Straight out of September 1963, The ICY FINGERS of JACK FROST are reaching out for IRON MAN!
This month we're in for a treat -- not only do we get another "exciting" adventure, but we see the debut of Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts (... I only just now realized their names are both alliterated, which makes them even cooler!)
The cover claims that these two are "destined" to become two of our favorite supporting characters. I actually love both of them, so the prophecy was right, at least for me! Actually, with a couple supporting characters to balance out the maybe-a-marty-stu Stark, things should start to get quite a bit more interesting.
Berns is still doing the writing and we have Don Heck on the illustration again. He's still playing catch-up on the Handsome Tony Race, so maybe we'll get some good stuff this episode.
The inside cover page gives a bit of a spoiler for the plot of this book -- it shows Iron Man fighting Jack Frost with a thought bubble telling us that Tony actually knows the secret identity of Frost. Now, sometimes these covers contain things that don't even happen in the story, but something like that... at least we're probably going to see Tony knowing the identity of Frost as part of the storyline at some point. It reminds me of the terror that came with watching anime DVDs back in college; you had to be sure to skip the preview for the next episode because it would spoil the entire plot. You even had to close your eyes and ears when the title call told you the episode title because the episodes would literally be named stuff like "(Character) Dies in this Episode!"
Anyway, it's not like the plots of these older mags are particularly phenomenal, so I'm not too disappointed.
This month, we start with Iron Man blasting down the highway at 200MPH. At first, some cops start to chase him, thinking it's a "stripped-down rod" (which I'm guessing means like, a motorcycle with some parts removed to make it capable of reaching higher speeds? I don't know; I'm super ignorant about this kind of stuff), but they somehow just realize it's Iron Man and let him be, figuring he must have a good reason for going so fast.
We cut to Iron Man who explains with his thought bubble that he really didn't have an emergency -- he was just trying to get to the Indy 500 quickly because he was late. He also assures the readers that what he was doing was safe because in the case of a potential accident he could use jet propulsion to shoot himself up in the air and jump over a car or something. Now, even at 40MPH, people don't have the reaction time to stop sudden accidents from happening, but Tony thinks he can do it at five times that speed? Lol... It reminds me of those people who don't wear their safety belts because they can just "stop fast and put their arms up" if they get in an accident. Tony, you're a danger to drivers everywhere...
Anyway, it's cool that Tony's going to Indianapolis, my hometown. In other issues he goes to generic places like "somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean" or "Children's Hospital," but in this one we're specifically visiting ol' Indy for the 500. If you don't know, car racing is a thing here. Like, a big thing, and the Indy 500 is a major event every year, with the entire town of Speedway being converted into some kind of wild campgrounds and fairgrounds for people all over the world to visit. It's super bizarre, but kind of fun. My husband likes to go drive through the town every year a couple days before the race just to people-watch. It usually fires up my anxiety but you see some interesting stuff. Last year I saw an old man approach a young woman and offer her a teddy bear if she'd flash him, which she did, giggling with her friends as she walked away with her new teddy. And this was just, you know, in the middle of a residential area. But it's like, overrun with people wandering around drunk. It's so funny.
But yeah, high-class Tony is here for... that! Well, he's going to be actually driving in the race, it seems. We get a very handsome flash of a smile from him as he gets set in his "crate" (they refer to various vehicles as "crates" throughout this issue) and talks to his pit crew.
Not long into the race, Tony realizes that in his rush to get here late, he totally forgot to charge up his chestplate. He starts becoming weak and can't control his car anymore, crashing it... into the air for some reason. Actually, race car crashes are generally pretty nasty so that's not too crazy, I guess. I originally was going to comment that it seems unrealistic to forget to charge your battery when it will kill you not to do it, but I guess it's not any different than forgetting your insulin or inhaler or something. You eventually stop forgetting that, but when it's somewhat new but past that 'constantly paranoid about it' stage, it's easy to forget stuff like that.
