Showing newest entries, #6 to #10 of 48.
Tales of Suspense #47: Iron Man Battles The Melter!
How can a man of iron save himself from a super-villain with the power to MELT iron?? Lee, Ditko, and Heck team up to bring you... IRON MAN, greater, more true-to-life than ever as he battles "THE MYSTERIOUS MELTER!"
A promising cover from November of 1963! Our credits are a little weird this time -- we have Stan Lee credited first as always, and then following it says that the story is "interpreted by" Steve Ditko and "refined by" Don Heck. I did a little research to see what these were supposed to mean, but it seems there's no definitive answer. It seems like most likely the storyboarding and some very rough penciling was done by Ditko, with the art being refined and inked by Heck. The art style looks like what we've seen of Heck so far, and other fans seem to agree, so I'm guessing that Ditko did some basic skeleton sketching and the art was mostly done by Heck.
Look, I'm learning things about comics! Actually, this is kind of dangerous because it's going to make me want to get more into them surely. How am I go to resist the luscious likes of well-stached Doctor Strange and others? Sigh...
I'm keeping track of who draws each of the 'Handsome Tonys' so I'm going to accredit these ones to Heck, since it's mainly his style that comes through in the end.
But, uh let's get into this month's story for now.
The episode even starts out with the caption, "Let's not waste time with long introductions!" and we're very quickly introduced to the villain of the month. We're shown a couple panels of some tanks being sabotaged as if parts of them were melted, including one with this hot stache copper in it! Tony goes to check on some of the tanks, since he was the designer, and suddenly this big blue and green dude appears and thwacks him in the head.
I am particularly fond of the word "thwack" because in high school, I got fed up with a kid bullying me and hit him with a bass drum mallet, and the drum instructors bestowed upon me the nickname "Thwack" which was hilarious. I got in trouble for hitting the kid though. And a discussion on bullying is for another time. And not in this readthrough at all hahaha.
Anyway, with the thwacking done, we find this Melter guy standing over an unconscious Stark revealing his main goals by narrating his actions. He wants to get revenge on his old rival Tony and "strike back" at the U.S. Armed Forces. Melting tank parts made by Stark and used by the government seems to be the best way he can think of to accomplish these goals. He even goes as far as to drop his own name: Bruno Horgan.
We're then given a flashback to learn exactly what this guy is so disgruntled about and how he discovered his powers. Apparently, Horgan used to be a major supplier to the government before Tony joined the scene. Stark, of course, produced the superior products with superior materials, so the government revoked his contract in favor of giving one to Stark.
Then later he was messing with his inferior products that went haywire. What was meant to be an "inspection beam" started melting the iron devices it was meant to be inspecting. Horgan didn't get it at the time, but he started studying the broken product until he figured out the secrets to making a melting beam. He fits it into a compact melting unit that he fastens to his chest.
He decides to use this newfound power for revenge, becoming a super-villain capable of avoiding the thread of weapons by simply melting them before they can be used.
After our little introductory flashbacks (I thought we were not wasting time with long introductions, but that took like two whole pages), we're taken back to the point where the thwacking had just commenced and Stark is lying on the ground with The Melter walking away from him.
Pepper asks Happy to go find Tony so he can sign some documents or something, and we get a little bit of comedic banter between them. Hogan finds Stark on the ground, who insists that he be taken to a room to rest alone, declining Pepper's insisting that she call a doctor for him. Apparently being whopped in the back of the head made his battery charge go down (???) so he needs to recharge. As always, he plugs himself into the wall and comments about how a few more minutes it would have been too late.
The Melter appears near the end of Tony's charge-up time, melting through locks to reach the insides of his munitions factory, ready to start melting stuff.
Of course, even though he could get past the locks, he couldn't do anything about the alarms, so Stark is quickly alerted to the break-in. He quickly puts on his metal costume from his attache, turning himself into Iron Man. Iron Man runs down the underground tunnelways he build to reach the factory quickly, thinking to himself how convenient it is that he decided to make the tunnels soundproof, or else whoever broke in would hear him coming now!
Convenient, indeed...
Iron Man arrives quickly, but a lot of stuff seems to already have been melted, with The Melter moving in on more targets. Realizing that he has a new foe to fight, The Melter turns his beam toward Iron Man instead. Tony is a bit relieved that he's temporarily taking his focus away from the munitions, but worries about what might happen if he gets hit with the beam himself.
