Monthly Archives: April 2012

The idea of a man in a skin tight suit of highly flexible metal armor is fantastic enough. Add to the mix mad scientists, wild temporary mutations, big business deals and secret identities and you are asking for an awful lot of suspension of disbelief…

…then you enter comic book crazy town and suddenly you’re walking down the pier of acceptability right toward the waters of who gives a fuck.

This issue is the event horizon and a robot Hulk is our delivery device, but we’ll get to that in a second.

First let’s talk about a very fundamental superhero comic idea: continuity.

Continuity is the threat of story that is carried from each issue of a comic book series to the next providing a history that readers can latch onto to be the common ground that different writers share when they add to the mythology. It is the thing that says Tony Stark was injured in a war zone and had to build the armor. It is what says that Krypton blew up and Superman was sent to Earth by his parents. It is what says that Abin Sur crashed on Earth and gave Hal Jordan the Green Lantern power ring. Continuity can change. When it is done in a specific book it is called a retcon, or retroactive continuity, and if it is done across the entire line of comic books it is call a reboot (see DC’s New 52). Continuity has fueled nerd rage for as long as there have been fictionalized stories. Seriously, when there were cave paintings there was a caveman who was pissed that the gazelle escaped the hunter. Pre-internet flame wars were actually conducted with flaming sticks!

Actually, don’t quote me on that. I just made it up about the caveman. I’m pretty sure it’s true but… yeah…

Anyway.

We’re actually a long way off from both a retcon and a reboot in regard to Iron Man (but, oh man, are they coming) so we can talk about the other form of continuity, one that everyone should be familiar with, where things that are established to be should remain the same until they are shown to change. HERE’S a dictionary definition.

Marvel cared enough about continuity discrepancies that they used to offer something called a No Prize If you pointed them out! As time went on (and people got greedy) they also required that you include a possible justification with your answer, adding fan-fiction pseudo-science to the mix. The rules have evolved as times have changed, but if you could get a No Prize for pointing out errors in back issues, I’d have a shot today for sure!

Rain, late night deliveries and a dude in a hood – it’s like a noir story and it sets you up to be pulpy and exciting, but what we get instead is a karate chop, a fake statue and…

The Hulk.

By now in Marvel Universe continuity Iron Man and The Hulk have encountered each other quite a few times, including starting the Avengers and then later fighting each other because of one misunderstanding or another. Now our mysterious hooded figure has managed to bend The Hulk to his will and bad things are about to happen.

Now for my chance at a retroactive No Prize, check out this page specifically the panels with Vincent Sandhurst on the phone:

See that huge diamond ring on his finger? It’s like they’re calling attention to it, right? Like it might even be a story point? Then in the bottom left panel it’s totally gone!

Oh, and it’s pretty clear now that Sandhurst has ulterior motives in selling Cord Industries to Stark – but we won’t know this issue.

The Hulk bursts in on the sales meeting and kidnaps Janice Cord, our resident damsel in distress, and then there’re pages of fight. Here’s a couple of them:

See all that swirling cloud there? That’s definitely a fight!

So, naturally, it turns out that it’s not really The Hulk it’s a Hulk robot! Oh and the hooded figure is the Mandarin.

So let’s take a look at a few things here:

1. So The Mandarin says at the end that this whole ruse was to see what would happen when people Tony Stark cares about are put in harms way and to confirm his suspicion that Tony Stark and Iron Man are the same person. However:
   1. Why make a robot Hulk? The two heroes have a public history in this universe, one where they worked together and formed a premier super team. Why not use a different super villain or, better yet, make the robot just a random monster? (Real world answer: Hulk sells comic books, but he’s not allowed to actually be a bad guy so put him in the book and make him a robot in the end – Sales Win!)
   2. Why Janice Cord? Yes she is a woman, and by 60’s standards that’s all you need, but she and Tony haven’t even dated yet, like, ever. So why target her?
2. Why is The Mandarin in a hood? He’s hiding from his own people? And then when he pulls off the hood he’s got a mask on too?!?!?!? Fashion faux pas! (Real world answer: so the reader doesn’t know that it’s him. But, seriously, all the Chinese iconography and the purple and green outfit, who else is it going to be?)
3. Remember this cover!!!! There are a few times when old covers, like this one, will be re-used in the series for totally different stories!