The situation is looking pretty dire for Tony -- not only is he incapacitated by being pinned under his crate's wheel, but he also can hardly move because he's out of batteries which causes his heart to slowly stop working. Now, if he could eat a battery before to regain energy, why can't he just like... suck up some energy from the car or something...? I guess it's not electricity, though, but... I mean... a flashlight battery... IDK, just... NO QUESTIONS.
But now we get our introduction to one of our new supporting characters!
A man from the crowd rushes toward the car, with everyone else trying to stop him because it's too dangerous. With seemingly superhuman strength, he just pulls the car parts apart to unpin Tony and drag him from the car before it explodes. What's cool is that he doesn't try to save him because it's Tony, but just because "someone's in there." In fact, he seems to not even know or care who Tony is!
Tony begs him to take him to the nearest motel room and lock him inside, no questions asked. The big dude suggests rather going to a hospital, but Stark insists that he has to go to a motel and treat his condition himself. The guy complies. We get an even more dramatic battery-charging scene, with Tony struggling to reach the socket on the wall ("... Just a few inches more...!") before he completely passes out and lies down doomed.
After a bit of a charge -- actually, I wonder how long it takes to recharge his battery? I'm sure they've mentioned it at some point saying like "minutes later" or something, but... Actually, once he plugs himself in, we're interrupted by some adverts, so it's kinda like he's charging during the commercial break. One of the adverts is for the first issue of The Avengers (should an entire series be written in italics or with quotation marks...?) which featured Iron Man, Thor, Hulk, and Ant Man. Despite Wasp being on the cover as well, she's not mentioned in name anywhere. The top of the cover just has the four men's names printed largely. Kinda annoying because she's one of my favorites of the original Avengers. Even though I know hardly anything about them and most of my knowledge comes from picking up random bits of information relevant to Iron Man and from playing HeroClix and other games lol.
Anyway, after charging, Tony meets up with the guy who saved him to give him a reward. He writes him a check for fifty-thousand clams. I'm going to assume that one clam is equivalent to one dollar, and it's not slang for some higher amount (like a grand is a thousand or whatever). Adjusted for inflation, that would be over $400,000 in 2018 money, it seems. Anyway, the dude asks Tony if that's all he thinks his life is worth, and Stark thinks he's trying to get more money, so he offers to double the reward. But the guy just rips up the check and says he wasn't doing it for a reward, but just acted on natural instinct.
They get to talking and we find out the guy's name is Harry Hogan, but he got the nickname "Happy" because no one's seen him smile. But he seems to be a softie -- it seems he gave up his boxing career because even though he was a good fighter, he never had the heart to finish his opponents off. It seems that now, because of that, what he needs is a steady, safe job. Upon hearing that, Tony realizes that it wouldn't be had to have someone around like this all the time in case he needs to be rescued like that again, so he hires Happy on as his personal chauffeur-bodyguard.
What's particularly interesting about Happy is that not only does he seem to not really know who Stark is beforehand, he doesn't seem to really care. Or the not knowing is part of the not-caring act. But for example, when Tony is listing off all the fancy cars he has, Happy says those cars will do for a start, acting unimpressed. I guess it's less like he "doesn't care" and more like he doesn't worship Tony like every other person in the series seems to so far, instead opting for teasing him, which is a huge relief and change of pace. It's also great how Tony seems to appreciate this senese of humor and doesn't get upset or anything -- though I'm probably guessing this is a nice relief to him, too, to just be treated like a regular dude and not some kind of demigod of money or whatever.
Tony takes Happy back to his lab/base/office thing and introduces him to his secretary, Pepper Potts. And here we have our other new character! Though from the way she was introduced, I guess we're supposed to assume she's actually been working here for a while; this is just our first time seeing her.
The first we see of her is her making an I'm-going-to-puke face upon seeing Happy, complaining that of all the eligible bachelors Tony could have hired, he decided to go for this ugly brute. Albeit funny, I have a little complaint about the way she goes about it -- she says she would have preferred a "Rock Hudson" instead of a "Bela Lugosi." Now, this is from 1963, so she's talking about generic conventionally attractive Hudson, not lucious pornstache Hudson nor 80s zaddy Hudson. And she's implying that she'd rather have that boring version of Hudson over the intriguing and certainly more handsome Lugosi? As a connoisseur of unconventionally attractive men, I have to say I'm quite disappointed in Pepper's tastes.