And right after he thinks it, the beam hits his arm and melts the entire piece of armor covering it. I guess this thing doesn't melt stuff through heat, but rather just... somehow liquefies iron and only iron. Tony worries that if he were to get hit straight-on by the beam, his identity could be revealed -- and worse -- his chestplate would be destroyed! I'm not sure you really need to worry about the former in this case, though, as it really isn't going to matter if your identity is revealed when you're, you know, dead...
He realizes he needs to retreat and come up with some kind of plan, so Iron Man throws some transistors into the air which somehow make a steam pipe thing burst open. To avoid being scalded, The Melter runs away for now, figuring he's done enough damage. I would think he could just hang around and wait for it to stop or go around and chase down Iron Man, but it's way more convenient for the plot if he runs away for now and gives Tony a chance to re-emerge and do some planning. He makes some kind of excuse like he'd rather toy with Iron Man for a bit instead of defeat him right away.
Tony returns to human form and commands his workers to all work triple shifts (for triple pay) to clean up the mess. I mean, if you have that much money, why not just hire more people to do it instead of making those poor laborers work all damned day long...? It's not like it's their fault, and triple pay doesn't really make up for having to work like that...
Out of costume, Stark returns to his office and tells his staff to cancel all his appointments and to not let him be disturbed. He spends a lot of time moping around his lab and worrying about how The Melter is a dangerous opponent for him, but he doesn't seem to actually accomplish anything other than recapping what we already know. We then cut to the next morning, with Tony arriving early, surprised to see Happy and Pepper there as well. They tell him that they never left, staying overnight because they thought he might need them. I guess Pepper had a change of clothes at the office because she's wearing a different outfit now.
Pepper gets a call from congress requesting an urgent meeting with Tony. He declines Happy's invitation to drive him, because he's really going to just turn into Iron Man and fly there. Well, he flies to some random cottage he keeps just for this reason and then drives to the meeting place.
Inside, some congressmen scold Tony about how his production is slipping and a bunch of his stuff is faulty. Particularly the head of chewing Tony out seems to be this super hot pencil stache senator, which is very great. According to some sources this is supposed to be the same senator who accused Tony of being a communist spy in the previous episode, but he doesn't look anything like him, and that particular senator becomes a recurring character, and later appearances maintain consistency with the appearance of the senator in TOS#46, so I'm going to say that possible this is not who will become known as Senator Byrd. The entire group of congressmen are scolding Tony here, and this guy says Tony has an untarnished record, when Byrd was accusing Tony in the last episode. Of course, you could say that according to the timeline of the series, this could come before issue No. 46 chronologically, but... I think that's putting way too much thought into what is most likely just a generic senator.
Anyway, congress threatens to withdraw Stark's contracts again if this stuff keeps up, and they also seem to not believe that The Melter even exists. Tony decides his next step is not only to stop The Melter, but to bring back proof of his existence and interference. Seems a lot like what he had to do last month. If they were going to look back on these two plots and choose a look for "the senator that doesn't trust Tony," they should have chosen this one. Though I guess the one from last issue is the one who actually expressed explicitly that he thought Tony could be a spy.
And now I'm the one thinking too much about a one-off generic senator. But... LOOK at him...
Anyway, Stark gets a sudden call saying there's an emergency back at his plant, and he has to flee from the senators' scolding. He returns to find everything melted, with the damages so bad nothing can be used anymore and must simply be removed and scrapped. He changes back into Iron Man (there's a lot of changing back and forth in this one!) and starts to help clear out the melty rubble. But before he could leave the scene, The Melter notices Iron Man as he spies from some trees to make sure his job was done. He decides to stay and battle Iron Man instead.
A guard tells Pepper and Happy to evacuate since The Melter has appeared. Happy suggests Pepper run while he tries to find the boss, but Pepper instead tells him that he "couldn't find a tree in a forest" and runs off ahead of Happy to find Tony herself. Which is pretty awesome that she not only told off the strongman but took initiative herself. Pepper is a BAMF.
They run to the place where Melter is. I don't know why. Maybe they didn't know he was there? But they arrive while Iron Man is carrying some rubble away.
