Showing newest entries, #1 to #2 of 2, with tag #pepper_potts.
Tales of Suspense #48: The Mysterious Mr. Doll!
See the NEW Iron Man! This one you dare not miss! Featuring: A truly different super-villain! None can challenge the great MISTER DOLL!
Welcome to December of 1963! We're finishing of the year with a big doozy! This one promises to be a classic in the years to come, even with a bulleted list of why it's so great! It has EVERYTHING!
- A powerful, seemingly unbeatable villain!
- A super-hero who reaches new heights of greatness, as you shall see!
- Produced by a combo of comicdom's brightest stars!
And by these brightest stars, we mean that Stan Lee actually wrote the script this time, and the art is credited to "Steve Ditko and Dick Ayers." I have no idea what that is supposed to mean. I'm assuming that Ditko did the main artwork and Ayers did the inking, or maybe they like... took turns? I don't know. The inking has this style of really think outlining that we haven't seen so far. Looks kinda cool.
And we're going to get to see the NEW Iron Man! He's finally starting to look like the "normal" Iron Man look, complete with Iron Underwear that he wears on the outside of his suit. And no, that's not Guts Man. Nor Quail Man. Just Iron Man.
We start off this month with Pepper receiving a call from Charleton Carter, a steel tycoon and apparently Tony's supplier, telling Stark's office that he's calling off their trade deal. Tony, of course, is shocked and worried, as Carter's never done such a thing before, and, well, he needs that steel.
As happened last episode, he goes off to visit Carter to see what's up with the suspicious behavior, telling Happy he doesn't need a ride after all, but not explaining why. Of course, we know why -- he's going to turn into Iron Man and like... fly there or whatever. Actually he just drives his own car. In the Iron Man suit. I don't know why...
When Iron Man arrives at Carter's cliffside manor, he seems some creep wandering around the grounds in a strange costume, immediately identifying him as a super-villain. You know, villains could probably get away with a lot more schemes if they just wore normal clothes, I'd bet. Well, it didn't really help The Actor, I guess. He got vine-bonded into a car pretty easily.
Anyway, the creeper goes back into the house, and Iron Man hears a cry for help from a tower window. He leaps up and enters through the window, which is conveniently open so he can hear things inside and enter without having to bust it down. If I was a villain hurting someone who was screaming out, I'd probably close the window. But that's just me. Maybe it was stuffy in there?
Upon arrival, Iron Man finds Carter being tortured by the guy in the crazy getup, who happens to have a pretty fantastic-looking low-handing handlebar mustache. The guy is carrying some weird little clay doll thing with Charleton's face on it, but upon seeing Iron Man, he quickly fashions it to look like him instead. Tony starts freaking out that his bones are pulsating or something like that. Now, if the doll controls or hurts someone based on the face it's wearing, why is it affecting Tony? Because he's wearing the Iron Man suit? So does the doll also haave to wear hats and masks and stuff to affect someone? If Tony took his helmet off, would the doll suddenly stop working? Could he like draw a mustache on Iron Man's mask and make it stop working until Mister Doll drew a mustache on his doll? It just... doesn't make sense to me... And I have a feeling it's not going to be explained any further. We'll see, I guess.
Oh, and Mister Doll was talking in third-person and half explaining his ploy aloud to Carter, so that's how we (and Iron Man) learned his name and about his doll. Though I have to say Mister Doll is... not exactly the most intimidating name for a villain.
Encumbered by the power of the doll, Iron Man ends up falling off the balcony and into the water below, sinking fast, unable to control his own body. With Iron Man out of the way, Mister Doll changes his doll's face back to Charleton's to continue threatening him, but that gives Iron Man just enough time to swim to the surface and survive.
But now there's a big problem -- all of that exertion has drained Tony's batteries dry, and he's starting to pass out. He races home in his car and just barely makes it to the outlet to plug himself in back at his lab. I wonder how far away it was? Was there not somewhere else he could have charged up that was closer? I mean, he put on a jacket and scarf which concealed that he was wearing his Iron Man suit to everyone at his lab and office, so he could have done something similar elsewhere.
Anyway, he tumbles to the floor and the narration wonders if maybe he plugged in just a bit too late. Yup. That's it. Series is over, and this episode was only a couple pages long. Bye! It was fun doing the Iron Man readthrough with you all. Sorry it didn't last longer. Guess I'll move on to Avengers or something?
Of course not. We haven't even seen the new Iron Man we were promised on the cover!
Not having heard from Stark, Pepper and Happy are worried when he doesn't show up in the morning. A disturbingly-deformed Pepper calls the lab and Stark barely wakes up in time to answer the call, telling her that he fell asleep in the lab from working too hard and not to let him have any disturbances whatsoever for a few hours. He realizes that his battery is a huge weakness (only just now?!) and worries about how it's seeming to have to be recharged more and more frequently anymore. I wonder if it's a lithium ion battery. Anyway, he decides to make some major changes to his armor to compensate for this weakness.
And he makes a lot of changes. In fact, he pretty much just scraps the whole thing and makes a new suit. The only thing remaining from the old one is the chestplate that he can't get rid of anyway because it keeps him alive, and his little golden underwear part that exists solely because they didn't want to draw him in regular underwear or show him naked.
