2018-09-06

-Iron Man Readthrough-
<< FIRST | < PREV | NEXT > | LAST >>

Never has Iron Man faced so deadly a foe as... wait. That's not very threatening-sounding. I mean, he's faced less than a dozen foes at this point, and half of them were weird stuff like some animals at a zoo or a make-up artist who can do mustaches, too. I mean, when you have a zappy beam that can destroy an entire metropolis, are your foes really that deadly? And if worse comes to worst, just eat a battery.

That's right friends, we're back again, hot off the presses from July of 1963! This month, it looks like Iron Man is going to be facing off against a woman for the villain this time. We already learned that in the Marvel Universe, women are masters of fashion and can choose colors that make giant robot suits go from terrifying to adorable with just a coat of spray paint. But how do they stack up as evil masterminds? We'll have to find out! (Please don't be a seductress, please don't be a seductress, please don't be a--)

This month's episode is illustrated by Jack Kirby again, so we'll get to see if the CREEPY FACES come back. Spoiler: they don't! I guess that really was some kind of time-management issue, or just... a really rough month for poor Kirby or something. Faces are looking normal again, and the albeit less-detailed Tony faces are looking handsome as ever and giving Don Heck's art a run for its money. Berns is yet again on the writing, and Heck is doing the inking again. I'm not sure if inking includes coloring or if the work goes back to Kirby for colors. These days inking would mean the black lines only, or at least that's what it means to me, but they don't list colorists in these things, so... no clue.

This time we start off at Stark's laboratories again. There's some kind of wind tunnel with a giant missile inside of it, where they're... performing... some kind of test. But the control panel explodes for no reason!! And tornado-class winds are bursting out of the tunnel! In fact, they send the missile crashing into a mountain in the distance, blowing up the whole thing. And even though these winds can pick up an enormous, heavy missile and fling it across the countryside, it apparently can't blow people very far, because they're hanging onto poles and stuff and managing to stay together pretty well.

One of the workers calls up Stark, who of course "calls up" Iron Man. And by that I mean he gets naked and puts on the Iron Man suit. Ah, yes, the reveal I've been waiting for! We now learn that not only does Tony carry around his Iron Man suit folded up in his attache case, but he actually takes his regular clothes off in order to put it on! That means, for us mustache enthusiasts (which should be everyone, honestly), we are gifted with the realization that Tony strips for us every single episode of these comics. Kehehe.

So after our little striptease, Iron Man rushes out to the wind tunnel, which doesn't seem to affect him at all. I doubt he's heavier than the missile that blew away earlier, so I'm guessing this is another miracle thanks to TRANSISTORS. And this isn't the only miracle we're going to witness. Everyone knows that the only way to stop a tornado is to throw an opposite tornado at it, so Iron Man hops into the air and just starts... spinning around. Yup, he becomes a "human fan!" The power of the two winds blowing at each other causes a huge explosion which somehow stops the problem.

8)

Afterward, Iron Man rushes off to change back out of his costume (and yes, we get another stripping scene, from a little closer up so we can also see Tony has pretty hairy arms lol) so he can run back to everyone as Anthony Stark so that no one gets suspicious. Because Iron Man and Tony always immediately running away and then the other appearing isn't suspicious at all.

And since one disaster was just solved, Tony makes the 'logical' decision to leave his attache with Iron Man's suit stored inside behind in his office, because it's a law of the universe that two disasters can't occur within 17 minutes of one another or something like that. I don't know. But guess what's going to happen! Wah-wah!

Pretty much as soon as Tony arrives on the scene, people start disappearing. Everyone's screaming and no one seems to know what exactly is going on. First Jim, then Evans...

And then a weird thing appears around Tony! No one has any idea what it is, not even the readers.

Whatever this polygonal thing is, it can't be broken, and Tony seems to be trapped inside. It even starts sinking into the ground! The workers nearby pick up their conveniently-placed sledgehammers and start whacking at it, but it won't bust open. It's a good thing it wasn't fragile, or they would have just smashed Tony in the process. They even try shooting at it with a gun (who even knows where the bullet ricochets to...) but no dice. The thing keeps sinking until Tony is completely underground.

Tony compares the phenomenon to being aboard a super-natural elevator. And indeed, as he continues to descend into the Earth, he finds not lava or anything like that, but... a weird laboratory!

Tony is greeted by Kala, Queen of the Netherworld. Tony seems surprisingly calm with the whole thing, just thinking it's pretty neat that there's a civilization in the core of the Earth. He may be a technological genius, but I guess he's dumb as rocks when it comes to geology.

We find out that Kala was attempting to summon Tony here because she needs the power of TRANSISTORS to get back to the surface of the Earth. Apparently her people were once the people of Atlantis, which sunk so far it actually sunk into the Earth's core (????) and they've been living down here ever since. They seem to be more technologically advanced than the surface-dwellers of Earth, except for Tony, who's more advanced than anyone ever. They have all the tech they need to destroy and conquer the surface once they reach it, as well as the ability to destroy the surface from within the core if they wanted, but the one thing they can't do is actually move from the core to the surface. And that's what they want to do the most.

We also find Jim and Evans -- I guess their tech is kinda buggy because they were brought down by mistake when they were trying to bring Tony to the core. I don't know why they didn't just use the instant-teleport thing on Tony, too, but for some reason he got his own special impregnable crystalline elevator thingy. Well, I don't know about impregnable but it's bulletproof and unsledgehammerable. But yeah, that's never really explained.

Kala tells Tony that if he doesn't help them build a transistor device to reach the surface, she'll kill him, Jim, and Evans! And even worse, if they don't get any help, she has a device that can make the Earth's orbit messed up so only the people in the core can survive on the planet anymore or something. Evans says to Tony that he thinks Kala is lying about the second part... but how would he even know? Like, there's no evidence to really base any assumptions on right now except for the whole... she teleported you from the surface to the core of the Earth in seconds thing... which, uh, hints toward phenomenal power in my opinion, but... I guess that's none of my business...

Anyway, so Evans says she's lying and that the three of their lives are worth far less than the lives of the entire human race, so Tony shouldn't help her build an elevator to the surface. Tony says he disagrees and wants to help out. Kala just knew he would be quick to turn his back on his own people to save his own life! Tony says all he needs is a lab with lots of tools and materials and absolutely no interruptions.

So it seems like Kala didn't end up being the generic seductress type after all! Maybe Marvel was even listening to the struggles of women back in the 60's, like Gene Roddenberry and friends were.

Just kidding, they're as ignorant as ever. Kala's top commander Baxu escorts Stark to his new lab. Tony sees it as the perfect opportunity to get inside Baxu's head, because obviously a man would not normally take orders from a woman! And simply because she exists and is hot or something, he must also "love" her, but it seems that they're equating "love" here with "finding her beautiful" with absolutely no distinction.

Now, you'd think if Baxu belonged to this entire society of people led under a matriarchy... maybe, just maybe... he would have different values and thoughts regarding women compared to the surface-dwelling misogynists...? But no. And Tony doesn't even bat a (beautiful) eyelash when responding, "Why should you?!" when Baxu complains about having to take Kala's orders.

Uh, but Baxu has a beard with a prominent mustache, and in some panels only the mustache is detailed. So that's good, right...?

Anyway, let's continue our story. Tony's life is threatened and he has no way out but to build some instrument of death for his foe, who for some reason gives him all the tools and stuff he wants with no supervision whatsoever. This sounds... like something I've heard before. I wonder what Tony will really end up doing in that lab? He's certainly not ready to sacrifice the entire surface population of Earth to save himself, right?

Well, as you probably expected, just like the story a few issues ago, he uses the free secret lab to build Iron Man. Again! This time it's a replica. You think maybe he would have worked in some upgrades or something, but he didn't... at least he remembered to do the spray paint!

Well, I guess he should make it as similar to the original as possible, since he's trying to trick everyone into believing that he actually went to the surface and told Iron Man to come down to the core while he was in the lab. Yeah. Everyone buys it, too! Like, running away and coming back as Iron Man wasn't suspicious enough, but now he's saying he literally dug through the entire Earth to call Iron Man and people are just like, "okie, makes sense!"

Anyway, Iron Man has a little confrontation with Baxu, but instead of defeating him, he says that Tony spoke highly of Baxu. They had only one exchange, and it was just "wemmen are stooped and I don't want to take a orders!" and that's what got him on Tony's good side...? I mean, I guess he's still trying to manipulate the dude but really whyyyyy in our first episode with a female villain did the key to victory have to be sexism...?

So they tussle for a bit, and then Iron Man comes out into the open to face Kala. She tries all kinds of tricks on him like using a GIANT disintegrator ray (But does yours fit in a flashlight, Kala? Didn't think so!), shooting some homing missiles, and more. Iron Man just TRANSISTORS them all away, though. He then throws a bunch of tiny mirrors on the floor which somehow activate his kage-bunshin no jutsu and he confuses the crap out of Kala. With her mind blown, he grabs ahold of her and takes her to the surface by using a pair of clippers that look like sheep-shears or something to just... cut his way up to the surface! While flying! There's some other fail science like the entire underworld being contained in a glass dome, and no problems coming from busting open said dome to drill out of the core, but... at this point we really need to stop questioning things.

And just when you thought this story couldn't get even worse, Iron Man reaches the surface with Kala and... she turns OLD! Dun-dun-dunn! Oh, she's like the crypt keeper! Yup, apparently the "different atmosphere" makes her turn old (?!) which Tony somehow hypothesized would happen. So seeing that Kala and her people have the opportunity to explore and understand an entirely new world and culture, befriending the surface-dwellers and exchanging ideas... she decides it's completely not worth it because she won't ~look pretty~ here.

Kala "learns her lesson" and goes back to the underworld, where she begs Iron Man to stay and be her King so he can rule instead, but he says instead she should marry Baxu. And then he tells Baxu to rule wisely and stuff as if he's already the ruler and Kala is suddenly a pointless side-character in this episode.

So the moral of this story is that the only value women have is in their beauty, and that only exists when they are young. And if they somehow succeed in any other way, it's because they did something wrong and forgot that their beauty and submission to men is the most important aspect of their entire existence.

To top it all off, we get a man and woman talking about Tony once he's back, saying at least since he was trapped in the Earth's core (yes, everyone learns of this and just accepts it as reasonable fact) it kept him away from the ladies for a while. Tony's fixing his tie in the foreground and thinking, "that's what you think, bub!" so we solidify the idea that even Kala was just to be interpreted as another object of Tony's sexual conquests or something...???

But yeah, what seemed promising for a second at the beginning completely fell apart into this crap.

But there's one redeeming thing here -- not only did Kirby show us he doesn't always have to draw creepfaces, but he drew us a whole slew of Handsome Tonys to look at!

Look at all those! A total of 9 hot Stark Staches in a row. And if you count the two-fers, there's a grand total of a whopping eleven! A new record! Kirby's gone beyond redeeming himself, and I'd say he's got me lusting over Tony even more than Heck and his facial detail. Granted, Heck didn't get much of a chance with last month's script hardly having any Tony in it, but still. At least in the hot stache dude department, things are looking up for this series. As for the writing and character development and stuff... uh... maybe we'll see Carla again in the future? Kinda doubt it. Oh well, mustache fanservice. Let's just keep chugging forward! Until next time, keep stachin'~

-Iron Man Readthrough-
<< FIRST | < PREV | NEXT > | LAST >>

#iron man readthrough #tales of suspense #tony stark

2018-09-06

-Iron Man Readthrough-
<< FIRST | < PREV | NEXT > | LAST >>

Are you ready for Marvel to usher in the Marvel Age of Comics? I'm not really sure what that means, but it certainly sounds epic! Get ready for Tales of Suspense No. 44!

After TOS43, were you left feeling a little under-satisfied? Maybe there just wasn't enough sexism for you? Well, get ready, because now we're going to have a Cleopatra episode! You know, the historical ruler of Egypt, scientist and philanthropist who spoke multiple languages and did a bunch of stuff to advance technology and culture for the entire human race? Oh, you don't remember her? She's "that hot chick from ancient Egypt." Because, yeah, that's how she's always remembered, despite all of her accomplishments, especially when it comes to depictions in popular media that seem to always focus on her appearance and sexuality -- things that were fairly irrelevant during her actual rule.

But, you know, it would be super weird in our society for people to admit women contributed to history, and after our little episode with Kala last month, I can't say I'm holding my breath for a positive depiction of Cleopatra this time around. But I guess we'll see how that goes.

Don Heck is back on illustration again and has a lot of catching up to do if he wants to surpass Kirby's Handsome Tony run he's got going on. And we still got Berns on the script, too, so at least the writing should be consistent. Er, yeah, still not holding out a lot of hope for Cleopatra...

And yeah, reasonably so. Right from the beginning, we're introduced to the idea of Cleopatra before she's even introduced in the plot -- in just the first few panels she's already being referred to as the most beautiful woman who ever lived, the "Siren of the Nile," and people are inquiring if Stark thinks he could get in her bed. Because when someone is leaving on an important archaeological journey, the most rational thing to ask them about is how likely they'd be able to bang Cleopatra.

And by the way, Heck's not winning any points with almost completely ignoring the mustache in the beginning here.

That whole debacle dies down and we're introduced to Tony's archaeo buddy, this cutie with a van dyck, who is trying to locate Hatap's Tomb, but needs Tony to help out because he's a genius. Tony instead agrees to call Iron Man to locate the tomb, even though I can't imagine it would be improbably for Tony to have some kind of transistor device he could use to locate the tomb on his own instead of needing to have Iron Man wear it. I mean, he has a pocket disintegrator ray, for crying out loud...

Tony thinks he's being so clever to call up Iron Man when really he is Iron Man, and decides to treat himself out to a fun night on the town in Cairo before returning to the excavation site as Iron Man. Apparently he has to fly back and forth between Cairo and the site, so that seems super inconvenient... I mean, I realize part of it is staying away for a while to help sell the illusion that Iron Man is a separate person somewhere far away that needs time to arrive, but... Seriously, Tony, just help out your friend with some transistors, please?

Like, he seems genuinely interested in helping, so why not? It's not like he needs to advertise Iron Man's services or something. And considering all the ridiculous things TRANSISTORS have done so far, and the fact that anything Iron Man can do, Tony should theoretically be able to do with an equivalent device that isn't attached to the suit, there's not really any reason why Iron Man should have to come here at all. I mean, besides because the plot requires Iron Man to be here or something. But then... he'd still have his attache case, so... I don't even really comprehend it on that level.

But that's enough squabbling over a minor plot point when none of these stories make much sense anyway. But that does bring us to another important topic -- Iron Man's strengths and weaknesses. Iron Man's strengths seem to be somewhat uncapped; transistor tech seems to do pretty much anything the writers want it to do, from creating illusions, changing the weather, drilling through the entire Earth, and more. Iron Man has pretty much infinite potential (... hey, he's like X from Mega Man X!) as long as the writers just use the old transistor excuse for something he does. What's weirder is, like I just mentioned, is that anything Iron Man can do, theoretically anyone should be able to do, because it's just latest-generation technology. I mean, Stark is sharing most of the his tech with the government and stuff anyway, so Iron Man is not only ridiculously powerful, but in a way, not particularly special...?

But I guess since Tony can kind of create new gadgets and abilities for Iron Man on the fly, as well as have the know-how to utilize all of these things effectively, it's really Iron Man with all the power. But then what kind of weakness balances out this power? He needs to have something really crippling or dangerous about him that his enemies could use against him, right? I mean, aside from his alter-ego Tony's basic mortality.

And we've seen that before -- he has to plug himself in. This is still a developing story so at this point he just seems to need to recharge when it's convenient for the plot, and there's not really too much detail to it. But I feel that the instance of this phenomenon that we see in this issue is a particularly telling one, and shows just how vulnerable and fragile Iron Man really is despite all his transistor magic.

Hanging out at the club, Stark suddenly notices his batteries are running dry, and starts to feel unwell. Not only does he try to immediately leave the party, but he has to have bus boys help carry him to his hotel room because he can't walk there well enough on his own. He says to himself that if they don't get him to his room in time, he'll fall completely unconscious. Considering how quick the onset of this was -- he didn't even have time to walk to his own room immediately after noticing -- that seems pretty severe!

It also raises another point -- what happens if his batteries do run out? Well, if they're out long enough, the shrapnel in his body will pierce his heart and he will die. But it seems to imply that there's a bit of a period before that where either the batteries are enough to keep the shrapnel away from his heart but not enough to help Tony maintain consciousness, or that he's able to stay a live albeit unconscious for a while after the batteries have drained fully.

So what if he had passed out in the arms of the bellboys? Would they have just taken him to his room and dumped him there? They likely would call an ambulance, right? And they're going to take Stark's clothes off, and bam, giant metal torso! So Tony has a huge weakness that he constantly has to live with, even when he's not battling. Unlike most heroes where they basically just change clothes and can choose not to use any powers publicly, Iron Man's "costume" is a vital part of his own body, and has to be carefully hidden under suits. He can't afford to even show a bit of his chest or back, much less be shirtless or naked around any other human being. And for a socialite who is constantly appearing in public, that's quite a strain, I'm sure. And of course, the batteries can run out even when he's not performing as Iron Man, so he constantly has to watch out for that. He has to be super independent and careful so he'll never get found out.

I think for all his powers, the ease with which it can all be destroyed instantly from a little slip-up is perhaps a decent balance. There's also the fact that Tony has no actual supernatural power source nor superhuman ability, so he's limited by his own humanity. We don't see a lot of this now, but this will get fleshed out a lot later, which is around where I started reading the comics.

But yeah. It's not something I honestly thought too much about before, because to be frank, I tend not to think all that critically about stuff like that and just enjoy stuff for what it is. It lets me enjoy a lot of stuff other people would be turned off by, but it also makes me less likely to appreciate more finely-crafted works of fiction for all that they are worth.

But let's get back to the story. Tony manages to get to his hotel room safely and discreetly, lying on the floor and immediately plugging himself in. I have to admit, there's something sexy about Tony collapsed on the floor next to a power outlet panting to himself while his batteries recharge. I mean, it's probably just the sprawled-on-the-floor-panting thing, but...

Iron Man is ready the next day to go help out Paul and his excavation crew locate the tomb of King Hatap. The crew talks about how you'd have to use magic to see through walls, but Iron Man assures them it's nothing magical, just the power of modern science! All he has to put on these special fluoroscope goggles and--

... Wait.

God-fucking-dammit, Tony, I told you, there was no need for Iron Man to come here! Anyone can put on some damned glasses! Are you serious?! In fact, it would probably be harder for Iron Man since he has to strap those things to his stupid capsule face! Why didn't you just give the goggles to Paul or wear them yourself?! I guess it's a good thing you went back to Cairo, though, because you ended up needing a charge but... seriously, omfg.

Anyway, He looks around at the wall a bit and finds the tomb, and then brings out some diamond-encrusted drills or something that will make the excavation faster. Again, not something you need Iron Man's suit for. Diamonds are not some kind of special superhero thing. Everyone knows diamonds.

So they go inside and find Hatap's sarcophagus and blab about it for a little, then head back to camp. But then Paul realizes that the Hatap's remains have been stolen! Stealing mummies is such a SaGa thing; it's nice to see it show up here. Now we just need a necro boat.

Paul creates some search parties and everyone runs around. Tony offers to stay behind and watch over the camp. But once everyone is gone, someone approaches him from within his own tent!

The mystery fellow introduces himself as King Hatap himself, to whom Stark calls Bunk. Yes, he uses "Bunk!" more than once in this episode. Basically, Hatap reveals that he never actually died but instead drank a magic potion that let him go into stasis for thousands of years and now he finally woke up from inside his sarcophagus and for some reason speaks English and knows who Tony is and is going to teleport them through time so he can kill Cleopatra.

We see Tony and Hatap flying on a magical time chariot... and Tony somehow knows what is going on, despite all of this happening over the course of a few seconds. He's so scientifically genius that he even understands the supernatural! But if it's understood by humans and clearly exists in the world, wouldn't it just be... regular-natural? I don't know. The logic has already completely fallen apart here, way worse than why you might need Iron Man to put on some goggles, so we really should just stop questioning. I feel like every month we reach a point-of-no-return in the magazine where we have to stop questioning lest we'll never finish the issue.

Tony and Hatap arrive in ancient Egypt, which Stark knows must be true because he can't see the camp... No questions, no questions...

For some reason the two are somewhat separated, with Tony atop a large hill and Hatap near its base. Hatap tells Tony that he must follow his orders now, but instead, Tony rolls down the hill in the opposite direction to try to make some time to change into Iron Man, because for some reason he was able to bring his attache case with him. Wait, so if he's able to turn into Iron Man for the action part by hanging around as Tony anyway, it's not even important for the plot for Iron Man to have to come out just to put the goggles on and...

... ... ...

NO QUESTIONS, NO QUESTIONS

So Tony rolls down the hill and manages to change into Iron Man and bury his attache before Hatap can catch up. He starts flying around and Hatap thinks it's some kind of metal monster bird that must have killed Tony and runs away. Iron Man decides to go find Cleopatra's court, noting that he won't be able to recharge any of his systems until he returned to the present. Shouldn't he carry around a few batteries to snack on or something? Or like, can't he just like, idk, bang a couple rocks together and inhale the spark or something...?

Somehow, Iron Man is easily able to find Cleopatra's place. There are Romans attacking, and Iron Mans them off by like catching and throwing fireballs or something. I don't even know. We're well into no-question territory, so just go with it.

Iron Man learns Cleo had already fled, so he catches up to her boat and saves her from another Roman attack. He finally gets to meet her, and of course the very first thing we see of her is her sultry pose and Iron Man commenting about how she's even hotter than her historical representation.

Even though the issue's cover and premise seems like it should have been leading up to this moment to really begin, there's hardly anything left of this story. Basically Iron Man lets Cleopatra know that Hatap is after her, then goes to find Hatap himself. He needs to make sure he gets Hatap's magic doohickey back so he can make sure to return to the present (though he gives serious consideration to staying in the past because Cleo is just that hot). He finds Hatap, squirts some oil at him so that he drops the doohickey, and then Hatap accidentally trips and falls into a sword that is for some reason on the ground nearby and sticking up in the perfect-to-stab-a-falling-person position.

Cleopatra admits she's in love with Iron Man and indeed wants him in her bed, but Iron Man disappears because of the doohickey and returns to the present, where we get the painfully expected jokes of people still asking Tony if he thinks he'd have a chance with Cleopatra, because, hehe, I guess he did.

So yeah, Cleopatra was hardly even a part of the story and basically existed solely to be the object of this joke, I guess. Despite appearing on the cover and being repeatedly mentioned for the whole first page.

... And that's the end of this episode. I forgot to talk about the side-stories last time, but we had some more creepy Lieber drawings that at least this time had a mustache. This time we get a written short story entitled "The Tree," which sounds terribly thrilling, and two more mini-comics after our main feature.

We get another Larry Lieber comic this time, and the style seems to have drastically improved from the last couple of issues. It also features a super hot petit handlebar named Wentsworth as the villain. Lieber seems to like making his baddies have facial hair. The other side story... I don't want to get into another the-60's-were-super-racist discussion so we'll just leave it forgotten.

So let's move right on to this issue's Handsome Tonys!

We only got four this time that really spoke to me on a, uh, physical level, and there were a lot of Tonys to look at this time around. So it looks like Heck isn't living up to his promises he gave us in the first issue, and Kirby has really overtaken the lead from behind. Definitely not what I was expecting when I started paying attention to who drew what, but an entertaining turn of events nonetheless.

Until next time, keep stachin'~

-Iron Man Readthrough-
<< FIRST | < PREV | NEXT > | LAST >>

#iron man readthrough #tales of suspense #tony stark

2018-09-05

-Iron Man Readthrough-
<< FIRST | < PREV | NEXT > | LAST >>

Hold your breath! Here comes IRON MAN!!

It's time for another exciting (?) issue of Tales of Suspense, this time coming at you from June of 1963. This flavor of the month this month is anti-communism social rhetoric!

It's pretty common in any era when you're trying to justify violence on other people to depict your target as subhuman so that the people you're manipulating into committing or condoning the violence won't resist as much. And so we get depictions of "communists" as barbaric, which in the context of 1960's American just means "anyone we want to kill and especially Asian people." They don't even really try to mask it this time, with the villain literally just being "a barbarian." The villains seem to enjoy being ruthless and stupid like this.

Now, it's not that Stan Lee and friends were themselves hoping to mislead the population into supporting the violence in Vietnam. Rather, when writing episodic fiction like this that needs to sell based on the cover alone, you need to create "obvious" villains and conflict that the reader will quickly become invested in. And since the government-influenced media was making everyone terrified of The Commies at the time, it was super easy to just use that as your catch (the scene on the cover doesn't even make sense in the context of the story we're about to read, anyway). Comics have a broad history of questioning these kinds of things and standing up for social justice, but... in this era we just get a lot of this stuff instead.

And don't think this isn't without your usual heaping portion of racism like always, either! Even though The Commies of this issue look like white guys (though the Barbarian is a bit ambiguous himself), they make multiple references to Asia anyway.

OK, I kinda rambled a bit. I didn't want to just ignore the whole RED BARBARIAN thing, but brevity is not my strong suit. Though using idiomatic expressions in proper contexts is a forte!

But let's get to the story. We have R. Berns on the script again, and now Don Heck is back on the illustration. Like the first issue, there's no separate inker, so I'm assuming Heck is doing all the art on his own when he works on the mag. Also, looking back on the two Jack Kirby issues, the creepy faces only appeared in the second of the two, so mabye he was just rushed to finish those ones or something and couldn't spend time making the faces look less scary...? Trying to give the benefit of the doubt here.

But I'm looking forward to seeing if Heck can keep up his Handsome Tony streak in this one.

This time, we start out right with Iron Man instead of Tony. The FBI (lol) planted a fake atomic bomb for The Commies to steal. So they came by and pirated it on a boat, but SURPRISE, it was just a box with Iron Man inside! He pops out and explains the government's plot in full detail to the gangers trying to nab the bomb that didn't even exist.

He then goes on to explain his own plan to fight them while they just kind of... stand there and listen, I guess. Even though one of them commanded the others to shoot him, none of them even try.

We have one of the most ridiculous illustrations of what TRANSISTORS can do here. Iron Man powers up a magnet above the baddies, which makes their guns shoot up and stick to it. But even funnier than that, the people holding the guns get sucked up into the magnet, too! Because they don't let go of the guns. You know if a force like that suddenly pulled your gun straight up, I'm pretty sure it would come out of your hand, rather than you reacting quickly enough to take your gun for a ride, flying through the air carried only by a little pistol...

And of course, Iron Man also has to explain that his suit may be metal as well, but it's ~special metal~ that doesn't get magnet'd. Or something.