But anyway, what's awesome about Pepper is that she's sassy as hell. Not only does she talk about how ugly Happy is where he can hear her (which, BTW, I disagree with as well! Look at that adorable lug!), but she also has all kinds of quick and witty comments to shut him down with, like "you wouldn't be my type even if you were my type." And when she admits she has a crush on Stark (your bad taste in men has been redeemed, child) and Happy refers to it as a 'love triangle,' she says the only triangle in the situation is his head. They even go as far as to put decorate some of her speech bubbles to look like they have hanging icicles or something to show how cold she can be; it's hilarious!
She's full of sarcasm and wit, and quickly stands up for herself, which is super refreshing for a female character in the 60's, and especially considering the women we've seen so far in this series.
We only get a brief introduction to her, though, as opposed to the several pages worth of introduction we got for Happy. But if you know much about Iron Man, you'll know that Pepper ends up becoming the more iconic and lasting character in the end, being a primary character of the more recent films and everything.
We cut back to Tony hanging out in his office alone, deciding to check up on his Iron Man suit by wearing it for a bit. Because I guess he just does that sometimes. And then suddenly someone is trying to break into his vault of "vital materials" and the big munnies. Pretty convenient he just put on the suit, huh?
Iron Man rushes to the scene to find that one of his most trusted scientists Professor Shapanka is the one tampering with the vault.
Iron Man pretty much just beats him up, then he goes back to his office and returns to his normal Tony form. He comments to himself that he's going to have to cover for Iron Man's departure and Tony Stark's sudden appearance at the scene, but that... never happens. He doesn't make any excuses and no one even questions it. I guess the thought of him having to cover was even enough now? We can't even be bothered for the cheesy excuses?
When Stark returns to the crime scene, Shapanka is being held by some of Tony's guards, with Happy standing in front of them. Shapanka assumes Tony is going to call the police and have him locked up, but Tony decides to let the guy go thanks to the work he's done in the past. Shapanka taunts him. I wonder who the main villain of today's issue is going to be? Hmmm... I guess that thing on the cover wasn't too spoilery after all.
Later we see Shapanka testing some kind of weird cryo-beam thing on a cat (ouch, animal testing?!). I guess it's nice that it works out harmlessly -- with his new invention, he's able to freeze the cat and thaw it back out with his zappy beams without hurting or affecting the cat at all.
With the secrets of cryogenics all figured out, Shapanka decides to make an 'ice suit' that will lower his body temperature to freeze himself but he won't be frozen... or something... I don't know. Basically he's gonna become kind of ice man thing, who for some reason also has powers to turn nearby things to ice, too, by like... blowing on them? It's not really explained but... this is more background than we've been given to any of the villains so far, so I guess that's pretty cool.
Oh, and all of this came from the fact that Tony said something about having "cold feet" while Shapanka was around, which gave the professor this epiphany to create all this. We're then interrupted by an advertisement for these creepy Disney latex toys. I really couldn't continue the story without showing you guys this. I always tease my husband being a kid in the 50s/60s and playing with rocks and sticks because they didn't have proper toys like us kids in the 80s/90s, but I guess they had crap like this which only makes the whole joke funnier.
With his new powers thanks to his nonsensical ice suit, Shapanka starts rampaging about town, stirring up news where people start calling him "Jack Frost." He thinks it sounds stupid but decides to keep the name anyway.
After what I assume was some practice terrorizing the town by doing stuff like robbing banks, Frost decides to finally seek revenge and go steal all of Stark's crap like he was originally intending to do, and turn Tony into a human Popsicle while he's at it. From his previous escapades (icecapades?! XD) we learn that ol Frosty now freezes stuff with beams from his hands instead of an ice breath like in his vision. Things nearby him freeze instantly, even quickly enough to stop bullets by turning them into snowflakes before they can hit him.
