He lives! He walks! He conquers! WHO? WHO? WHO?
Hey friends. I've started this like 2 or 3 times and never gotten very far, so here I am trying again. Basically I'm just going to (try to) read through The Invincible Iron Man and comment on it. Not necessarily all of it, as I'm using the DVD-ROM thing I bought forever ago which was released in 2007 so I'm obviously missing over a decade of comics here. I'm also only reading Iron Man itself and not like, every other comic ever where he appears because then I'd pretty much have to read the entire Marvel publication list from the 60s to doay, and I'm... not doing that.
I actually don't know crap about Marvel or comics or anything. I just read Iron Man as a kid and have a huge crush on Tony Stark. And I've always wanted to read them from the beginning. So this is the perspective of a complete idiot reading these things, so maybe that's interesting?
But yeah, this is just a commentary with a few little "screencaps" of the comics (I mean, they're on a DVD so I guess that's appropriate to call them?). They'll be cropped and this is just commentary, so this isn't meant to be a way to actually get the experience of reading them, so if you wanna see it for yourself, go subscribe to Marvel's online thing (I'm assuming they have these lol) or buy the DVD-ROM collection yourself, if it's still around. Or I guess shell out millions of dollars for the actual mags.
Anyway, we're going to start with Tales of Suspense No. 39, which is where Tony and Iron Man's story begins. Apparently ToS was a science-fiction anthology where this story started before it spun off into its own magazine. Later it featured the story of Captain America and the magazine just became the Cap series itself, I think?
This one is from March of 1963, in the middle of Vietnam's war of resistence against American colonization, or as we like to ambiguously refer to it here, the "Vietnam War." Which is an important context as the story intends to take place in an alternate timeline to our real lives, basically just... real life but with superheroes.
But yeah, enough of that blabbering, let's get blabbering on other things!
The cover of the magazine entices you to guess who this mysterious new hero is, showing parts of the "armor" being picked up by mysterious hands with captions, "WHO? WHO? WHO?"
But then we go on to introduce a completely new character and story so I don't really get this angle here, since we wouldn't know who this was anyway...?
But yeah, let's get to it.
Well, kinda. A cool thing about the DVD-ROM is that they are just scans of the mags, so the advertisements and weird side-content is still in-tact. The first page is actually an ad for the Made Simple self-teaching Encyclopedia set, which you can own for mere pennies a day!
I don't think owning an encyclopedia is much of a thing these days, but when I was a kid, my family had a set or two. I actually used to enjoy reading random parts of them, even though I don't think I actually learned anything concrete from it. But I'm sure I got some kind of growth out of it.
The one in the advert seems kind of cool, as it seems to be structured to be more like a self-teaching school course, instead of just a big compilation of informative articles. Ours were just organized alphabetically, so we had like an "A" encyclopedia, while these have like, a math book, an astronomy book, etc. I probably would have read them even more as a kid if they were like this, honestly. Though once I was a little older we got the Encarta 95 CD-ROM, which had short video clips, sound clips, color pictures, hyperlinks, and even some little games you could play. I don't think I'd have too much interest in a traditional paper encyclopedia after that, hahaha.
OK, you've been here for like 10 mintues now and we still haven't even started talking about the comic or the story.
So after the encyclopedia, we get the inside cover page, or whatever you call this. We see Iron Man emerging from behind some rocks, almost as if he's creating that crevice himself by shoving the rocks apart.
This page is also where we get to see the credits for who worked on this episode. The main plot was devised by Stan Lee, the indiviudal script written by Larry Lieber, the art by Don Heck, and lettering by Art Simek. I'll be honest and tell you I never paid attention to these things as a kid, and of these names, Stan Lee is the only one I even really know. From having friends who love comics, I'm somewhat familiar with the name Don Heck but I don't know enough about any of the artists to be able to tell whose style is whose or whatever. So I'm going to try to pay attention to that this time. And try to do it without looking up stuff about them so I'm forming my own strange opinions about these things lol.
Iron Man's original appearance is pretty funny; not only is he this bulky tinman thing, but he even has an antenna! Get ready for a lot of funny 60's sci-fi stuff like this.
Comic language has always been funny to me, too. I love how words are randomly written in heavyweight text, and they try to cram as many "creative" words as they can in there. The panel on this cover starts with, "Watch his awesome approach! Listen to his ponderous footsteps as he lumbers closer... closer..."