We finally get to see Tony, though mostly in shots too far away for Heck to even bother drawing his little stache (a huge disappointment), who is showing off his newest tech to the government again. This time, it's a ... disintegrator ray. Yup. It fits in a flashlight case (I wonder if he's using the flashlight case that he ate the battery from?) and you just point it at stuff and it goes away. If it's magnified, you could even destroy an entire metropolis!

Is this not, you know, maybe a bit OP? I mean, he says it has a "few bugs" left, but he is able to completely poof away an entire tank and a wall with no problem. We're just not at the destroy-the-entire-world level yet, I guess? And he didn't mention if it works on organic stuff, so I don't know if we can poof a human or not. But I'm assuming if we're poofing a "whole metropolis," the living things contained within would go with it, too...? And, yeah, what about a tank? Do we just destroy the operator in the process? I'm not really sure how it works on a wall without affecting the things around the wall, either, but... I guess we're not supposed to think that much about it.

We then cut to a "red satellite country" where The Red Barbarian is... chomping on a big hunk of meat. I don't know what kind of meat this is supposed to be, but it's that... thing you always see where it's like a big bone they hold like a cotton candy or something and there's just this massive round meat hunk on it.

But yeah, he's munching away and some goons show up and tell him that Anthony Stark has a new plan to make America invincible. But Big Red gets mad that they didn't already steal the plan and throws the big Meat Thing at one of the lackeys, knocking him unconscious. So with the take-the-fun-for-a-ride and now this, I'm guessing this is supposed to be a comedy special...?

After a bit more squabbling with his lackeys and shooing them out of his office by firing weapons at them (he's... shoo-t-ing them...!!! MAHAHA) another dude appears and introduces himself by removing his disguise. This guy is called The Actor, and apparently "with a little bit of makeup" can exactly replicate the look of any other man that he's seen before! At first I thought this was a bit OP, too, but not nearly on the level of the disintegrator ray. But further thinking, this is a pretty shitty power. I mean first of all, you have to carry makeup around. Makeup seems kind of fragile as a weapon; you'd have to make sure you don't lose any and none of it gets messed up somehow. Plus, all he does is paint his face (and apparently changes his hair, too). But like, his stature doesn't change? What about the shape of his body? So he can only impersonate men around his height, I guess? Like, if he's trying to mask as someone 6 inches taller, I think people are going to notice... Plus, you'd have to have like a million changes of clothes or like always be stealing clothes...? It seems super situational and difficult to really use most of the time. Other than for small little things, you'd be found out right away.

Anyway, so The Actor is apparently some new guy to Red's group and wants to help steal the plans by using Tony Prism Power Make-Up. Red, being the Barbarian that he is, threatens to kill Actor if he doesn't return with the plans, and so he sets off.

We get a few little examples of Actor's abilities by seeing how he sneaks into the U.S., posing as famous actors and senators, including wearing a very fine chevron mustache. Or would you call it, like, a petit walrus? I'm never sure what to do with these in-between styles. Anyway, he can copy mustaches, and clearly ones that extend enough away from the face that you couldn't just paint them on. I guess since he's also changing his hair, he must carrying around some kind of synthetic hair he can like... insert into his face and head temporarily or something...? I don't really get it. It's definitely not that this power is OP, it's that it makes no sense. It would be better if they just said he was using magical powers instead of saying he uses make-up, I think...

The Actor has some cronies disguise as pentagon officials (he doesn't do their make-up, sadly; they're just wearing costumes) and they head over to Stark's lab. Stark's private guards are confused because Tony before said that no one is to enter his private office except himself, but now he's letting people in. Actor!Tony just says he's allowing them in now because they're pentagonners and the guards are just like, "K, boss!"

You'd think that Tony would have said something like "Don't let anyone in but me, even if I say so!" or something, or at least had some additional security besides just some guys sitting around. You know, like a retinal scanner or something. I know this is 1963, but he has a disintegrator ray, so he could probably at least make like a thumbprint thingy?

They start ransacking the office looking for the plans. While one of the lackeys finds the plans, though, The Actor stumbles upon Iron Man's folded-up parts. I don't know how he knew what they were or why Tony wasn't carrying them around in his briefcase like always, but he found them. And of course, conveniently for the plot, he decides not to tell anyone ever unless it's dire.

Though none of that is particularly important at this point because LOOK AT THAT FACE. Definitely not issue-41-Kirby-style creeper from close up. And I have to say that evil-scheming look on "Tony's" face... holy (Don) heck, that's hot...

A few drooling minutes later, we can continue reading the rest of the panels.

The Actor leaves on a plane, but for some reason, the goons dressed as officials are still in Stark's office. Well, I'm guessing their orders were to kill Tony upon his return or something. We see Tony talking to himself about how someone sent him a phony request to attend a emergency meeting or something. The baddies ambush him in his own office, shooting guns only at his torso and nowhere else.

Fortunately, Tony has the power of the Iron Man chestplate he always has to wear... and the power of indoor lighting! He turns the lightswitch off which makes everything pitch black (I'm assuming there are no windows in here?) and quickly changes into his Iron Man suit. He turns the lights back on and no one quests how Tony escaped and Iron Man suddenly appeared. Actually, it's probably not that sudden, because he has to unfold all the parts and put them on his body like he's getting dressed, so the dummies were probably fumbling around in the dark for several minutes while Tony got changed in the corner and they just-so-happened not to fumble into him.

Tony couldn't have left the room because he would have had to open the door, leaking light in...? And they would have heard it? Well, actually, did they not hear him changing his clunky metal clothing? Maybe it doesn't make sound because transistors or something, I don't know...

But yeah, Iron Man karate-chops their guns away and then hugs them until they give away that The Actor stole his disintegrator ray plans. They gave up the information from just one hug! But if Tony hugged me, I'd tell him anything he wanted to know, too, probably... But I mean, these idiots can't even see his mustache through his weird gold suit. Oh, maybe it has some kind of seduction transistors in it...? Or maybe they just thought he was gonna squish them...

Somehow knowing exactly where The Actor is at the moment, Iron Man flies off to go interrupt him. He catches his moving car with his bare hands. Well, his iron hands. And then... it's like tied up to a tree by vines? I'm guessing Iron Man did that, but it's not really explained.

We also get our first instance of "Does Khrushchev tell Kennedy?" which we'll hear a few more times going forward. Also, why does "Khrushchev" have so many H's in it? I have to type it very slowly to make sure I don't mess it up... But yeah, we also get a "By Lenin's beard!" later in this one, too.

So, Iron Man goes to the Red Barbarian's office and pretends to be The Actor (hoo boy). He has the attache case with the plans that he took from The Actor with him tied up in his weird tree-car cage. He tells Red that he was impersonating Iron Man in order to trick Tony, and he now has the plans, but they have a time-lock on them that will explode if it's opened in the next four hours. He takes the case with him (with everything Red Barbie did leading up to this, you'd think he'd demand they wait out the time bomb together, but no) and heads out to "take off the suit" for four hours and then come back so they can open the case together.

He then returns to the treecar to free The Actor. The Actor is ecstatic to be freed even without the plans, because he knows Tony's secret. He rushes off to tell Red, and Iron Man takes the plans safely back to his office.

When The Actor arrives at Red's place, though (which hilariously has posters of the hammer-and-sickle emblem on the wall just to remind you THEY'RE COMMIES!!), Red thinks that The Actor is trying to betray him by pretending to not know what happened and hiding the attache case. Now, if he was really planning on betraying him, wouldn't he have just run off with the case instead of coming back and pretending to be confused about it?

Red commands his lackeys to kill Actor, but Actor pleads with them saying he knows Iron Man's true identity. Considering that Red believes that The Actor had been disguised as Iron Man while infiltrating Tony's lab, you'd think that it would be reasonable to assume it's possible he did somehow learn Iron Man's identity, but Red doesn't believe him and The Actor is killed, with Iron Man's secret identity remaining a secret.

While there were a lot of questionable moments, I'd say this was definitely the most clever plot so far. The ending seems kinda hastily put-together, but I feel like in the 60's, you weren't challenged to really question stories that much, and just if the general idea was clever, it made for pretty good writing. You can see it in other 60's media, too, that this kind of writing is the norm, so I can't really complain that much. It definitely wasn't as ridiculous as the first three. Well, the gun magnet flight part was, but...

Our side-stories are a bit boring as always, too. I already forgot what the first comic was about by the time I got to typing this sentence, and the second one was about a prisoner who escaped to space, but the police knew he was there, so that's okay, I guess. And I guess I shouldn't complain about Kirby's creepfaces anymore, but this one was illustrated (and written!) by Larry Lieber, and he drew... this...

And since i promised I was going to read the prose eventually, I guess I'll go ahead and do it now.

K, I'm not going to do that anymore. Basically there was this weakling skinny dude who everyone made fun of and he wanted to be strong. And he had a car with a name that he talked to that seemed to "talk" back with car noises like an animal, though this is not relevant to the story in any way, but for some reason it was there. He met a farmer who was even skinnier than him, and the farmer could lift a car. He told the dude that he got strong by eating a magic candy bar and gave one to him but told him to keep it a secret. So main dude went to the circus and challenged a strongman to a fight for a thousand dollars. But then the manager called him a fake and reached into his pocket to find he had a magic candy bar that gives strength. But then main guy realized he didn't actually eat the candy bar and was just naturally super strong this whole time. So he ran away and carried his car home. The end!!!!!!!!

So, yeah. I'm not even going to comment on that. Let's get right into the handsome Tonys.

Actually, there are none. Well, there are some handsome Actors-as-Tony. I guess that kinda counts, but we're just gonna lump all of The Actor's good looks together:

The one as the senator is very nice~~ Though, of course, the Tony ones are great, too. And lounging back in his purple suit, even no-make-up Actor looks pretty fine.

It's hard to see in most of the illustrations (or impossible as it's not even drawn half the time), but Red had a mustache, too:

I'm not entirely sure how to refer to this style. It doesn't have the definitive grown-out sides of the manchu, but you hardly ever see a stache with the middle part shaved other than the manchu. It's like some sort of chevron-manchu hybrid. Maybe a half-chevron? Petit-manchu? Chuvron?

Either way, it's pretty hot, though I think it's intentionally supposed to make Barbie look more "Asian," and I'm not going to go into that rant again.

And with that, we've finished another issue of Tales of Suspense and another episode in the story of Iron Man.

-Iron Man Readthrough-
<< FIRST | < PREV | NEXT > | LAST >>

#iron man readthrough #tales of suspense #tony stark

2018-09-04

-Iron Man Readthrough-
<< FIRST | < PREV | NEXT > | LAST >>

Welcome to May 1963! Today we're going to see Iron Man pitted off against one of my favorite mustaches, Dr Strange! Except, perhaps not that Dr Strange. This one doesn't have a mustache. And "the" Dr Strange apparently debuted a couple months after this, so maybe this is like... Prototype Strange. I know pretty much nothing about Dr Strange, but from stuff like Marvel vs Capcom and other appearances... hot damnnnnnn.

So, we're not going to get the sexy Strange this time, but... something. I guess. Let's just get started.

The same electricity I am SHUTTING OFF -- now!

Also, you gotta love the question that ends with an exclamation point.

This month, we have the same writer/artist combo with R. Berns doing the script and Jack Kirby illustrating. Personally, I liked Don Heck's Tony a little more going by the first two issues -- Heck seems to draw more detail on the face which makes Tony look a little older (and handsomer). There's also just a tiny bit more detail to the mustache, which is very important. Not that Kirby's Tony is bad by any means, of course. We'll see how he holds up this time.

Our story begins with who's gonna win Tony visiting a children's hospital that seems to be named Children's Hospital during a charity event, where he of course donates a bazillion dollars and even offers to contact Iron Man to come entertain the kiddos--

Whoa. Okay, maybe Kirby's Tony is not holding up. He looks a little wonky/boring in the rest of the panels on this first page, but this one is just... wow. I mean, the mustache looks good, but... maybe Kirby's style of drawing faces detailed and from the front is not my thing, because these two look creepy as heck. Not Don Heck. Just heck. That hot place.

But, uh, yeah, apparently the kids "idolize" Iron Man when just last episode they were terrified of him. I guess the gold paint completely changed their view! Nice job, Marion the Woman!

We're also given a little insight into Tony's views on love (and a recap of all the stuff he does) when his date (why do you take a date to Children's Hospital??) asks him if he considers falling in love and getting married. He claims that no woman wants to marry an "absentee husband" and then goes on to talk about all his research and development he does around the world and how he's always so busy.

Of course, he doesn't mention the whole I-have-to-run-around-the-world-in-my-spraypainted-suit-I-keep-in-my-briefcase thing. At least, not to this gal. He thinks about it to himself, so we get to see it as the readers.

There's also the whole ordeal where he has to plug himself in to keep himself alive. With this girl cuddling all over him I'm still unsure how they don't notice that his torso is is a giant iron plate with an electrical socket on it... but oh, well. Just go with it. But yeah, gotta keep that shrapnel floating around in there and not piercing his heart!

So we cut to Iron Man visiting Children's Hospital and giving a show for the kids. He juggles cars magnetically in the air, of course because TRANSISTORS, and then has the military fire a cannonball at him, which he catches and crunches up in his arms. The TV announcer says that the only person who could possibly match this display is the evil villain Dr Strange (... why is he just randomly bringing this up?) who is thankfully behind bars. Also I just accidentally typo'd that as "behind bras" which is funny. Teehee, bra.

We then cut to Dr Strange in jail, who also has a terribly creepy face from the front when drawn with detail. Stop it, Kirby. The tl;dr version of Strange's backstory here is that he's a big bad who went to jail and then got struck by lightning somehow, and is faking being "sick" because of the lightning strike, when really it "increased the electrical energy of his mind" instead. (?????????????????????)

Also, somehow he just... knew? that Iron Man was going to be at Children's Hospial... I mean, I guess Tony did publicly announce it before it happened, but... I don't know. Just... pretend this makes sense, okay? We already have lightning bolt powering him up and everyone thinking you get sick from lightning, so just... yeah.

Anyway, he wants to break out of jail, so he pretends to be dizzy. The guards carry him back to his cell (... where was he before...?) which is conveniently low-security because he's still sick with The Lightning. I don't understand if it's supposed to be like... he was in a high-security cell but they take him to the low-security one when he gets Thundersick or what?? But now he's there, and just... carrying around this radio device that no one seemed to notice or question...

He uses the radio to send signals out to Iron Man at the nearby Children's Hospital, which somehow mind controls Iron Man into breaking into the prison and freeing Strange.

... 8)

We also get to hear a bit of Strange's motive now -- while Iron Man is carrying him away (flying with Strange on his back, both of them with creepy faces from the front), Strange thinks about how proud his daughter is going to be once he conquers the world or whatever. But yeah, apparently more than anything, he craves his daughter's love and affection which he neglected during his years spent on a "fantastic life of crime."

Then Iron Man drops him off at home in his secret lab or whatever, where Strange tells his daughter that he's going to give the world the choice between total surrender or extinction. She is aghast at the idea and asks him why he must do something so drastic. He calls her a "foolish child" and then goes on his way, telling his lackeys that "she'll straighten out" when she is acting distant from them.

Like... did he really not realize that he's not "winning" his daughter's love and affection this way...?

I guess his thinking is supposed to be, like, she doesn't understand the master plan now, but once he's ruler of the world, she'll love it?

So Strange goes on to detonate a "200-Megaton Bomb" in outerspace, then transmit a message to... everyone in the world, I guess? that he's capable of detonating the same bombs on Earth unless everyone surrenders. Also, I might note that while on the cover, he was wearing a green outfit, his outfit is purple now. He never wears the green outfit in the actual comic.

And of course, he also... gives away the location of his hidden base in the Atlantic Ocean and explains how it's protected by a forcefield from above, so Iron Man knows where to find him and knows to go underneath the base to avoid the forcefield. Also, a mad scientist's lab hidden out in the ocean reminds me of Dr Wily, which is great.

Except Wily doesn't look this creepy when we see his face up-close.

We see Strange arguing with his daughter Carla, who is telling him she is shocked that he's willing to kill everyone in the world. Iron Man breaks in and starts busting up Strange's stuff, but then he falls down. Apparently there's "no electricity" left in the building because he busted up the machines, so now he can't function (?!?!) and even one tiny spark could save him. So Carla throws him a flashlight and Iron Man cracks open the the battery or something??? And now he can fight?

Strange is shocked that Carla would help the enemy, and she tells him that she once loved him, but now there's nothing more for her to love. Strange says he forgives her and that she'll understand some day (SERIOUSLY dude, do you STILL not get it?!) and escapes. All of Strange's lackeys are captured and arrested, but Strange himself is nowhere to be found. We end the episode with Carla crying into Iron Man's arms (okay, hopefully at least she realizes he has a big metal torso?!) and Iron Man wittingly saying that giving the world a love, courageous girl was Strange's "strangest" achievement.

Like, I wish I could explain this story with more detail but it's really just that Iron Man punches some machines and eats a battery. Somehow it took many pages and panels to convey; a lot of them were just the characters describing their actions before they actually acted on them. In fact, that's a thing about these older comics -- instead of showing actions, they have a character think out their action. I remember in the last episode, there was something with Iron Man jumping down a building and doing all this stuff to ensure his safety and trick Gargantus and stuff... but we didn't actually see any of that. We just kinda saw Iron Man standing atop the building and thinking to himself about how he was going to do it, and then... we saw him after it was done. This is a really common thing it seems, just narrating the story with thought bubbles instead of actually illustrating it. I guess part of it is to save space, since telling all of the action with pictures takes up a ton of panels and pages.

But in this issue, everyone thought out all their actions, and then we saw them, too! So it was a lot of redundancy.

I don't know if this was a great story for the 1960's, but "I did the evil thing for my daughter!" and the daughter not actually wanting it is such a tired gimmick anymore that I can't really get excited about it. I liked when Iron Man was powered up by a flashlight battery, though. Why does he have to go plug himself in if he can just crack open a cold battery when he's feeling down?

As for our side stories... I think the DVD rip I'm using is missing some pages from the non-important parts, or maybe the original DVD-ROM was like that. I'm not using the actual DVD-ROM as it's packed away, but rather a rip I found online that converted it to e-comic format for easier reading. But I think in the conversion, perhaps some parts were lost? But it only seems to be now and then a random page of an unimportant part is missing -- the main stories never have anything missing as far as I know. So maybe the original scans were like that, too. It's been so long since I had the DVD-ROM out, and back when I read on that, I didn't even look at the side-stories and stuff.

Anyway, the first one is weird and has some beards but is not particularly interesting. The second is weird, too, about this like... suicidal guy in space or something? It at least has some nice mustaches for a moment, including a toothbrush, drawn by Steve Ditko who we haven't seen illustrate a proper Iron Man story yet:

And then we also had some prose about little Joey playing the piano or something. The written stories always seem to be these really awkward slice-of-life stories, which don't really fit in all that well with the rest of the mag. Or maybe they have some kind of fantasy elements in them that I'm not noticing because I never read more than a few paragraphs before being bored out of my mind and deciding to give up. But even skimming the rest of the story it doesn't seem like there's much there. Maybe I should actually read an entire one.

This month, we don't have very many Handsome Tonys. In fact, there's only two, and one I already displayed earlier:

Overall, what seemed like a very promising issue ended up being quite a disappointment. A lot of redundant talking, a tired and predictable storyline, and very little sex appeal (though tons of creeper faces!) ... At least with Strange's escape, it seems like we might be setting up for him to return as a villain in the future, which breaks away from the episodic nature of the first two issues. Maybe. Since he's going to go on to have his own comic in a couple months, he might not cross over into Iron Man's world again any time soon, especially if this was only Prototype Strange. Actually, if this isn't the "real" Dr Strange that appears later, that means this is probably the last we'll ever see of this Strange (and Carla), so all of this setup was for nothing. We'll have to see.

-Iron Man Readthrough-
<< FIRST | < PREV | NEXT > | LAST >>

#iron man readthrough #tales of suspense #tony stark #dr strange

2018-09-01

-Iron Man Readthrough-
<< FIRST | < PREV | NEXT > | LAST >>

Welcome back, friendos. We're gonna continue on with our Iron Man readthrough. Well, mine. You're just gonna sit there and take it.

Now that Tony's origin story has completed, we're going to start seeing a bunch of monster-of-the-day-style episodes, and our first one is... Iron Man fighting a big naked dude.

This time, we're reporting from Tales of Suspense Issue #40, from April of 1963. Our artist this month is Jack Kirby, with Don Heck doing the inking this time. And our writer is R. Berns. The lettering is just credited to "Duff" which is funny, especially since the lettering for the credits seems kind of cramped at that point, so maybe Duff misjudged how much space was left to work with.

We start out by re-establishing Tony's "three faces," scientific genius who works for the military, millionaire playboy who you know you wanna go down on, and that clunky tin man thing.

The first of those is illustrated through Tony showing off TRANSISTOR roller skates that allow soldiers wearing them to travel at 60MPH. Hope no one loses their balance! I like how they go WOOSH when they try it out, though.

The next part is just Tony dating some girl and refusing to go swimming, because he has to keep his iron chestplate thing fastened all the time. These girls are like clinging all over him and they don't wonder why his torso is a giant bulging piece of metal? Like, I mean, I'm sure they can notice that through the clothes?

But the funniest of these three things is the reveal of Iron Man's core weakness... he has to plug himself in to charge his batteries, lest he becomes super weak and risks the shrapnel penetrating his heart and killing him. You know, TRANSISTORS can do all of these crazy things, but they can't just... remove the shrapnel safely? Or you know, maybe he could... have a surgeon do it...? I'm sure he could give them some transistor-boosted tools to make it easy. Or just do the surgery on himself, idk.

But instead, we get a giant walking iron torso lump in a suit who has to plug himself in. I can't really complain, because the idea of Tony running off to the bathroom to jack himself into the wall outlet is hilarious every single time it happens.

But the shenanigans don't stop there -- we learn that "thanks to [his] knowledge of microscopic transistors," he can fold up his suit and store it in a briefcase. Yes, he is carrying around that entire thing in a briefcase, like wadded up into small little sheets of metal that somehow unfold into this enormous humanoid suit that he can crawl inside and manipulate with his brain. Because TRANSISTORS.

Then the narrative starts to kick in, and Tony is dating some gal named Marion at a zoo, and suddenly all the animals break loose and start attacking people. Sounds like a job for Iron Man! So, Tony tells Marion he's going to go call the police (which is a pretty convenient excuse in a world without cell phones, though I'm surprised Tony hadn't invented a TRANSISTOR phone that was basically the same thing yet...) while everyone else runs around in panic.

But as he's trying to save everyone, all the women talk about how scary he is, while all the men are just like "OK yeah, it's Iron Man." So Tony realizes that he needs to give Iron Man a makeover. He comes back to the scene after Iron man leaves, and Marion tells him they don't need the police anymore (and she never questions why he was gone all that time and either didn't call them or called them but they never showed up) and they start talking about how Iron Man is creepy.

Tony asks Marion what she thinks Iron Man should look like, to which she responds that since he's like a knight in shining armor, he should be gold-colored!

Tony tells Marion he wouldn't be surprised if Iron Man himself had the same idea, which is stupidly suspicious, but I guess we're supposed to assume Marion will never catch on because she's just A Woman. Even though she was the one with the brilliant makeover idea in the first place.

So Tony goes back to his lab and spraypaints his suit. But of course, it's not just regular spraypaint, it's untarnishable TRANSISTOR spraypaint, so it'll stay gold forever!!!!

And so, the new look for Iron Man is born. Iron Man has a lot of different armors over the years, and I feel like I often see people consider this and his first armor as two separate models. But it's just the same one with paint on it.

So, later Tony is supposed to meet up with Marion again; I guess this must occur several days later. He asks a pilot at the airport if he picked up a Female when he was in Granville. Now I of course was not alive in the 60's to know how airports worked then, but this sounds more like something you'd ask a bus driver, not a pilot. Do the planes just jump around to many stops and the pilot actually knows who gets on and off? And is he supposed to recognize Marion from the sole description that she is "A Female" ???

Well, apparently Granville has been inaccessible for three days, but no one knows why, so Iron Man goes there to check it out. This is actually the beginning of the "main" plot of this episode, though honestly the gold spraypaint was the most important part of this whole thing.

Iron Man flies over to Granville to discover that the people have walled off the town and are attacking any outsiders because something called Gargantus will kill them if they don't.

Gargantus ends up being a Neanderthal Man (yeah idk) who despite looking like he should have ponderous footsteps, instead is ridiculously nimble and jumps around everywhere, TWANGing off of flagpoles like Super Mario and climbing up buildings with the expertise of Spider Man.

Iron Man realizes that because it's cloudy, this must really be a robot controlled by aliens! And indeed, he busts up Gargantus by using those TRANSISTORS and magnets he used to blow up the safe in the last mag. Gargy rips apart into robot scrap, and then shines a light at the clouds which makes the alien spaceship appear, with little green men inside and all! Somehow, breaking Gargantus also makes the mind-control on the people stop working (?) and the aliens get scared and run off, vowing not to come back to this planet because it's protected by iron men.

Iron Man busts down the wall, and then the next day we find Tony reuniting with Marion, ending the episode on a real knee-slapper!

To be honest I have little to comment on the actual Gargantus plot because it's pretty dumb. In the end, it's revealed that the aliens had actually visited the planet 80,000 years ago and only just now came up with the Gargantus plot to mind-control the people, but didn't realize that in 80,000 years the people would have evolved a bit. I guess in a way, that's somewhat clever writing, but at the same time... no, it's not. I mean, we had Star Trek in the 60's, too, so clearly people were able to imagine way more realistic stuff than that.

Actually, thinking back on the original Trek... never mind. People in the 60's were just really silly with their sci-fi.

I do love spray-painted Iron Man, though. Definitely a hilariously quirky reason for Iron Man's main appearance for a while.

For our side-stories, we had another prose about some Little Jimmy or whatever, a short called "Work of Art!" which had some fuzzy-faceed dudes in it and ended up being about a sorcerer who turned living things into paintings, and another short called "Prophet of Doom!" which mostly was about this dumb time-traveler who wanted to mess up history, but there was a little moment with these two mustached world leaders, one of whom was a Not Hitler with his little toothbrush stache. The side stories in these mags seem to revolve around a few pages leading up to a "clever reveal" like "there were other time-travelers, too!" or whatever; the stories aren't particularly exciting, but I'm sure in the 60's kids thought these were very surprising plots.

And here's our collection of Handsome Tonys for this month:

There weren't any other hot characters this time, but the second image above at least has some nice mustache action going on in the background. And that's it for TOS#40! Until next time, keep stachin'~

-Iron Man Readthrough-
<< FIRST | < PREV | NEXT > | LAST >>

#iron man readthrough #tales of suspense #tony stark