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~...