Both of those parts get covered up anyway by a new red part. The new chestplate opens up in the front and has transistor batteries (??) inside some panels that he can reach easily. I guess these are new batteries to replace the old one? I don't really know. It doesn't explain it. But the next part is pretty cool -- he has arm and leg cuffs that act as backup generators! If the main battery is to die, the backups can kick in and help him stay alive for longer. And I'm assuming they'll alert him that the battery is low, giving him time to escape to an outlet while he's still conscious and in good condition, instead of just suddenly being on the verge of collapse every time the battery starts to run out.
The cuffs also contain the golden sleeves and pant legs of the armor. After he clasps the cuffs on, magnets in the shoulders of the chestplate and in the red undies part suck up the rest of the armor without him having to put it on himself.
Wait.
Crotchplate. I'm going to call it a crotchplate.
Similarly, he also has new shoes that are kinda like little slippers, He just steps into them and clicks his heels together and magnets suit up the rest of his boot. They also have jets in them that are "less than an inch thick" but that seems like they would burn his feet when he powered them on. But probably some transistors keep his feet cool or something lol.
He also has a new ultra-thin hood with a hinged mask that he can flip up and down. Seems kinda like a bad idea -- an enemy could just flip the mask up and see his secret identity? Maybe it sticks on with magnets or transistors though. He also says that the mask allows people to see his expression, which can give him a psychological advantage against his enemies. Now, I don't understand how that part is any different than his old mask. It just has holes for the eyes and mouth. Just like the old one... Except this one has thin slots for the mouth, while the old one was just a big hole that let you see the entire mouth, so this would seems like it would be less expressive...??? No questions, no questions...
And with that, the NEW IRON MAN is born! I love the concept for the new suit. Not only does it look super cool, but the concepts are pretty neat. Especially I love the backup generators in the cuffs, and the way the magnets zip the suit on after he places the cuffs. I wish I could see it animated! With music and flashy backgrounds so it looks like a magical girl transformation sequence! Complete with cute pose at the end!
The new facemask with the v-shape is pretty cool, too. I don't know how soon that is going to go away, but it doesn't last terribly long, which is a shame.
Another important feature of this armor is that it's lightweight. Before, the power of transistors helped Tony manipulate the suit despite it being heavy. But now if you get tossed into the ocean off a balcony from a rich mustached tycoon's house because a doll is making your bones throb, you'll be able to swim to the surface without draining your entire battery fighting against the weight of your own suit. Fantastic!
The police have been questioning why all the richest dudes in the city are signing over all their money to a "Mister Doll." It's pretty hilarious because that would mean Mister Doll is his legal name and he's actually acquiring wealth under that name. So he probably has a Mister Doll bank account. But shouldn't that mean he also has a Mister Doll ID and social security number and stuff? They should be able to find him easily with that identification information...
But uh, no questions. Well the police have questions. But everyone who signs over their assets to Doll seem to be so mortified that the police can figure out nothing from them. After realizing that Charleton Carter was the third richest guy around, the police suspect that Mister Doll's next victim is going to be the weapons dealer Anthony Stark!
The police schedule a meeting with him, warning him of the danger, and offer to stay guard with him. He declines the offer, saying that he has enough of his own private guard. The police leave, and Tony realizes now that his guard is on high alert (he only has one guard lol), he has to figure out a way to ditch him.
He tells the guard that he's been wanting to ask Pepper on a date and would like some alone time with her. They go to a secluded room with only one entrance and exit, so that the guard can stand out front for protection without having to worry that Stark is missing. Pepper is overjoyed that her crush wants to date her and leaps into his arms. Tony thanks her for going along with his scheme and runs off into a secret exit, telling Pepper to continue talking to herself to keep the guard tricked. Of course, this leaves Pepper bewildered, sobbing to herself as he disappears.
Tony runs off to change into Iron Man, and at least the very first thing he thinks as he changes into his suit is that he regrets having to treat Pepper that way. I'm glad he's remorseful, but it was still a super shitty thing to do, and I'm sure he could have come up with some better plan. But if Tony perhaps did realize that Pepper wasn't acting to go along with his plan (which would explain why he felt so bad about it), then now Tony realizes that Pepper has feelings for him, at least. Though considering it's Tony, we're probably just supposed to assume that all women have feelings for him so this isn't even a reveal to him.
He should have just said he wanted to date happy instead and confused everyone for a while.
Iron Man appears in front of the guard watching over the room that Tony and Pepper are supposedly in and tells him that he's arrived to take over the guard duty. What's super weird is that everyone knows that despite his radically new appearance, everyone knows it's Iron Man because they can recognize his voice. His voice! It's Tony's voice! If they can recognize it, why can't they tell it's Tony?! No questions, no questions... ugh... Though I guess that Tony could have installed some kind of transistor-based voice-altering mechanism in his suit... Though this was never addressed...