I'll admit this is my first time hearing the word "ponderous." Immediately I relate it to the word "ponder," so I feel like his footsteps must be lost in deep thought about something. Or maybe it's like the word 'curious' where it can describe a reaction as well, so maybe his footsteps incite you to become contemplative yourself.
Well, I guess it really just means clumsy and heavy or something. I really wonder how many kids in the 1960's knew the word "ponderous," and for those who didn't, how many looked it up? Like, maybe "ponderous" was just a normal part of 60 kid vocabulary, but...
SO LET'S GET TO THE ACTUAL STORY!
We open up with Tony showing some government agents the power of his TRANSISTORS. And just so you know, transistors are going to be a big thing. Pretty much whenever anything fantastical happens, the reason will be transistors.
Anyway, we're actually inside his own lab, which is "secluded somewhere in the U.S. defense perimeter." The government officials show up and talk about how Stark must really RATE. In fact, he RATES so much, The Commies™ would give their EYETEETH to know what he's working on.
The bold stuff is the stuff that's written like that in the book lol.
But yeah, transistors. Stark is demonstrating his transistor by placing a small magnet on a huge steel vault, then "powering it up" with a "tiny transistor" sitting on a table. Basically he switches on the fancy table thing and it makes a zappy beam that BLOWS UP THE ENTIRE SAFE DOOR. Woo, TRANSISTORS!
But we also gte to see the face of our new hero. The sexy, delicious, mustached face. He seems to have a nice pyramid stache here, but we'll soon see that the exact style will bounce around a little bit, but mostly stay in the pyramid-pencil range.
Oh, and that agent he's showing this too is pretty cute himself.
We're invited to learn more about the man behind the TRANSISTORS, which consists of just two panels of him flirting and girls looking at him so we learn that not only does he make nifty science things, but he's rich and everyone wants to bang him.
It's the mustache.
And then we're taken to the actual beginning of the story -- somewhere in a ~crazy Vietnam jungle~ or something, there's an evil RED tyrant named Wong-Chu who just goes around pillaging towns for fun.
He also is literally colored yellow and speaks in short, broken English. Though I would assume he's actually speaking his native language in these parts and we're just reading a translation, so I'm not sure why it would be translated as having bad grammar and short, abrupt thoughts... well, I mean, we all know why, but...
At least they had the decency to give him a handsome manchu. And it's hard to really see from this angle, but it's indeed a manchu with a little goatee, not a circle beard. This was just an angle where he looked kinda hot.
Anyway, Stark is in the same jungle as Wong-Chu because the U.S. army wants to transport their heavy artillery through the dense jungle, so TRANSISTORS make them lightweight and small for some reason. But he trips over a booby trap with a big BAROOM and is captured by THE REDS. Well, Wong-Chu at least.
Tony is about to die because some shrapnel is closing in on his heart. Wong-Chu's evil scheme is to "trick" Tony into making weapons for him by promising to have a doctor operate on his shrapnel problem after the weapons are complete. They give him a big lab with plenty of iron and tools to work with, and complete privacy, as well!
Well, kinda. The next day they throw in some Professor Yinsen guy to help for no real explained reason whatsoever. Yinsen clearly does not want to cooperate with the RED TYRANTS so it's not like they're putting him in the lab to keep an eye on Stark.
So Yinsen and Tony work together to create an "iron body" that will not only work as a weapon to fight the REDS but also will somehow keep the shrapnel from reaching Tony's heart, keeping him alive.
I really appreciated the recent(-ish) film adaptation of this story, by the way. It was basically just a modern version of this exact story, using Afghanistan instead of Vietnam (which you can also draw your own parallels on America's roles there lol) and being pretty true to Tony's character overall. Of course, the sci-fi tech Tony invents in the movie is a lot fancier than a giant iron plate, too.
The tech in this, though, is of course, just TRANSISTORS. So Tony lies inside the big metal suit thing they made and Yinsen powers it on. Transistors keep his heart beating, but the transistors need to power up or something, and of course, everything has to happen at the last second before disaster to make it exciting, so for some reason Wong-Chu and Friends are coming to check on them RIGHT NOW. Yinsen pretends to "go mad" and run around to distract them for a bit while the transistors power up, and Tony vows to avenge his new buddy's death.