Even though he could easily defeat Iron Man right there, The Melter decides not to; he likes toying with him. Actually I think that was part of why he escaped earlier, too. He instead demonstrates his power by re-melting all the melted stuff that Iron Man is carrying, causing it to coat him in a big iron cast. Of course, Iron Man has the power of transistors, which makes... go away.
This makes Melter super mad and he decides he doesn't want to toy with him anymore (lol) and shoots his melting beam at him...
But nothing happens! Even at maximum intensity, the beam doesn't seem to melt Iron Man's armor for some reason. The Melter panics and notices that there's a crane carrying a boulder (why?) nearby, and decides to melt the crane part so the boulder will fall and smash Iron Man. But there's a big flaw in this plan -- Iron Man isn't even underneath the boulder. But I guess luckily for the Melter, Happy and Pepper are, so Iron Man has to take his attention away from The Melter to rescue them.
Melter runs off while Iron Man is busy, but since Tony knows the layout of the plant so well, he easily catches up to him, locking various doors and stuff with his transistors to trap Melter in a room with him. Melter gets the genius idea to try to melt the reinforced iron floor under Iron Man (it's... very convenient that almost everything around here is made of iron, even the floors...) but Iron Man just floats with his transistor jets. He then hilariously grabs the iron floor and yanks a sheet of iron away like it was a carpet, sending Melter tumbling off the rafter or whatever the heck it was they were even standing on.
About to crash into the floor below, Melter notices an iron covering over the sewage passage. He melts it and dives into the waste disposal waters (ew) and swims away. Iron Man has exhausted a lot of his batteries and can't really afford to go after him, not knowing if he drowned or escaped. It's then that Tony narrates to himself the big reveal -- the reason that Melter wasn't able to damage him this time is because he wasn't actually Iron Man, but Aluminum Man! He hopes that if The Melter is to return that he doesn't discover the secret and find a way to use it against him.
With The Melter likely to rear his ugly melted head again, we finish another issue of the tales of Iron Man. Definitely things picked up with last episode; this one was pretty good, too. We've established a couple good supporting characters now. And we've also started to see there are other weaknesses to Iron Man -- not just in being melted or whatever, but in that Tony requires government contracts to keep going, and he's starting to walk on thin ice with congress. The world is starting to have some shape to it, and we even seem to have some potential recurring nemeses for Iron Man, too, with both Jack Frost and The Melter getting away at the end of their issues. We also have Doctor Strange from before, if he ends up not being just Prototype Strange.
So, now that we're done, let's look at our collection of Handsome Tonys from this month! There was a lot of time spent out-of-costume so there are a lot of Tonys:
Look... at all... those mustaches... I... I'm melting...
OK, I... I gotta go... 'Til next time, keep stachin~...
Tales of Suspense #46: Iron Man Faces the Crimson Dynamo!
It is time for ANTHONY STARK to become IRON MAN once again!! How can the golden super-hero ever defeat "the CRIMSON DYNAMO!"
How exciting! Even the questions end with exclamation points!
This month, we're starting out with Tony half-undressed on the cover itself! I'm pretty sure by now they've caught on that we love seeing naked Tony and are just pandering with fanservice at this point. "Read our magazine! Stripping mustaches inside!"
Coming to you from October of 1963, this time we have yet another Berns and Heck production. Been on a streak of Heck for a while now; maybe he's becoming the main illustrator and we're not going to see much of Kirby now? Or maybe three months in a row isn't too unusual. I don't know.
The issue starts with the comic talking to the reader: "Can you recognize the pudgy, scowling figure entering a strange laboratory just outside Moscow? If you don't then you know nothing about the Cold War! For this stocky fellow is the "Mr. Big" of the Iron Curtain!"
They don't refer to the man by name, but I'm pretty sure we're supposed to assume that this is Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (again, WHY so many H's T_T).
The story starts off with "Mr Big" going to visit a deliciously-mustached scientist named Vanko, who is an expert in electricity. Apparently Big hates him, but he's going to meet him to see some kind of demonstration of some new invention or discovery or whatever. Sounds a lot like like Vanko is supposed to be an evil version of Tony, as this is how a lot of episodes have started out with U.S. government officials going to see his demonstrations.
Vanko shows off some big red suit thing that looks like a super-evil version of Iron Man. Big says he looks like a "human dynamo," but I don't understand how he would come to this conclusion since dynamos look like this... But I guess it's a good lead-in for Vanko to say that he's indeed supposed to be a dynamo, and can manipulate electricity at will.
And basically, according to his demonstration, this gives him two main powers: the ability to remote control anything and the power to blow stuff up at will. He illustrates by manipulating and exploding an Iron Man robot and a full-sized war tank, terrifying Big in the process.
Instead of transistors, we learn that he uses instead a rheostat that is located in his hand. I'm not sure why he needs an entire walking suit to fiddle with a little control in his hand, though. In fact, he purposely leaves out explaining the details because it's above Big's head. All we know is that he just has to "line up the proper frequencies" and stuff goes boom.
We then cut to Tony's part of the world where a rocket he worked on is about to launch some guys into space. Happy and Pepper have a little argument, with Pepper commenting on how Happy has no bravery, to which Happy responds that she'd probably even find fault with Iron Man. Overhearing their conversation, Stark realizes it's probably a good idea to have Iron Man around for the launch, just in case anything goes weird.
A pretty convenient moment to think of it, too, as Crimson Dynamo is lurking around the corner ready to screw up the launch.
The shuttle launches and suddenly starts twirling around wildly in the air. The men inside worry that they're going to die, but little do they know that Iron Man is nearby to save them. Exactly as you would expect, he jumps up and catches the missile right by the nose and allows it to crash into the ground with him breaking the fall. He staggers away and everyone talks about how great Iron Man is. You know, typical everyday stuff around here.
Dynamo curses him from the bushes, complaining that he sabotaged his sabotage. But then he comments that Iron Man can't be around to protect all of Stark's inventions and assets at the same time. Which is honestly something I didn't even bother to think of before, and you'd really wonder why no villain has thought of this before. Attack two things at once and you'll succeed in at least one of them, as Iron Man can only be in one place. Especially a good idea if you plan them so that Iron Man shows up at the decoy location and your real goal is left unguarded.
I guess, of course, things would work out in Stark's favor somehow though. Like he was testing an automated Iron Man robot that went to the decoy place and then he was able to stay and become Iron Man himself for the main battle, or something like that.
Over the next several weeks, Dynamo goes around wrecking havoc in various plants and bases supplied by Tony, messing with the electricity to cause fires and explosions. So rather than attacking multiple places at once, he's just doing surprise attacks all over the place randomly. And Iron Man isn't around to stop him.
In fact, his plan seems to be even more thought-out than I had believed -- knowing that some kind of terrorist is targeting specifically Tony, the government is considering severing his contracts with them. Or rather, a senator seems to be accusing Tony of being a communist spy sabotaging himself. Since weapons dealing is Stark's main source of income, this would mean he'd lose everything! And since Tony and Iron Man's abilities come from their vast supply of materials and money, this would also mean Iron Man would be unable to keep repairing and upgrading himself. Of course, Dynamo is only after Stark, but he's hurting Iron Man more than he realizes as well!
Tony worries about his upcoming financial ruin, but Happy and Pepper vow to stick with him til the bitter end.
But then Crimson Dynamo takes the wrong step next. He chooses for his next target to attack Stark's office directly, luring out Iron Man so he can destroy him.
The fires and explosions start, causing Pepper and Happy to run out of the office, leaving Tony to safely and discreetly change into his Iron Man suit.
Iron Man bursts through the wall and confronts the Crimson Dynamo for the first time. Also, the little caption in the panel says "Next Moment..." as if consecutive panels are not intended to be the next moment after previous panels... I understand when there's a large time skip and they have a caption like "2 Weeks Later..." but why do we need "Next Moment" ????
Dynamo starts fiddling with some dials on his belt to adjust his frequencies or whatever so he can blow up Iron Man, but Tony has already been thinking ahead. From the evidence of the origin of past explosions and problems at his plants, he realizes that his enemy must have control over electricity, and he's prepared... with TRANSISTORS!
Dynamo sends his electrical waves at Iron Man from his hand rheostat, astonished that he didn't suddenly explode. Iron Man explains to him that he used his transistors to create a forcefield of static that interferes with the electricity that he's sending out.
