senator, and he has a duty that has nothing to do with what makes for good politics. (This was the 1960s. More optimistic times in America.)
So, obviously if I turn the page, I get a Captain America story. But we’re not going to turn that page.
Hear me out.
For a long while now, I’ve just wanted to finish the stupid Secret Empire story in Hulk’s comics. And we’re about done. But it was intimately tied into the AIM story in the SHIELD stories. AIM had been defeated. There’s hints that AIM and Secret Empire are both connected to a resurfacing Hydra. But that’s for the future. We’ve gotten Nick Fury’s story to a good point with respect to the Secret Empire stuff and don’t want to go forward yet. But Cap’s stories and SHIELD’s are closely tied.
What’s happening now is that Hulk is in New York. He’s going to meet Spider-Man there. And Iron Man and Thor will be chilling like nothing big is going on in their lives. So I can’t have Iron Man in China trying to save Happy. I need to get his story a little further. And I need to get Thor back to Earth. Then we can read the Spider-Man story. And then we can finish up the Secret Empire stuff in the Namor/Hulk stories.
And then catch up on some titles we’ve skipped over because they were sufficiently disconnected from the Secret Empire nonsense: Sgt. Fury, Fantastic Four, X-Men.
But then we’ll get back to SHIELD and Captain America and see if Hydra really has returned.
So we’ll finish this comic. Y’know, eventually.
Rating: ★★★☆☆, 50/100
Significance: ★★★☆☆
Characters:
- Mandarin
- Happy Hogan/Iron Man
- Tony Stark/Iron Man
- Senator Byrd
Story notes:
- Mandarin has captured Happy, wearing Iron Man’s armor. Tony is just recovering from his heart attack.
- Stark hires taxi to take him to Long Island factory, pays double to get there in 20 minutes.
- Guards don’t recognize Stark in a taxi instead of his Rolls or XKE.
- Tony finds employees confused by his transistorized circuits. Tony doesn’t have time to help but suggests they reverse the third stage cycle to start.
- Door fingerprint-activated. Stark intends to patent that.
- Stark needs energy of atomic reactor. He works with the fissionable material in Sub-cellar 5.
- Stark needs new better armor to support his weak heart.
- Experimental means to double power may kill him.
- Iron Man makes a tape recording of the secrets of his armaments for Senator Byrd– in case he doesn’t return.
- Rocket sled takes Iron Man to Stark Missile Development Center where he’ll ride one man rocket to China. It will take an hour to reach China.
- Capsule breaks off from rocket and leaves Iron Man in waters off China coast.
- Happy locked in Mandarin’s dungeon.
- Iron Man defeats Mandarin’s guards and electronic defenses.
- Byrd’s advisor suggests he back off Stark for political reasons: Iron Man and Stark are so popular. But Byrd’s oath means more to him than politics. He intends to resume the hearings once Stark is well.
- The real Iron Man confronts the Mandarin.
| Previous | #594 | Next |
|---|---|---|
| Tales to Astonish #85, Story B | Reading order | Tales of Suspense #86 |
| Tales of Suspense #84, Story B | Tales of Suspense | Tales of Suspense #85, Story B |