He busts up the front of the place, freezing Pepper and Happy in the process, talking about how he hated Pepper all along, and making way too many ice puns.
Frost reaches Stark's room where he finds, instead of Tony himself, Iron Man is waiting. Iron Man pushes a button on the wall which opens a trap door that is conveniently located exactly where Frost is standing. He starts to fall into the "underground labyrinth" (who has this under their office...?!) below, but before the door can even fully open and drop him all the way, he freezes the "mechanism" that opens the door to the chute. What's even more amazing than this impeccable response time is that he manages to narrate what he's doing alongside it! How fast must those words have been said? Could Tony have even understood someone speaking that fast? Well, he's at least able to recognize the voice as Shapanka, so...
We also learn of another scary power that Frost has. Iron Man stomps on Frost's hand as he's trying to climb back up into the office, but Frost just creates many more arms and hands from ice! It seems not only can he freeze the nearby visible objects, but he can also utilize the water in the air around him to quickly sculpt nearby ice things like arms and hands. I'm not sure exactly how he manipulates them to grab onto things and stuff considering they should be just solid blocks of ice, unless he's rapidly freezing and unfreezing the air in a way that it just looks like it's one continuous solid object moving. I wonder how many FPS he gets with this? But yeah, no questions...
He uses the hands not only to climb back up, but also to grab onto Iron Man's legs. Tony realizes that he's starting to feel icy even from being touched on the outside of his iron suit. For some reason, these illustrations alone lead Tony to believe that Frost is almost unbeatable. He says there's only a one-in-a-mullion chance to defeat him, and it will only work if Shapanka doesn't know that Iron Man is actually Tony Stark on the inside.
I'm not exactly sure why that's relevant in any way, because all he does is stun him with a heat beam from his chest and then builds a "miniature furnace" while Frost is immobilized, commenting about how convenient it is that he just so happened to have all the components he needed to make his little invention on him at the moment. Now, I realize that 'making little transistor thingies' is Tony's shtick, but I don't understand how Frost would have been able to stop him from doing this simply by knowing his identity. I mean, the zappy beam completely immobilized him, and I don't see how knowing who Tony was was going to undo that.
Iron Man places the mini-furnace on the ground next to Frost, which starts to blast the office full of heat. Stark grabs still-frozen Happy and Pepper and carries them outside, one in each arm, as the heat continues to rise, eventually bursting stuff inside to flames. Frost's outer ice shell thaws out, leaving only a scorched Shapanka stumbling out of the office. This time, Iron Man doesn't allow Shapanka to go free and hands him over to the authorities.
And we have finished a really great episode of Iron Man! The introduction of the new characters was great; we really get a good feel from their personalities even from such a limited interaction with them. And the sarcastic boxer and sassy secretary make the perfect contrasts to debonair Tony, so we're going to have great supporting cast moving forward.
The battle between Frost and Iron Man was pretty well-developed, too. We got a little build-up learning about Shapanka's motives and Jack Frost's origin, and the final showdown featured Iron Man actually getting bested for a moment before finding a solution. It was pretty exciting, especially compared to what we've seen so far, where the conflict is resolved almost as soon as it appears by some ridiculous idea of Tony's or whatever.
This seems to be a turning point for the series -- we're adding characters and the writing is getting a lot more serious and involved. Well, hopefully that will continue as we move forward.
And Don Heck has blessed us with a few Handsome Tonys this time around, too!
Look at all of those :D And some of them are really great, too. The dashing smile as he's about to race in the 500 and the stern glare as he decides to let Shapanka go are my favorites.
After the main comic, we have only a single side-story this time, another Lieber short involving yet another mustachioed villain that seems to be designed to fit my tastes all too well. We also have some advertisements for other Marvel mags, including Strange Tales which contains stories of Spider Man and Human Torch, the popular Fantastic Four, and the all-new debut of X-Men. Specifically these are ads for the 72-page Annuals, yearly big releases with tons of content loaded inside.
And with that, we've finished with Tales of Suspense No. 45. I hope you have enjoyed and are looking forward to the next episode. Until then, keep stachin~