To start off, I think I may need to get more of these stiff Mylar bags for the old comics. The colors in issue 7 alone look like they are printer fresh and that’s pretty cool!

This is the first real multi-part story for the regular series. Even though each issue has represented essentially a day in the life of Iron Man (which makes this one hell of a week) and all of the events have strung together, this two-parter has an actual cliffhanger.

In this issue the Maggia hires the villainous Gladiator to help defeat Iron Man and rob Stark Industries. Here’s what he looks like:

There’s another character called Whirlwind. He looks like this:

When I was but a boy I fancied myself quite the Marvel Maniac. I knew trivia that impressed comic shop owners and, had the internet been a thing in the late 80’s, I had the over-confidant swagger of an internet troll. The fact that both of these characters had saw blades on their wrists, though, completely threw me. I was convinced they were the same character with different names – completely ignoring that Whirlwind has a whole separate set of powers (he controls wind, you see). But the saw blades! Why would you do that? The risk of injury seems really high and not one but TWO super-villains used the same weapon! Gah!

It took years to finally realize that they were different, which is a little embarrassing to admit in public, but it’s true.

There’s also a character named Vincent Sandhurst, he’s Janice Cord’s lawyer. I’m wondering if he’s related to Basil Sandhurst, The Controller (a villain we’ll meet in a couple issues). So many things I don’t remember!

Can we look at the covers again really quickly here?

These kind of covers are really rare in modern comics. They’re like mini-art pieces and there’s something in the way that they’re printed that gives them a deep, rich almost “painting” feel.

Anyhow, story synopsis:

• Maggia is planning heist of Stark Industries.
• Gladiator says, “I can take out Iron Man!”
• Whitney Frost, the Maggia’s Big M, says, “Uh, o-ok.” She now has feelings for Jasper Sitwell and doesn’t want him to get hurt. Actually Whitney Frost as a character is pretty progressive considering she is a product was the late 60’s. She is a really strong woman who isn’t all fainting and in need of saving, that job goes to…
• …Janice Cord, who visits Tony in hopes that he will buy what’s left of her father’s company. Her attraction to him begins here – until Tony has to escape to become Iron Man:

• Probably should have mentioned earlier that Gladiator kidnapped Stark, Sandhurst and Janice.

• Then Gladiator tries to drop a piece of heavy machinery on the Janice and Sandhurst, but Iron Man saves them in the proverbial nick of time, smashing his repulsor rays in the process:

• So we are left with this cliffhanger:

Issue #8 opens like this:

Right off the bat I’m impressed with how good the color is in this issue. It is remarkably well preserved.

I’m not sure if the scan does it justice, but I thought it was worth mentioning.

As I read through these early books of the series two things hit home more and more:

1. I was not paying anything close to attention when I read these the first time because I barely remember any of them.
2. Removing the fact that no one except the bad guy gets permanently hurt in any given issue, these stories are surprisingly mature – in a sophisticated way, not an inappropriate way.

If you’ve ever listened to “Tom vs. The Flash” then you probably know just how often 60’s era comic book stories would rely on time-travel. (Here’s the iTunes direct link just in case.)

Actually, if you’ve ever seen an episode of Star Trek the Original Series you know even more so!

Even though Iron Man is set, by comic book standards, in a more realistic world there was no way to escape time travel in the late 60’s. The thing that I found eerie, though, is just how much 24th century Earth sounds like 21st century internet culture, but we’ll get into that.

There is no delay in the start of the action this issue, page one is Tony getting ripped through time to the future, and he is unable to reach his armor.

Three panels later he’s being accused of creating the computer that runs the world – CEREBRUS!

When we learn what Cerebrus is it comes off as a proto-Skynet created by Stark to help run America’s defense planning, but it didn’t end there!

Cerebrus was so good at it’s job that people started using it for everything and it functioned on an international level, expanding as needed.