In the few seconds Yinsen was running around, the transistors successfully power up and Tony gets up in his new suit. From his thoughts we learn that TRANSISTORS also make it possible for his brain to control the suit in the same way it would control its own muscles.
But he seems to wobble around a lot, with those, you know, ponderous footsteps. He falls down and talks about how he's like a baby learning to walk. Then in the very next panel, he's already mastered everything about his new body because he's so smart! Not even kidding, he's just suddenly super good and we're supposed to accept that was his learning period. All of this is still happening in the few seconds that Wong-Chu is like, walking 10 paces toward the door...
Tony then has a bit of an existential crisis after realizing that he's technically still alive, but will have to live the rest of his life inside a giant tinman body that keeps him alive. But a bit of reflecting in the mirror later, he realizes he doesn't have time for that shit and needs to hide. Because still Wong-Chu and his lackeys have not arrived at the door for some reason.
But of course, TRANSISTORS allow him to rocket boost out of his feet and suction to the ceiling with his limbs! Wong-Chu and co. reach the room and are surprised to find Tony is gone and that he hasn't been building weapons. This is literally the first time they decided to check on him at all...? Did they like, not feed him for days? What even???
They also didn't hear the noise of the giant metal dude rocketing off the ground and clunking into the ceiling when they were right at the door. And they don't seem to notice him hanging feet above their heads, either.
So Wong-Chu immediately gets bored and goes back to pillaging towns and beating up the townsfolk because Communism. Or something.
But a new villager appears to challenge Wong-Chu this time!
He actually appears in a trench coat and says, "First, I shall remove my clothes!" before fighting, which is a SUPER weird thing to say before you fight someone, but I'm not going to complain about a Tony striptease.
Wong-Chu freaks out as expected, and Iron Man beats him up. We're then interrupted by another advertisement, this time for a special tool that can help you learn how to draw "even if you can't draw a straight line" but it's seriously just a mirror and a light.
Iron Man then fights off more baddies using TRANSISTORS such as one that makes Reverse Magnetism and blasts everyone away!
We then continue with a chase scene where Iron Man uses various little tricks Inspector-Gadget style to show off the various things he can do. For example, when Wong-Chu locks a door, instead of just punching it and busting it down with his superhuman strength, he turns his finger into a mini-buzz-saw that can cut through doors despite being small because TRANSITORS. Other things include not being hurt when a filing cabinet filled with rocks (why exactly was this even there???) is pushed at him, interrupting radio waves to make a loudspeaker tell everyone to desert Wong-Chu, and turning his thumb into a tiny lighter or flamethrower or something, I don't even know.
Wong-Chu goes to kill all his prisoners... just because... so Iron Man stops him by burning the entire place down. So I guess he killed the prisoners, too? I really don't understand. But that's our dramatic ending!
The magazine also comes with a short prose about a boy and his "wishing dog," and a couple other short one-shot comics. I'm not really going to go into the extra stuff unless something really stands out. The Last Rocket is at least funny because it's about how the entire world abandons this planet because the sun is going to die, and only two people out of the entire population of the Earth decide they want to stay behind. Also for some reason everyone is white. And the two people who stay behind witness the miracle of a new sun appearing and the Earth going into its orbit for... some reason.
And that's our first appearance of Iron Man! If I had read this first as a kid, I probably wouldn't have really gotten into it. I have no idea where I actually started, though, or why I even got into it in the first place. Well, I'm sure it was the mustache, even if I didn't realize it at the time. And I guess this one had the stache, as well, so... maybe...
Anyway, I didn't mean to recap the story THIS much this time, so future entries will probably be shorter for a while, since the stories will be silly and episodic until much later. But since this is the origin story or whatever, I went a little more into describing what was happening.
I also collected all the handsomest Tony panels throughout the issue:
And here's one of Wong-Chu from the front so you can see the manchu more clearly:
And here's one from behind because teehee:
Well, look forward to reading more of these. Hopefully. Every time I do this I get a few in and then stop. This is my first time doing it on ThaaoNET, though, and my first time paying attention to the artists, so maybe I'll be a little more motivated to keep going...? Plus with them more easily organized on ThaaoNET, I'll be able to pick back up whenever I want without too much hassle.
Until next time, keep stachin'~