Not long after Iron Man takes over, Mister Doll appears to target Stark. Iron Man rushes to face him, but the new look isn't too worrying for Doll. He just changes the face on his doll to reflect the new look, soon paralyzing Iron Man by twisting his arm with the power of the doll.
And now I see what Tony meant about the mask showing his expression -- the holes on the mask actually change shape to match Tony's expression! Well, that's not going to work to intimidate Mister Doll now... in fact, he's going to see just how much pain Tony is in by the writhing expression on Iron Man's mask!
So I guess his expression plan backfired. And even more with Doll's next move -- he changes his doll's face to look like Stark, to manipulate him into crawling to him to sign over all his stuff. Little does he know Tony is standing right there next to him. Iron Man turns away from Doll, afraid to show his face, because he can't let Doll see how much he's suffering, or he might realize that Tony Stark is the one under the costume.
For some reason, this annoys Doll and he commands Iron Man to get out of his sight -- just want Iron Man wanted! Thanks to the new lightweight suit, Iron Man is able to fight through the pain enough to get out of the room without raising suspicion. Doll just thinks he's already terrified of him and cowering away. Escaping to his lab, Tony comes up with a very risky plan. He has an idea for a device he can create to defeat Mister Doll, but he's in too much pain from fighting the control of the doll to work on it.
He detaches his chestplate device that keeps his heart beating despite the shrapnel lodged inside. As his heart slows down, it will deaden his nerves, making him unable to feel the pain, so he can work on the new device. But he'll only be able to stay alive for a few short moments before having to plug himself back in. Now, I don't really understand how he's going to sit and build this entire device without his nervous system functioning, but... you know, no questions.
The plan seems to work out with Tony plugging in at the last minute for the second time this issue. After powering up a bit, he rushes off to face Mister Doll. He doesn't seem to be in pain now, despite having plugged himself back in and reactivating his chestplate. Though I guess Doll is using the doll to force Tony to come to him, so complying with the order shouldn't pain him. I guess that makes sense. Of course, Tony busts into the room as Iron Man, which makes Mister Doll think Iron Man has come back to try to fight him again.
He changes the doll's face to resemble Iron Man's again. This time, he threatens to drop the doll onto the floor, which apparently will be devastating. He makes it sound like it would kill him. But before he can drop it, Iron Man quickly spins toward the doll and fires his new device -- a tiny "transistor-powered force beam," which changes the doll's face to Mister Doll's own shape! NO QUESTIONS! But at that exact moment, Doll had already dropped the doll, and he falls to the ground with it, unable to get back up. So I guess he didn't die?
Iron Man alerts Happy and the guard (or maybe the police, idk) that Mister Doll is incapacitated. He returns as Tony and Happy asks him where Pepper is. I guess he just completely forgot about her being locked in that room! Teehee!
They go and find her, and she's super mad. She storms off, and Happy talks about how he doesn't understand women. Tony says he understands women, but not Pepper!
Like... Seriously??? Are you kidding me? You can't understand why she is upset? You misled her into thinking you returned her feelings, made her cry, then told her you were going to make a call and come back, but you never came back, you just completely forgot about locking her in a room by herself to cry, and now much later you let her out and wonder why she is upset?! Like, as readers, we're supposed to relate to Tony and Happy being confused about this like women are some kind of weird, funny, enigmatic alien species that are impossible to understand. But, like, having even a modicum of compassion for fellow human beings would allow you to understand what is wrong here. Are men just supposed to be that fucking dense, or are we supposed to assume women are so inhuman they're incapable of normal feelings and should be happy to be subserviently locked in a room for hours after being lied to just because it was a man that did it...? Like... what??? I can't relate to this at all, and it's unsettling that the writers would assume anyone could relate to this ending... Well, I mean, other than people who relate to Pepper, I guess.
I can't even just write this off with "no questions" because this is just so stupidly dense.
Let's not dwell on it, though... We'll just move on to Handsome Tonys. Chauvinist that he may be, he's still flippin' hot with his sexy little mustache. And with this episode being heavily focused on Tony, we got a lot of 'em:
Mr. Ditko seems a little inconsistent in his style for now, especially with characters other than Tony (that one Pepper... *shudders*), or maybe they really did have him and Ayers taking turns drawing panels or something...? Seems kinda unrealistic, but IDK.
But overall we got a lot of nice Tonys. The eyes are much brighter and more detailed than Kirby or Heck, with focus on different features getting more attention to detail. In particular, the noses are well-detailed, which is a delight for me. The mustache doesn't randomly disappear when Tony is further away from the point of view of the panel, either, and it's not randomly changing thickness as much as the other artists' 'staches.
And the inconsistency isn't any worse than Kirby's, and not nearly as wild as Lieber's, so I'd say this is a great style for Iron Man, and it would be nice to see more of Ditko's style going forward.
Oh, and speaking of Lieber, our side story was another comic by him called "Kraddak." Can you guess that the villain looked like? Though this may be the hottest one yet; though I did really like the guy who got sucked into space. Two different types of tastes, I guess... which one is better depends on the mood. We also had some prose called "The Pact."
With our characters getting more development and Iron Man getting his new look, it seems like going forward should be pretty promising. Until next time, keep on 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~