Iron Man asks Dynamo if he's the one that's been sabotaging Tony's plants. He even refers to them as "my plants," which you think would give Dynamo the realization that Iron Man is actually Tony Stark, but I'm guessing this was just an oversight in the writing. Dynamo not only explains that he's been sabotaging the plants, but gives away his identity as Vanko freely, much to the delight of Iron Man who has a tiny ultra-sensitive tape recording device on his belt. Convenient thing, that.
I guess Tony recording the "confession" to prove he wasn't the one blowing up the plants to use it to keep his contracts, though they don't actually show him doing this. I guess it goes well, because we keep getting plenty of issues after this!
Anyway, Tony gets a brilliant idea next -- he realizes that Commies all distrust each other! And what do you do when you have a great epiphany like that? You start... chopping down trees... Yeah, he just starts uprooting trees and hacking them down with his hands and stuff, going nuts all over the place, while Dynamo just watches in confusion. Thankfully, he just continues to stand around and be confused, allowing Iron Man to build a tree fort around him, trapping him. He then flies away to go grab a radio, taking several minutes to return.
I... can't even believe this was his plan. Why didn't Dynamo just... run around while he was picking up trees and tossing them? It looks like Iron Man could only carry two trees at a time, so it wouldn't be that hard to just... move away... why would you just stand there and let him pile up so many trees around you? And during that entire time he was gone trying to find a radio, couldn't you just climb out??? What kind of plot is this??????
Anyway, Iron Man returns and picks Dynamo up and starts carrying him around. Again, why couldn't you just do this from the beginning? Well, I mean, I guess he needed to go get the radio, but considering he always has everything else conveniently on him or can just build new items out of nowhere, I really think it's weird that a radio of all things is something he didn't have.
Iron Man threatens to drop Dynamo into some water, which obviously will fry him, but he tries to convince his foe not to do it because the electricity will shock them both. Iron Man responds that it's a worthy sacrifice to get rid of Vanko and Dynamo, but I don't understand why he couldn't just... you know... drop him... why would have have to go in the water with him? I mean, they're flying...
So yeah, Berns was really not having a good day when he wrote this script, I think...
Anyway, Dynamo starts whining that he doesn't want to die, and so Iron Man lets him listen to the radio instead, by giving him some "ear plugs." Of course, Dynamo is still wearing his helmet, so he doesn't have exposed ears... and we just see these weird pink things with all kinds of weird shapes sticking out of them stuck to the side of Dynamo's helmet. Iron Man hijacks the airwaves to intercept a transmission from Mr Big telling his Comrades to machine-gun down Vanko when he returns, as he doesn't want the threat of Dynamo turning on him in the future.
But then we learn that he really didn't go get a radio, he just went away and recorded the message himself. So it wasn't even hijacked airwaves, it was just him talking into his stupid tape recorder. He doesn't even say that he learned to speak Russian or that he imitated the voice or anything. It sounds like he just went and talked in his normal voice in English on this tape recorder and Dynamo believed it was Khrushchev. Then Iron Man congratulates himself on such a great plan, commenting that it obviously worked because everyone knows how treacherous all communists are!
Berns... Come on, man...
Dynamo gets mad that he was tricked, upset that communists can't be trusted. I guess if it had actually been a real intercepted transmission, he would have heard a similar thing, but in this case, it was Iron Man who tricked him. So Iron Man is the one who is lying and shouldn't be trusted, right? Iron Man then offers him a job working for Tony Stark as an electrical engineer. But I don't know why Tony would want Vanko to work for him, since he just got done explaining that his plot was guaranteed to work because no communists can be trusted.
I... don't know. We'll just go with it 8) No questions...
And yeah, it just ends like that. That would be cool if Vanko showed up again as a recurring character, because he has a fantastic mustache. And speaking of fantastic mustaches, let's check out our Handsome Tonys for the month:
... Yeah, only two this time. Mostly just because Tony hardly appeared at all, but at least when he was around we did get to see some nice images. Ascot!Tony makes up in quality for our lack of Tonys in quantity.