Here is a quote: “Cerebrus swelled like a mammoth mechanical spider-web — until it engulfed the world!”
Kinda’ sounds like the internet, right?

Here’s another quote: “The world had grown almost totally dependent on Cerebrus’s monolithic might… many gave in to become zombie-like slaves of the machine…”
Now it totally sounds like the internet, except internet trolls don’t have the Mr. Universe physique!

The differences between Cerebrus and the internet quickly become apparent, though, when two “Tracking Coils of Cerebrus” come bursting through the wall. As far as I can tell Google apps doesn’t currently support  tracking coils.

Naturally Tony is helped by hot-lady-scientist who delivers exposition and leads him to a museum where his Iron Man armor has been kept – remarkably well preserved considering being over 400 years old. (To be fair, at this point in continuity Stark wears the power source to the armor, the chest plate, all the time so the only parts that he uses from the museum are the extremities and helmet. But still…)

Tony takes the fight to Cerebrus, who can manipulate energy and become just about anything – like God in Star Trek 5

So fight, fight, fight, fight, fight – neither can get the upper hand so Tony pulls his mask to show Cerebrus that the man Cerebrus is fighting is actually his creator and that Cerebrus risks destroying himself  if he kills Stark. This freaks the machine out and hot-lady-scientist blows up the computer core and before all energy in the world goes away Tony is transported back to his own time.

Yeah, the ending feels as rushed as that was written. The whole thing wraps up in two pages, seven panels from explosion to “Next Ish:”

Like all media, you can see what the concerns of the day are by what is dealt with in its entertainment. Just like “Soylent Green” dealt with over population, this issue is all about the growth of automation and human dependence on machinery. But even though writer Archie Goodwin may be able to laugh now looking back on his horrors of the 24th century, take a look at this ad for Cheerios to see the context of where we were in 1968:

Intelsat III was the height of tech that most consumers had access to. 1200 calls and 4 TV channels, my phone can do that. In that world what would they think of the internet? What would it sound like to know that you have a little box in your pocket or purse at all times that knows exactly where you are and functions as both eyes and ears in our society? Would it be cool or scary that you could turn on the lights of your home, start your car and change the TV channel all with the same device?

Part of me likes to laugh at the “quaint-ness” of these comic stories, but are they really all that different from the horror stories we tell ourselves now? “Contagion” was a terrifying movie about a world-wide pandemic, but in fifty years will we be so medically advanced that we’ll look on that movie as a wild exaggeration? It’s nice to take a look at these and see how far we’ve come while at the same time realizing that it isn’t as far as I thought.

On a completely different subject, but still related to time, I found this great video on I09 about why old books have that “old book” smell. Breaking into these old comics has made my office smell like a used book store.  My romantic writer side is loving it!

Next time:

There’s something about old 60’s comics, and I’m not just talking about the smell of deteriorating news print. The language, the character arcs, and the serial style of the issues are all a window into the past where you can see how entertainment was consumed.

This was the late 60’s, 1968 to be specific, and a good five years into “The Marvel Age” the focus of “super-heroes with real world problems” is being laid on in a liberal way. Nothing points that out more than issues 3 and 4 (at least so far). At the time most weekly entertainment was still derivative in style to theater shows, live acts and radio plays and that is visible in the way these issues were written. In fact it’s so much a part of the fabric of how all these early issues were written that I don’t think I’ll mention it again until the style changes (sometime in the 70’s).

Both issues feature villains that were prominent in old issues of Tales of Suspense and both are instrumental in effecting Tony Stark’s opinion on being Iron Man.

Reading back through these again I remember issue 3 pretty well. We’re going to see more of The Freak, enough that my 9 year-old self rolled his eyes when I saw him on the cover, but issue 4 was a bit of a surprise. The cover I remember clearly, I mean I’ve had it for over 20 years, but the story was completely new to me! I’m curious how often that is going to happen in this project.

Story stuff: In issue 3 we pick up right after issue 2 with Shellhead returning to his Long Island, New York factory desperate to recharge, as is so often the case.

As he’s flying by, the Uranus rocket that Stark Industries is building falls over.