We get two more side-story comics and another written story this time. I think the prose was entitled "The Utopia?" I'm not sure. I don't even care to go check. The first side comic was about some gargoyles and the second about "Mr Flubb's Flashlight," neither drawn by Lieber, so we don't get any sexy long-faced mustached villains this time. The second, though, has the art credited to Sol Brodsky, whom I don't remember seeing credited before, so that's kinda cool. His faces look a lot more round and vibrant, almost even manga-ish compared to the art style we've seen with the other artists so far.
Promised in the caption at the end, we're getting an 18-pager next month where Iron Man will face off against "the Mysterious Melter." Look forward to that! Until then, keep stachin~
Tales of Suspense #45: The Icy Fingers of Jack Frost!
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~
CYTUS II!!
So, for Rayark's 7th anniversary, some of the additional stories to Cytus II were on sale, so I had to nab them. ConneR was a part of them. I had to.
Anyway, I hadn't played Cytus II in quite a while. And I have no idea why!! The game is so phenomenal. I played the hell out of the first Cytus and then when Cytus II came out, I played it for like... a couple days non-stop and then kinda moved on to other stuff and never came back. And now coming back, I wish I hadn't stopped hahaha.
So let's talk about the awesomeness that is Cytus II and the DLC I just got. Actually, I don't know too much about the DLC yet because after leveling up ConneR a few times, I realized I wanted to go back and finish the base story before playing the DLC stories, because I don't want to learn something about A.R.C. or cyTus or something that would be more fun to learn through the main story.
So, Cytus is a rhythm game series (I guess you can call it that, since there's two now XD) with a sci-fi/cyberpunk story. The first game basically just had chapters and you could play through in any order, and each chapter had a "story" stage where the stuff that happened in the background told a story while you played the music stage. Becuse you were concentrating on the music stage, it was hard to really watch the story, and there was very little text so you were basically trying to figure out the story by watching a slideshow of (really awesome) artwork, and to be honest, even after clearing all the chapters many times and trying hard to understand the stories, I still don't really understand the story of Cytus.
Cytus II, however, is a lot easier to understand. Kind of. The games are originally in Chinese and the translation is not amazing, as Rayark is a pretty small company still. But there's a lot more narrative, so even though I still don't understand everything, there's a lot that I'm following. Some of it is not meant to be understood, as part of the story is learning about the world in which the story takes place, so you'll hear about concepts that you're not supposed to fully understand at first. So I don't know how much of it is me not getting it and how much of it is me just not being far enough into the story yet.
BUT let's talk about how cool the story and atmosphere is, along with how the story unfolds. The game takes place in a future where people... live inside the internet or something? It's kind of hard to explain, because everyone seems to have a corporeal life and connect to the internet separately to do things like talk on BBS and stuff, but at the same time, they seem to live inside some kind of computer world called cyTus where things are divided into "Nodes" and real life has simulated elements...? Definitely there's more to this that we're supposed to understand as the story goes, so that's part of why it's so hard to explain, but I think the best analogy would be that it seems to be something like the Digital World from the Digimon series, but with a darker setting. And not a bunch of cute creatures that evolve into furry sex fantasies running around.
At first it just seems like a cool virtual world that would be any tech nerd's paradise. But as you go on, you start to learn about the inner workings of the world and its government, which seems to have recently had a major shift in power, and it seems to be very questionable. I don't want to give too much away, but you'll easily get captivated by the world and find yourself eager to find out more. Even though it's a rhythm game at its core and you can even completely ignore the story if you want, you'll find yourself dire to get as much EXP as possible to move the story along instead of just playing music stages for the music aspect.
The main story unfolds through reading various message board posts. There are three main characters' stories you can play, and each one functions like a 'song pack,' with their own set of music to play. You choose a character and play music stages in their pack, and based on your score and whether or not you've cleared that song before, you'll get some experience points for that character at the end of the stage toward leveling up that character. While it's called "leveling up," it's more just a story progression bar.
When you get a level up, you'll see some new messages appear on the BBS, when you can read to figure out how the story is going. Not only do you see messages from the characters you're leveling up, but you'll see other characters' messages, and even just randos' topics and stuff, too. Each topic has a bunch of comments on it (there's even like spam comments and stuff haha) and through these posts, you learn about the events happening in the world of the game. You'll see the events unfold more through the perspective of each character and their fans and friends (the main characters are all musicians/performers) as you level up each character.
Eventually you hit a "level lock" where you have to have the other two characters leveled up to a similar level before you that character will start gaining EXP again. The main point of this is just so the story will make sense, so you won't start seeing BBS threads vaguely referencing stuff that you don't even know happened yet, or get other characters' major events spoiled early, stuff like that.
The characters themselves have so much unique personality, and you even learn about their fanbase, which has their own cultures, too.
First, we have PAFF, who seems at first to be your standard "pop princess" type, but as you go on, you find that maybe that image was created for her and she's not really that type of person. She's my favorite character, and probably the real "main" character of the overall narrative. Her songs are mostly vocal songs with powerful, emotional vocals.
It's hard to comment on PAFF's personality because she's very reserved, and her staff seems to post on her behalf online more than she herself. She has a loyal following of fans who call themselves "Puffs," and she seems to be one of the most popular music performers in cyTus. Threads related to her story tend to be pretty calm and similar to something you'd see on a friendly Facebook forum.
Then we have NEKO#ΦωΦ (I hope that displays properly; it's not displaying properly in vim for me but the encoding should stay in-tact I hope XD) who is like... an obnoxious gamer? I don't know XD Even though she's a public figure, she openly bashes PAFF and others and loves to stir up drama. She has a lot of easily-excitable and crude fans, as well as a lot of normal fans, too. Her threads tend to be full of much more heated comments; think something like the 'bad' parts of YouTube.
For our other main character, we have ROBO_Head, an online administrator who talks like a computer. I'm still not really sure if he is a person or a legit robot. I think he's a person who pretends to be a computer? Of course, his fans are the geekier type as well as some fans who just think he's a cool robot like Daft Punk or whatever hahaha. The threads tend to be a lot more mature with a few casual comments thrown in.
We also have other characters (who have their own stories you can buy as DLC; the core game is only $2 for a TON of content, and then additional stories are $10 each (or $5 when there's a sale), a pricing system I really like; you can pay a small amount to get a full game, and then if you like it enough to want to see a lot more, then you can pay the big $s) who interact along with all of this too: Xenon, a more adult-acting character who doesn't like to get into all the drama and posts short and truthful comments; ConneR, a historian with a fascination for 'classical' instruments like guitars; and Cherry and Joe, who I don't really know anything about. Xenon and NEKO seem to be friends, though Xenon likes to keep NEKO and her fans in check. ConneR doesn't interact with the others, but is sometimes referenced by them. He seems to be more connected to the overall world/setting than the other characters, seeming to know more about everything going on than anyone else. He also seems to have more insight into what life was like before all the major changes that seemed to have happened before the story starts, as he's a bit older than the other characters.
So in all, you can pay $2 to get the full main story and a complete game, and if you like it enough to want twice that with additional stories, you can pay $20-40 for the full HUGE experience. I like that a lot better than paying $40 for a game only to find out you don't like it and don't want to spend $2 on the DLC. There's also song packs you can buy for $5 each so if you're wanting to keep throwing money at the game, you can, and that's probably where they make a lot of the money. It's easy to get hooked into the game and want more, and with such a low entry price, it's not intimidating to drop a few bucks to try it. The original Cytus used a similar system, but the original game was completely free with a $2 fee to remove advertisements from the full game, and then there was a bunch of additional paid DLC for a lot more.
SO, that's how the story works. So what about these additional characters? Xenon and ConneR were on sale for the Rayark 7th anniversary and I had to pick them up. Xenon is a very fascinating character from his interactions with the other characters, and ConneR is a disgruntled old man who seems to know a lot of secrets. And he has a bit of a mustache.
I only played a little bit of ConneR's story, but instead of BBS (since he's not much into that), we get insight into some government files about him as we level him up! After reading a couple, I knew we'd probably find out WAY more about the world than I wanted to know before completing the other stories, so I went back and started working on those again. It seems really exciting, though, and I can't wait to get back to working on his story.
So what about the actual gameplay? I mean, I have talked this whole time about the story, and this is a rhythm game. The gameplay should be the core, right? Not story?
Well, don't worry. Rayark is a company passionate about rhythm games. The staff are not only musicians but rhythm game fans themselves. You get a variety of awesome music and the tap charts are phenomenal. Aside from another Rayark game I love called VOEZ, the Cytus games are the most musically-satisfying rhythm games I've ever played. (VOEZ is so amazing though I can't even begin to tell you how fantastic those charts are!) The timing is spot-on, the scoring system encourages you to keep trying harder and harder, the challenge ranges from beginner-friendly to fucking insanity, and there are tons and tons of songs each with three difficulty levels to play.
It's basically just a "tap on the buttons in time" type of game, with taps appearing all over the screen similar to something like Ouendan, but the placement on the screen determines their timing, with a timing bar bouncing back and forth. There are regular taps, held notes, notes you follow with swiping, and little flick notes. The tap chart designers really know what they are doing, and write charts that fit with the music perfectly, and they don't just follow the melody (like you'll find, sadly, in way too many rhythm games). You'll play along with the percussion, the counter-melodies, the wub wubs, unique taps that create their own percussive rhythms... if you like the composition of music and the variety that goes into the different voices that make up a music track, you will be very delighted by the attention to detail to all of these things.
I can't recommend Cytus enough. If you just want to try one of the two games, go with Cytus II if you're willing to shell the $2 solely for the awesome story and atmosphere, but if you're just wanting to see what the rhythm gameplay is like, go ahead and try the free version of Cytus. Another game I must recommend is VOEZ, which is completely free with some IAPs available. You can unlock stuff by playing through the story (which is super challenging) or pay little bits of money here and there to unlock stuff without having to complete the story. The game cycles a lot of paid content into the 'free for now' sections so each week you have access to new paid content without having to pay anyway.
But yeah, playing Cytus II again now with ConneR and Xenon unlocked got me super hyped about this game again, and I had to write this entry. It's especially nice because I've been dying for a game I can play without having to sit at a desk for when I can't or don't want to sit up in my computer chair lol. But yeah, if you're a fan of rhythm games at all, go check out Cytus and VOEZ. There's also Deemo, which is a bit older and not as solid as the newer games, and based solely around piano tracks. It's amazing, too, but I'm spoiled by the newer games.
How many diaries can I start?!
Heya, friends! Here's some ThaaoNET news:
I'm restarting the Romancing SaGa 3 play diary. I originally talked about doing this because I found information saying you could get Young Fang earlier in the game, but the truth behind that is... well, you can get him, but only temporarily. My actual reason for restarting is that I accidentally deleted a bunch of my screencaps. After the most current entry that was posted, I went through a major dungeon and sealed an Abyss Gate, but that's all gone now. I could easily run around that area for a few makeshift screenshots, but I can't re-summon the boss or see the cutscenes revolving around it without starting the game over, so I may as well just do that...
I also have a slightly better understanding of Mikhail's mass combat system, so I might try to go more into that. Before, I didn't do much with it because I just lost every time, so we didn't get to see much of what could really happen with it in the diary. But this time maybe I can get somewhere with it.
I'm also hoping to pick up the Romancing SaGa 2 diary again soon. Been having a hankering to play both of these games.
I also started yet another new diary! Welcome to the pack, Colobocle Station for Girl, also known as Harvest Moon DS Cute! This is one I've been wanting to do since the very beginning of ThaaoNET, so I figured I may as well just jump into it. This is a game that can take hundreds upon hundreds of hours to complete fully, so why not just do it bits at a time alongside the others? Well, that's kind of my thinking for all of these things which is why I have like 10 diaries going simultaneously right now or something lol.
I also divided up diaries into another section on the main menu. On the left side of the home page, the "Ongoing" category has now been divided into the "New" and "Ongoing" categories. "New" is for diaries that have not been finished in any way, while "Ongoing" is for diaries that have multiple playthroughs planned and at least one playthrough has been completely finished. This way if you're only wanting to read diaries that cover an entire play from beginning to end of a game, you can look at the "Finished" and "Ongoing" categories to find those, while "New" will only have completely unfinished things! Convenient, right? It also breaks up the tons of diaries in one category so it looks a little neater.
In my own time, I've been working on getting my Chaos Chao in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, and after almost 300 hours of gameplay, I've finally gotten all three types! Of course, a large chunk of that gameplay time was spent elsewhere; it's not like it took 300 hours to raise three Chao. They're very cute; I named them Right (Angel), Wily (Devil), and Cossack (Neutral). I'll be showing them off over on my Twitch channel some time soon, so follow there if you wanna check that out~