Iron Man catches it while all the workers escape but the strain on his transistors weakens his already damaged heart and he is forced to re-build a new armor!

Already in the pages of ToS he has re-designed or re-built the armor, but this is the first example in his own book of the Iron Man armor catching up with the technology of the times. Now instead of transistors he’s using integrated circuits and a thermocouple to help keep the armor charged.

Unfortunately, because his heart is so damaged, he can’t build the armor himself so his best friend and former driver, Happy Hogan, comes to help! Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts and long time mainstays in the Iron Man mythology, but this was their first appearance in his own book. Where they used to be comedic foil and romantic interest respectively, from here on out they really just serve as ways to torment the Tony Stark character. By the way, if you’re interested, Gwenth Paltrow plays Pepper in the movies and Jon Favreau plays Happy Hogan.

So during the building of the armor Happy get zapped by some of the rays from one of the machines creating the armor and gets turned into The Freak!!

He beats up Iron Man, who’s still not up to snuff yet since the new armor isn’t charged, grabs Pepper in a very King Kong way, and runs out into the city.

After some typical comic book action The Freak is incapacitated by gas and taken back to Stark Industries to get de-Freaked. The important part of this story is that seeing his best friends hurt makes Tony wonder if being Iron Man, with all of its dangers and secrets, is really worth it – so the whole issue ends on a real bummer.

Then we get to issue 4, page 1: fixing Happy. That goes fine, as all comic book science does when it needs to, but Pepper is all upset because she doesn’t know why Tony would put Happy in danger…

You know what, leaving all the soap opera aside we go to our favorite Cold War enemy, The Soviet Union, where they are giving new super-powers to a character called The Unicorn.

Yep. The Unicorn.

I know the name is silly, but he’s actually one of my favorite early Iron Man villains. I really like the design of this costume and he shows up a lot more becoming a more and more tragic figure. This issue starts all that story.

So the Soviets give him these great powers: super strength, durability, a bitchin’ armor mesh costume and, the piece d’resistance, the Unicorn helmet and power belt!

Small downside, the rays they used to make him powerful put his body in a constant state of crisis response so his life-span is significantly reduced. So he escapes with his new powers bent on finding someone who can fix this little problem…

…fortunately there’s this big science conference, being attended by none other than Tony Stark, still brooding about whether or not being Iron Man is a good idea.

So Unicorn storms in, makes demands on TV, and intends to use the scientists he can to heal himself and then ransom off the ones who can’t help him to make a little money.

Naturally Iron Man can’t let that happen and they fight! It looks like this:

After destroying the power belt, thereby eliminating the very horn that makes the Unicorn the Unicorn, the Unicorn freaks out and dives into the lake after it hoping to fix it. We’re going to see more of his unfortunate dealings with water (including a particularly disturbing run-in with the Atlantic Ocean) but for now the Unicorn is gone.

Seeing someone with unrestricted power proves to Tony that he should, and will, continue being Iron Man because the power of the Iron Man armor can’t be trusted to anyone else. This becomes a bit of a problem about eighty issues from now, but we’re not there yet.

For me, I’m actually surprised at how mature these stories are. Back in the 60’s these comics were written for and intended to children. It makes me sad that these kind of stories, dealing with real things (albeit in a cleaned-up safe way) don’t show up that much anymore in titles that are called “all ages.”

Also the serialized aspect of it all isn’t the same as current comics. These issues all literally take place the next day, if not the next hour, from the last issue. It makes for a kind of tight continuity that helped to make the Marvel Universe what it is today.

We’re getting closer and closer to multi-issue arc stories so more of these multi-issue posts are coming. Leave me a comment and let me know how you’re liking it so far. If the view numbers are any indicator this is one of the most popular series I’ve done so I hope it’s true!

Next Time:

It was bound to happen, I just didn’t realize it would happen this soon.

I have very few memories about this issue.

It features a one-off battle with a robot super-villain, the Cord family (who will play a big role in the early Iron Man comics), and more of the obnoxious SHIELD agent Jasper Sitwell.

Tony Stark also has a bevvy of beauties on his boat, and he wears a captains hat.

This was definitely the 60’s.

I do know that a lot of these early issues, because they were difficult to find, I read out of order. Because of that they don’t have the emotional “stickyness” that I have for some of the other issues. Although I will admit, I’m glad I’m finding the time to read the series in order. It’s really nice to fully understand the story!

I think that it’s worth bringing up that one of my charming foibles, at least back before I was old and cynical, was that I was a “complete-ist.” That’s a collector who wants to have all of whatever it is he collects. This drove my obsession from when I was a kid and well into my twenties.

It wasn’t enough to have all of the recent issues of Iron Man, I wanted ALL of the issues. And then it wasn’t enough to have just his title, then I wanted any issue of whatever book he might have showed up in. That might sound like an impossible task, but I had a resource back then, before the internet, called the Overstreet Price Guide. In it were not only the most reliable prices for all comic books (it’s what everybody used) but also a list of who appeared in what book. You can still get it today, HERE, if you wanted it!

But why stop at comic books? Iron Man was a character that was just popular enough to have some cool memorabilia without it being at Spider-Man or Superman levels of “impossible to find,” so I wanted all that too!

I made a pretty good job of it! With the exception of some stickers and iron-on t-shirt decals, I was able to get just about every Iron Man bit – with one major exception: The Marx Plastic 6″ figure.

I had one opportunity when I was 11 to get it at a convention. The seller had the whole Marvel set and was selling the whole set for $100. That was a LOT of money when all I wanted was one of the figures so I pulled out some of the tricks my dad taught me, no dice. He was only selling them as a set.

Hindsight being 20/20, had I known that eBay would exist and that I would be a relatively active eBay seller I would have happily spent the $100 bucks since I can get about that or more for each of the figures now – but whatcha’ gonna’ do?
EDIT: I just did an eBay search that you can see HERE showing that maybe I was right to walk after all, however maybe it’s worth the $10 bucks to get the Marx Iron Man now? Oh cruel collector gene!!! Why are you re-activating!?


All that being said, I gave up my complete-ist ways a long time ago. It isn’t that Iron Man has suddenly grown into super popularity, although that would make being an Iron Man complete-ist one of the most expensive hobbies ever, but I just kinda’ grew out of it.

Hanging on to the hunt like that is something you really need a lot of extra time for – something a kid, a teenager and a guy in his early twenties actually has.

I think my new relationship with money was an influence as well. There are other things I need/want to spend my money on now. It’s really difficult to say that a piece of plastic that will just be hanging out on my desk is worth even just the few dollars it may cost…

…although every once in a while….

Next time:

So before I even begin I would like you to look at the cover:

You purple circle stamp on the “N” on the cover? Fun story behind why I bought this issue and how it’s easy to confuse a kid who thought he knew everything about his favorite character’s premiere issue but turned out to know just enough to get himself in trouble.

Well, trouble in a relative sense.

OK, so not any actual “trouble’ but we can go with “mild embarrassment.”

I remember very clearly the comic convention where I finally found, and more importantly had saved up the money to buy, Iron Man #1. Well, I remember except for the location – it was definitely a hotel ball room, can’t remember if it was L.A. or Anaheim, but that’s not the important part.

The dealer who was selling it was right next to the entry door. He had what comic collectors would recognize as a “rare wall” where they put all the number one’s and first appearance issues. He had multiple copies of Iron Man #1 ranging in price and condition. Two caught my eye right away – one at $250 and another that was $350. However, because it was so early in the show, I didn’t want to blow my cash right away. And it was a big show so I figured there’d be other dealers carrying the issue.

Comic conventions for my dad and I were really cool bonding moments. We’d walk the aisles, check out artists and new books and he started teaching me the way to negotiate and bargain – ideas that were completely foreign to me. I have several items in my Iron Man collections that he managed to talk down to a fair price, and I still flinch to myself when I remember how I screwed up a negotiation for a Wolverine Secret Wars action figure almost twenty-five years ago ($40 bucks! Gah! I shoulda’ walked away!).

The Shrine shows were my favorite! ComiCon is great and all, but nothing beats a good old fashion comic book and collectors show like the one’s they held at The Shrine auditorium (They still put on this show! INFO HERE). It was $10 to get in and it was an easy way to burn a Sunday. I bought so much Yoda memorabilia there – just ridiculous. I still remember that there was a sculptor one month that did an Iron Man statue. The armor didn’t match any that I was familiar with, it was his own take on the current armor of the time, so I held off buying it. I decided after we got home that it was cool and I did want it after all. We went back the next month and he wasn’t there. Dad told me that sometimes, especially for one of a kind items, you really can’t wait. Lesson learned.

Back to the story…

So we waited until the end of the day to go back to the original dealer, no other dealers at the con had a decent copy of Iron Man #1 at a better price and, as my dad had taught me, people are more likely to wheel and deal when it’s the end of the day.

We went up and I asked to see the two different versions of the issue that had caught my eye in the first place. The $250 one was a little worse off for wear, but still in what would be considered VG or very good condition. The $350 was definitely better overall, practically NM or near mint condition, and there was an extra label on the bag that said “Marvel Value Stamp intact.” At the time I had no idea what a Marvel Value Stamp was. I thought it was that purple mark that I pointed out to you on the “N’ at the beginning of this post. Seeing that as an extra bonus I totally got that one. We talked money, I know the price came down a little but I don’t remember how much (yay for negotiation skills, boo for memory loss), I handed the man my money, bagged it up and I was the happiest little boy walking out of that convention! It was, and continues to be, the pride of my collection. Even after decades of storage it is still in marvelous, no pun intended, condition.

Fast forward, decades later, I find out what a Marvel Value stamp actually is! You can get a full explanation HERE but the basic story is that they were small pin-ups of characters, the size of stamps, that you’d cut-out and collect from all the different issues of Marvel comics – in the mid 70’s! there is no Marvel Value Stamp in this issue! This came out a good five or six years before that promotion! So as an adult I’m thinking to myself, “That bastard screwed over a kid!” Really, using my rational brain, $350 was a very fair price for the issue at the time given it’s condition so even if I had paid full price I couldn’t be too unhappy…

…but then you look at the purple stamp that is there on the “N” and it’s just a constant reminder that part of my decision making process was based on my misunderstanding of what a “Value Stamp” was. So embarrassing! I have no idea what that mark even is. I think it might be a postage mark, but I don’t know for sure. If you do please let me know in the comments.

The issue itself is very fitting for the times. It picks up right where the last issue of Tales of Suspense left off (as retold in Iron Man and Sub-Mariner #1 see last post) with shell-head sucked via vortex beam into the A.I.M. submarine.

This is the end of the story and it wraps up everything nicely – Iron Man wins the day, Jasper Sitwell is saved and we are re-introduced to Whitney Frost (originally introduced in ToS #98 – an issue I do not own so this was my first exposure to her). Whitney becomes very important later so stick her name in the back of your mind.

Some of the cool images of in this issue come from the renderings in and of the A.I.M. island base. Not only are the yellow beekeeper suits eye catching, but apparently in the late 60’s you needed to put a monogram on everything, even the floor!

This is my favorite:

Seriously, that is a highly stylized “A” on that machine arm!

The big-bad in this issue is a one-off named Mordius – a pre-cursor to the menacing M.O.D.O.K. who we’ll meet later. His face is deformed, although there is no explanation as to why, and he speaks just like the kind of super-villain you’d make fun of. He’s so corny, in fact, when Iron Man decides to kiss some ass he makes mention of it:

Oh, and I should probably mention that he invented what is essentially a very powerful 3D scanner and printer that he uses to make copies of the Iron Man armor. What he wasn’t counting on was the refractory coating on the armor that screws up the x-rays and makes it so that the armor copies don’t work right!

The story ends with the island base exploding, Mordius is never heard from again, and we are promised more action with “The Demolisher!”

There’s also a bonus story in the back, a three page re-telling of Iron Man’s origin. There wasn’t a collector’s market at the time. People couldn’t easily get the back issues so re-prints like this were common. When we get to the Giant-Sized issues and Annuals you’ll see more stuff like this.

Now I kinda’ wanna’ take my dad to the next Shrine show.

Next time: