Category Archives: Project: Iron Man

April 13, 2015 · 9:45 am

Project: Iron Man – Iron Man #28 The Controller Lives!

This is a one-and-done issue and when I read issues like this I always ask myself if going through each issue is really the best plan for this project. The goal was to go through my collection and read them through and reconnect with the sentimental memories that are attached to them. Issues like #1 and #173 are easy because they are not only milestones in my collecting history, but are fond memories that I have with my Mom and Dad, but issues like this don’t rouse the same emotional response. I didn’t want this to just become me retelling Iron Man stories. That idea’s been done, and done very well, by Tom Katers and I don’t want to do a poor copy of that.* I considered taking a new tact with this project, of reading through each comic and then only writing about the ones that struck a chord, but that didn’t feel like it was in the spirit of what I set out to do. It felt like cheating. Then it occurred to me that this issue follows television show formula and that, even though I may not have strong memories of it, there’s still something to explore. Something to comment on beyond just rehashing the story in the pages. If this issue of Iron Man were on TV it would make for a good CW show.

Here on our first page we have a girl running in the dark. There’s thunder and lightning, suddenly a foreboding shadow and… the monster is revealed! It is The Controller and he has found her! This opening scene wouldn’t out of place in an episode of Supernatural or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It even ends the page with the credits.

The more I read stories with The Controller the more it is clear to me that he is a good foil for Iron Man , especially at this point in Iron Man’s evolution.

Just like Tony, Basil Sandhurst is infirm without his armor.
In the opposite of Tony who uses his own brain power to make powerful armor, The Controller uses other people’s literal brain power to make his armor powerful.
He’s a very physically powerful villain, they make a big deal about that this issue, so he’s not someone that Tony can just overpower. Tony has to out think him.

As he makes more appearances he changes to fit with the times and by the time we get to Matt Fraction’s run in 2005 The Controller has an army of drone zombies… but we’re not quite there yet.

The Controller is trying to stop our young lady, who we will call Meredith McCall, from warning Tony Stark about something and pulls out and tosses a tree stump just to get to her and make her one if his mind slaves.

Where comic books have one-and-done issues that return to the status quo at the end of twenty-two pages and TV shows have their stand-alone episodes that do the same thing. This is one of those. Have we met Meredith McCall before? No, she is a special guest start if we are using TV vocabulary. Will anything be changed when we get to the end of this issue? No, but I’m getting ahead of myself. That tree stump does what all things thrown into the air must do – it comes down…

…right in front of the car that is carrying Tony Stark and Jasper Sitwell.

Can we take a moment to talk about how strong someone has to be to pull a tree stump out of the ground? Rain and wet earth notwithstanding, tree stumps are notoriously difficult to get out of the ground. It’s easy for city-slickers like myself to forget that there’s a reason why stump pulling has a shocking large return of results on Google search. Trees don’t want to be moved and anchor themselves down pretty good. The fact that The Controller can rip one out of the ground so casually really speaks to the strength he has.

Back to our story…

Tony and Jasper are on the rocks ever since the run in with The Minotaur and Jasper’s discovery that the love of his life, Whitney Frost a.k.a. Madame Masque, is in love with Tony. Tony mentions that he is just visiting an old friend and doesn’t need his S.H.I.E.L.D. escort, but Jasper is more cautious saying that a mysterious call from a young lady from Tony’s past seems suspicious. The tree stump pretty much confirms that Jasper is right as does the scream from the woods. Jasper runs into the woods to help while Tony dons his armor from the secret compartment in his car. Side Note: I wish real cars had all the secret compartments like they do in comics and movies. I don’t know what I’d do with them, but I want them!

Iron Man, using his boot jets, finds Meredith before Jasper can (and The Controller runs off not ready to confront his old foe) which makes an emasculated Jasper Sitwell feel all the more useless.

Tony has guilt about it, but also has to maintain his cover of being both Stark and Iron Man, so Iron Man lets Jasper get Meredith back to the car while he “searches” for Tony. They drive to the sanitarium where Meredith works and we get the popular television trope – the flashback!

Forbidden love – the sweetest of all fruits. Even though Tony and Meredith are all hot for each other that one summer, after their fathers make an effort to separate them the relationship fades just like so many do. The reach the Pinewood Sanitarium and mention that Meredith was worried that Basil Sandhurst – The Controller – was planning his revenge on Stark. The director of the facility laughs it off claiming that Basil is an invalid, even showing Jasper and Tony a sleeping Basil Sandhurst.

Jasper, still feeling useless, decides that Tony probably is safe and leaves, Tony sticks around to see to Meredith. Unfortunately it was all a trick! The Controller reveals himself and that he has built a new Absorbatron! In TV we’d call this an act break or a reveal – something big to bring you back after the commercials.

Now The Controller wants Tony’s help building a new device that will make him even more powerful…

Meanwhile in the woods, Jasper can’t shake his suspicions and investigates the area where they found Meredith. There he finds a slave disc and rushes back to Pinewood.

Under the careful watch of The Controller, Tony builds the helmet Sandhurst designed. It focuses the mental energy of those attached to slave discs into powerful rays of destructive force.

Jasper rushes in and distracts The Controller just long enough for Tony to get into his Iron Man armor and there is a battle:

I really like this battle scene. Iron Man is not as physically powerful as The Controller, Iron Man even mentions that only Hulk or Thor could really slug it out with him, and just like in a good TV show we need to see the hero overcome what looks like a hopeless battle. And brains win out over brawn. Knowing that he couldn’t directly sabotage the helmet, Tony made it so that it could only handle so much power:

With the bad guy defeated we get our wrap-up where the status quo gets put back to normal (rather quickly as well):

Villain is out-of-action and his new tech is destroyed.
All of his victims are free and safe.
Jasper and Tony are friendly again.
As for Meredith and Tony’s lost romance? The final nail is hammered into that coffin when it is revealed that she is married. Stark don’t do married chicks.

I don’t think we see Meredith McCall again and the next time we see The Controller he is so different that this story is irrelevant, but just like good genre TV it filled a month and was fun to read.

See you next time!

*Seriously though, his podcasts called Tom vs. Comics are fantastic! Especially if you’re a DC Silver Age fanboy. I’m not but I listened to all of Tom vs. The Flash and I attribute it to being the main reasons why I’m enjoying The Flash television show so much right now. Yes the show is good on it’s own, but Tom and his retelling of the classic stories makes it so much better. Check it out!

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Filed under avengers, comic books, iron man, Iron Man 28, Iron Man Issue, Project: Iron Man

January 26, 2015 · 8:00 am

Project: Iron Man – Iron Man #27 “The Fury of Firebrand!”

This is an issue where it isn’t so remarkable how much I remember, but in how much I didn’t understand and what went over my head. The heyday of my Iron Man collecting, and therefore Iron Man reading, was ages 8-12. Ideas like Communism and The Civil Rights Movement existed as unrelatable ideas that were taught to us in history class. It was the mid to late 80’s. Yes The Cold War was still going strong, but it had been 20 years since the Cuban Missile Crisis and neither country was eager to repeat that mistake again. Martin Luther King, Jr. was an acknowledged hero of the Civil Rights movement, we got the day off from school and I had not yet witnessed anything close to real racism in my life. So when I read comic books from the 60’s and early 70’s the ideas in them were like ancient history. They were written for their time and thank God we weren’t like that anymore. Reading them now, however, opened my eyes to just how much issues like this one covered.

Let’s start with the super villain in this story: Firebrand.

When I was younger I had no idea what a “firebrand” was. I knew that this bad guy had fire related powers, but no idea that his name was also relevant to the story. Of course now we have the internet for instant definitions:

Firebrand: one that creates unrest or strife (as in aggressively promoting a cause) :agitator
– from www.merriam-webster.com

And our character makes with the agitating right off the top. He helps some local protesters break into the construction site of a community center that the Iron Man Foundation is paying for. Even though the protesters are excited about their sit-in Firebrand makes it clear he’s looking for a fight and then takes off.

Eddie March, who you may remember did a brief stint as Iron Man, is now out of the hospital and has been selected to be the director of the new community center since he is both a native son of Bay City and also has the popularity of being Iron Man for his short time. As they head to the site, Eddie marvels at the changes to the city, with the exception of the North Side which is just as bleak as he remembers it being when he was a kid.

He and Iron Man arrive at the construction site with the city councilman in charge of the community center, Lyle Bradshaw, to see that there is already a bit of trouble between the protesters (black) and police (white).

There’s almost a Commedia dell’arte feel to the characters from this point. Not that they are directly from the Commedia tradition, but that there are archetypes that each character represents. Iron Man is the unbiased moral “right” that wants what is best for all within the law. It is worth noting that Tony Stark appears very little in this issue. For 95% he is in his Iron Man guise – a superhero with no definable skin color. Eddie March is the biased “right” who can relate to the protesters more than Iron Man can. The protesters, all black, represent the civil struggle and members of it become the focus of different variations within that struggle. The police, all white, represent the white establishment defined by law without bigotry. Lyle Bradshaw represents exploitative greed and the white establishment defined by bigotry. These are some pretty heavy concepts to toss into what were called, at the time, “funny books.” My 9 year old brain saw them more as:

Iron Man = Awesome
Eddie March = Was Iron Man = Awesome
Firebrand = Bad guy with fire powers
Protesters = Poor and Suffering
Police = Police
Bradshaw = Jerk

So I saw the good guys versus the bad guys in the issue, but I missed all the nuance of how this applied to the times. It is also worth noting that reading this issue with today’s current events in mind, like Ferguson and “Black Lives Matter,” that as far as we’ve come, there is still a way to go.

Taking advantage of the unrest, Firebrand shows up and a riot starts.

There’s a super villain/super hero fight that happens, but that’s not the point of the issue. Instead, the poignant plot line is between Eddie March and a young woman he saves from the riot, Helene.

After they escape, Helene takes Eddie through the city and they discuss what might actually help raise the community as opposed to just have a community center built for them.

While this is happening we get some background into how Firebrand came to be.

And how he built his suit (a bit of unintentional foreshadowing to The Armor Wars and The Five Nightmares).

Battle aside, Iron Man, Eddie, Helene and Councilman Bradshaw eventually all end up back at the councilman’s office and discuss what might be best for the community – which leads to an impasse. Naturally, Firebrand shows up, raises hell, and kidnaps Councilman Bradshaw.

We also find out that Bradshaw is completely corrupt and is profiting on the community center.

Normally, in a comic book, we’d expect to have everything wrap up all nice an clean, but it doesn’t. Firebrand escapes. The riot is stopped, but so is construction of the community center. Eddie and Helene get jobs at the Iron Man Foundation. But the comic even mentions that it is a very slow matter to get back to healing and understanding.

The last panels bring the whole thing home.

I don’t know that we have the same kind of material created for children that addresses issues like this in the same way that they did back in the 70’s. It was a time for experimentation and breaking established rules and that lead to some great filmmaking, music, and storytelling. It’s also strange to me that a story this on the nose still found a way to get over my head. I guess there’s no stopping a pre-adolescent brain that’s obsessed more with the super hero than the stories that he is featured in. Regardless, it is very eye opening to re-read this now and get a whole new sense of meaning from it. Although not the original point of this project, it has been a very nice bonus.

See you next time.

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Filed under comic books, fanboy, iron man, Iron Man 27, Marvel, Project: Iron Man

January 12, 2015 · 9:00 am

Project: Iron Man – Iron Man #26 Death in a Dark Dimension

After having such a connected experience to the last issue, I hit the polar opposite with this issue. I have no memory of of Iron Man #26 Death (or Dual depending on whether you’re reading the cover or front page) in a Dark Dimension. However, looking at the cover, seeing the barbarian-like hero and his weapon being The Solar Sword, I am reminded of Thundarr the Barbarian:

That aside, this is a stand alone issue that tried to cram a lot of stuff into 22 pages. We open with Happy Hogan trying to beat up Tony as he armors up. This happens quite a bit over the course of the series.

Pepper has been kidnapped by the Collector to make Stark bring him The Freak – the monster that Happy turns into when exposed to Cobalt Rays. Happy can’t know that he was ever The Freak so Tony wants to save Pepper with the power of Iron Man.

As I mentioned above, the villain in this issue is The Collector in his second comic book appearance. The Collector you may recognize from the Guardians of the Galaxy movie:

Guardians-of-the-Galaxy-Poster-The-Collector screenrantDOTcom

Photo from Screenrant.com

Here he makes a deal with Iron Man, bring him The Solar Sword or he turns Happy into The Freak and adds him to his zoo. Very basic, kind of a cartoon plot. Just an excuse to get everyone fighting. Definitely designed for younger minds from a more naive time.

So Shellhead is taken to the Dark Dimension where he is immediately set upon by shadow demons.

I think they kinda’ look like the weeping angels from Doctor Who:

But Iron Man is rescued by Thor! Wait, no, that’s Val-Larr Champion of Light! He just looks like Thor with a big “V” on his chest.

Together they fight off the shadow demons and the issue starts to feel like a backdoor pilot for this new hero. He’s in the Dark Dimension, which is a Marvel Mystic realm often visited by Dr. Strange. I wondered while reading this if Val-Larr ever showed up in Dr. Strange or any of the other Marvel Mystic books. A quick Google search showed that he does not seem to. He’s referenced again in Iron Man #33, but we’ll see that later. We get a quick history of the realm, the battle between light and shadow, and the origins of the Solar Sword that Val-Larr uses.

Comic Book Science: The Solar Sword is a weapon that can collect the ambient light and then use it to perform feats and powers including strobes of bright light that burns shadow demons and blasts of power. The full powers and limits of the Solar Sword are not known.

Then Iron Man is taken to the last Citadel of Light – LUMINIA!

And now, after having fought alongside Val-Larr (like, his name is, literally “valor”) and making friends, Tony suddenly remembers, “oh yeah, kinda’ need to grab that sword because The Collector is coming” and he picks a fight.

My favorite part of that is Val-Larr’s response, “Wha?!?” If it were written today he’d be like, “Da faq?!!” Also this gave me a feeling of foreshadowing to a certain storyline in the future where Tony makes a dubious decision because he feels it’s the right thing to do…

Photo from villians.wikia.com

…but we’ll get to that later.

Tony does get the sword back to The Collector and, surprise surprise, The Collector decides to keep the sword and abandon Tony, Pepper and Happy in the Dark Dimension… that is until the Solar Sword starts acting funny. Remember the comic book science thing? The Solar Sword was created in the Dark Dimension, where light is scarce. Suddenly brought into a place where light is prevalent the sword begins to overload – and it’s going to explode! So Shellhead picks up The Collector and flies him back into the Dark Dimension.

Fortunately for Val-Larr and the residents of Luminia this coincides with Shar-Khan’s attack on Luminia.

I actually really like the design of Shar-Khan. I would have liked to have seen more of him. Just look at that creepy face!

So, as you may have guessed, the good guys win. The bad guys lose. Happy and Pepper go off to live without Happy discovering that he was ever The Freak. It’s a stand alone issue and it’s interesting to think that this issue is very similar to the issue that features the first appearance of Thanos… but that’s still to come. I think that these were pretty typical issues in the 60’s through the early 70’s. New characters were always being introduced, just like the Golden Age. Some stuck, some didn’t, and Val-Larr was one of the latter. The next issue features the first appearance of Firebrand and dips a toe in how Iron Man as a comic book starts to look at social issues. That’s a character we see a bit more often.

Bit of a non sequitur: this issue’s Stan’s Soapbox, the “newsletter” section of the comic, includes an audience survey. It asks about what kinds of stories you like and what you don’t. It uses some fantastic 70’s vernacular. It gave me the impression of how fandom used to work before the internet. Everything still happened: surveys, complaints, discussions; but they all worked via the mail or telephones or conventions/meet-ups. Just another example of ‘the more things change…”

See you next time.

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Filed under comic books, comic movies, geek, iron man, Iron Man 26, Iron Man Issue, Marvel, Project: Iron Man

January 2, 2015 · 9:00 am

Project: Iron Man – Iron Man Issue #25 This Doomed Land – This Dying Sea!

This issue is a perfect example of why I wanted to do this project! I have such strong memories associated with this issue and, surprisingly, there are elements of this issue that affected my beliefs on our environment and corporate policies.

The opening page, for me, is some of the best evidence that the more things change the more they stay the same. It’s been known that pollution is a problem for decades and, while big strides have truly been made (the air and water now are far better off than they were in 1970 when this was written) there’s still so much farther to go. When I was a kid I remember being struck by this notion that “saving the Earth’ wasn’t a new idea and here it was, subtle as a hammer, on page one of this issue of Iron Man.

So, there’s Shellhead, carrying the corpse of a young woman poisoned by the very air she breathed. We are relieved to discover that this is just a film created by Tony to help convince other business owners to take environmental protection seriously. They respond in a stereotypical “businessman” fashion… which leads Tony to tell of a recent adventure he had with Iron Man.

We move to Namor the Submariner swimming through the ocean angry and brooding. He comes on a pipe spewing pollution – look at the plumes of black and deep purple – killing all the local fish. This, naturally, sends him into a rage and, like any good Silver/Bronze Age comic book character, he destroys the object of his anger… and then follows the pipe back to kick the ass of the surface dweller that put it there.

Now we flash to the surface, where the pipe originated from, where Tony Stark is visiting the supervisor of the Meridian Island facility, Blaine. Blaine is a douche. Archie Goodman leaves very little room for negotiation on this fact. He’s overly casual with the CEO of his company, cuts corners on safety and environmental equipment and siphoned budgeted funds to pay for his off-the-books pet project, a solar generator, that has some pretty gnarly side effects. Blaine’s fiance, June, comes running in to tell him that all of filters and pumping equipment are shutting down and that the island is starting to fill up with toxic gas. (Point of note, Mr. Goodwin makes sure that we know that Tony is a responsible business owner by having him mention that there should be special filtration units that should be taking care of these fumes.)

Tony is just getting his head wrapped around all of this when Namor shows up to beat things with his fists – which includes a building or two. Stark sends Blaine to get his employees to safety and then Namor and Iron Man fight for, like, a long time.

It’s pages of punches, but those are not as important as the core of the story so let’s jump right to the end where Iron Man wins (natch) and we get back to Blaine the douche denying that there’s any trouble even though all the air around them is inky with noxious fumes. Turns out Blaine’s solar generator is helping to cause this smog (fuzzy late 60’s pseudoscience here) and needs to be destroyed. Well, Blaine just won’t have that and puts up a fight until his fiance passes out from lack of oxygen.

With June down Blaine is suddenly willing to listen to Iron Man and ol’ Shellhead lands a verbal bitchslap.

Then we get the “team-up” section of the book where Iron Man helps Submariner escape and then they work together to destroy the solar converter…

…By dropping a giant rock in the ocean and tidal waving the island clean. Oh, and Blaine the Douche died trying to fix his mistake – TOO LITTLE TOO LATE, DOUCHE!

In the end the businessmen that Tony was trying to convince to join him in better environmental practices blow him off saying that changes cost money and that they have stock holders to answer to. They leave and we’re left with much the same reaction you’d see in modern business.

The funny thing is, Tony quotes that, “…the same thing could happen on a global scale in ten to thirty years!” And it kind of is. Maybe not to the extreme of this story, but it is over thirty years later and climate change is constantly in the news, animals are constantly threatened with extinction, and rainforest is still being cut down by the hundreds of acres a day… If nothing had changed Archie Goodwin probably wouldn’t have been wrong.

The nice thing is the effects of the Clean Air Act of 1963 were starting to show effects and the Clean Water Act of 1972 helped to clean up and save some of the most important waterways. The combination of the two have definitely kept us from the kind of apocalyptic scenario presented on page one of this comic. The conversations generated in the 70’s also helped to change the culture as far as the popularity of environmentalism. I grew up in the late 80’s/early 90’s and I remember the environment being part of the core conversation in school and in general. Earth Day was recognized at school and we’d do events to prep for and celebrate it, Star Trek 4 had a “save the whales” message and was a big hit, and recycling became such a thing in california that suddenly there were different trash cans depending on whether what you were throwing out was recyclable or not.

So when I read this in 19… something-or-other I was really surprised that these ideas, that felt really young, were actually much older than I was – as was the corporate attitude of “money before responsibility” that is the stale cliche/truth of big business.

It’s funny how things like this can stick with you. Having read this again, decades after reading it the first time, my memory of it was very accurate and it’s amazing to me that the message can still be relevant.

Has anything stuck with you like that? Let me know in the comments.

See you next time!

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Filed under comic books, geek, iron man, Iron Man 25, Iron Man Issue, Marvel, nostalgia, Project: Iron Man

December 3, 2013 · 5:00 pm

Project: Iron Man – Iron Man #24 “My Son… The Minotaur!” or Self Esteem Issues a la 1970

How do you wrap up a dangling plot threat and talk about self esteem issues in a comic book from 1970? You make the story about a Minotaur and contrast that character’s issues with that of your hero’s current love interest. And that is exactly what we get in Iron Man number 24. If you remember, the Midas story arc from issues 17-19 ended with Whitney Frost, AKA Madam Masque, ending up adrift in the ocean where it could have been assumed she was dead.

She was not.

Turns out she ended up stranded on an island in the far Aegean. Frankly I didn’t realize that there was so much of the Aegean Sea that some of it could be considered far, but it was 1970 so I’ll go with it. As she comes to we are treated to a re-cap as to how she got here (which I was especially grateful for since it has been months since I’ve looked at my Iron Man stack).

She wakes up only to be knocked out again by the terrible Minotaur, whose name is Miklos. More on him later.

Meanwhile, a separate SHIELD investigation finds that Madam Masque’s mask has been sold to an international fence who gets busted. The mask is then examined and returned to our faithful SHIELD agent Jasper Sitwell since it relates to his investigation of the Maggia.

Tony Stark is still upset about the death of Janice Cord and is trying, unsuccessfully, to “playboy” it off in Monaco. Lots of James Bond-y stuff here and all of the dialogue is CRAZY soap-opera-like. I actually had to make two attempts to get through this one because I just wasn’t in the right head space to deal with the melodramatics the first time.

And that’s the set-up, getting all of our characters on paths that are bound to intersect.

To get to the core of the issue we get a bit of back story about how Miklos became a Minotaur…

…and we see that Miklos has some serious self-esteem issues.

Oh, and that Miklos’s crazy scientist father pawns all of the things that Miklos steals from the villagers to fund his research, and out of greed has decided to create an army of Minotaurs to steal from everyone. Meanwhile both Iron Man and Jasper are hot on the trail of Madam Masque.

Iron Man stumbles upon Miklos and they fight:

Dr. Vryolak attempts to transform Madam Masque,

But it all ends poorly:

All of this gets Miklos thinking about what it mean to be an outcast and how Madam Masque, who is horribly disfigured, still seems to be loved.

Then more fighting:

The fight shatters a rock that is holding up the cave and it looks like victory for our villains is secured:

But Miklos has a crisis of conscience and sacrifices his life, and that of his father, so that Madam Masque, Jasper and Shellhead can escape leaving us with these panels:

Oddly enough, even through all of the death and destruction, Madam Masque finds hope out of how Tony and Jasper feel about her and she wanders off to make herself feel worthy of their love.

This is actually a pretty heavy concept for something that was, essentially, a kid’s book. I do realize that much of the point gets lost in the fact that 1) there is a Minotaur and 2) the final point is reached with the death of the two antagonists, but this issue just goes to show that there has never been a time when young people haven’t felt like outsiders. If we look back on our own teenage years and are really honest with ourselves, I’m sure we can all remember times when we felt like an outcast. I know I can. And this issue’s message, that there is hope and that people who care about you care about you no matter what you look like, is still relevant today. With bullying being a major point of social awareness and unfortunate events like school shootings happening more than anyone wants it’s important to realize that the underlying issues are not new.

Now, I don’t think Iron Man #24 is going to solve any of these bigger world issues, but maybe the angst of a teenage Minotaur is enough to get some conversation going and conversation is something.

Do you relate to Miklos’ plight? Are you still dealing with feeling like an outsider? Let’s talk about it in the comments. At least you’ll know you’re not alone.

See you next time.

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Filed under body issues, greek, iron man, iron man 24, minotaur, mythology, Project: Iron Man

May 15, 2013 · 9:48 pm

Project: Iron Man Issue 23 or Check out the threads on this guy!

Janice Cord is dead!

Dead, dead – not coming back (but don’t hold me to that). And Shellhead goes straight into avenging mode and sinks the ship that brought the Titanium Man into the country.

Straight up sinks it. Sure he says, “The Coast guard will pick them up.” But when you see what damage is done to the ship I think you’ll agree that not everyone made it out unscathed.

But after he visits Janice’s grave this comic makes a hard left into Silver Age storytelling land. I’ve been wavering on my opinions of this issue. It’s one of the issues that I have no memory of ever reading before. When I was originally collecting my Iron Man comics I didn’t get them in order so I didn’t read them in order – except for the issues that were current at the time. From issue 200 on I was solid on continuity. Even the late hundreds before 200 are squared up pretty good in my head, but these early, early books with very short, sometimes only single issue, story arcs just got lost. Before I’d buy what I could find, read it, and bag & board it. I rarely went back to read the early ones – I didn’t want to damage them. To a certain extent that behavior paid off. These books, which are nearly fifty years old(!), look great, aren’t brittle and look like they could stick around for another fifty years. It also means that, with a mature, adult brain I’m reading some of these stories for, essentially, the first time.

With all of this in mind let me introduce you to THE MERCENARY!

It’s ok, get the laughter out now. That outfit isn’t going anywhere.

Early in a superhero’s run lots of shots are taken at creating his rouges gallery. Most of the bad guys a superhero faces in modern comics were actually created decades early in the hero’s career, with a few notable exceptions who aren’t worth mentioning now. But not every villain created in the Silver Age is worth keeping and The Mercenary definitely counts as one of them that can afford to be forgotten.

Outfit aside, he’s a hired killer who has a lot of gadgets and training.

A LOT of gadgets.

And check out how well he lounges in a chair:

Gadgets that are just a shade too convenient and applicable to the situation. It’s like the creative team read a Batman comic of the day and decided this bad guy should have a utility belt too.

Plot wise, this issue does a lot to close some loopholes.

Janice Cord is confirmed dead.
The pirates who brought the Titanium Man to the U.S. are dealt with.
And the Vincent Sandhurst (brother to Basil “The Controller” Sandhurst and former attorney to Cord Industries) storyline is completed with his death.

All of this made possible by a damsel in distress – the wife of one of the pirates. Really, that’s not important, but this splash panel is:

It’s the one time The Mercenary looks cool.

When all is said and done the girl is saved, the bad guys are both dead (which doesn’t bode well for The Mercenary coming back – but that’s probably for the best),

and Iron Man walks off with her into the sunset.

Next time Iron Man fights a Minotaur.

Seriously. This is what was happening in Silver Age Marvel comics.

See you next time!

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Filed under comic books, geek, iron man, Project: Iron Man, projects

April 18, 2013 · 4:30 pm

Project: Iron Man – Issues 21 & 22 Fandom & Obsession Leads to Misunderstandings & Tragedy

Being a fanboy is nothing new to me, as I’m sure you’ve noticed if you’ve read these entries at all, and it’s fitting to have the next story line in Project: Iron Man focus on being a fan… along with a tale about unrequited love and some of the fantasies that go along with both of those things.

The Iron Man cover for issue 21 continues the streak of red herrings that are so typical for this time period. The dramatic, “I QUIT!” along with the image of Tony Stark throwing his Iron Man helmet to the ground. Yes this is another issue where Tony gives up being Iron Man, but he’s not nearly so upset about it and it also isn’t a very long retirement.

Take our opening page here:

Is Iron Man fighting a boxer and losing??!?!?

No, of course not. We’re inside the mind of Eddie “Iron Man” March. Iron Man is Eddie’s favorite superhero and a huge influence in his life. And in the end his admiration of Iron Man helps Eddie win the fight!

Eddie March is the placeholder for the reader – albeit he happens to be a world class boxer – and his wish to be Iron Man mirrors our own. When I was a kid I played Iron Man all the time. Because I grew up in the middle period between the Secret Wars figures (which I would eventually get in several forms) and the Toy Biz release I re-painted and re-purposed other action figures to be Iron Man.

Shellhead would regularly battle my M.U.S.C.L.E. men and Lord Dread from Captain Power.

Lord Dread was actually a really cool figure. Since he didn’t have much characterization in his own show (he sat in a chair and said “evil” things) having a cyborg in a cape with a laser sword made for a good recurring enemy. In my adventures he was an evil genius of Doctor Doom caliber. Very nasty indeed!

But back to Eddie…

Due to his years in the ring we find out that he has a brain condition and needs to quit fighting.

But as one dream dies another is about to come true. Tony Stark, now that he has a repaired heart, has been holding back in his battles with Iron Man because he doesn’t have the “I’m going to die anyway” confidence that he once had. In a battle with the new Crimson Dynamo he decides to pass the mantle of Iron Man on.

Naturally – because we only have about twenty pages to tell this story – both Tony and Happy Hogan (Tony’s confidant for the uninitiated) agree that Eddie March is the man for the job! Talk about wish fulfillment! This played right into the the very thing I wanted as a kid (and would still be pretty cool, quite frankly) getting trained to be Iron Man with your very own set of Iron Man armor!

He even does pretty well for himself in his first fight:

But reality (or what passes for it in a comic book universe) rears its ugly head. The blood clot in his brain is still there and, even though the Iron Man armor can take some hard impacts, fighting the Crimson Dynamo is enough to take Eddie down.

At the beginning of issue 22 things are looking bad for Eddie and suddenly being a superhero for real isn’t looking so great for the reader, but Tony makes it in time to get Eddie to the hospital.

Because of Eddie’s willingness to sacrifice himself for the honor of being Iron Man Tony resolves that no one else should have to carry the burden and decides to remain Iron Man – although that changes when he becomes a drunk, but that’s about 100 issues away.

And by page three our story turns from wish fulfillment to a tale of broken hearts and misunderstandings. How often has this happened to you? You defect from your country, change your name and go into hiding from the KGB, get hired by the rival of the person you hate the most, fall in love with the owner of that company and then use a super suit of your own design to not only beat down the symbol of your rival’s company but also impress the girl you love? All the time, right? Well for Alex Niven, the new Crimson Dynamo, that’s exactly what’s going on.

The problem here is that the KGB in the Marvel Universe, unlike the real world, can send the Titanium Man to come get you when they find you.

Titanium Man is bad news. Ten feet tall in a battle armor that is comparable to Iron Man and piloted by a guy who is losing his humanity. Not good. Alex saves Janice, but Shellhead shows up assuming that he is stealing her away – classic comic book misunderstanding.

Janice tries to tell Iron Man that the Crimson Dynamo is helping, but he doesn’t listen. Originally I was going to point out that this is a mildly misogynistic trope from the 60’s, but then I thought about all the times Rene has said, “Why don’t you listen to me?” and it made me realize that, apparently, men just don’t listen to women. Since no one is listening, and there’s a Titanium Man rampaging about, people get hurt.

Alex, fearing the worst and wearing a damaged armor, runs away. Iron Man puts down Titanium Man and finds Janice near death. Which just goes to show that jealousy + super powerful battle armor = dead girlfriend.

Although the example is extreme, I can see with hindsight how jealousy and pointless bravado led to similar no win situations in my own life – especially in my teens. As much as an adolescent boy may think girls will like the 12 year old comic book action hero it rarely turns out to be true. Maybe if I had paid more attention to the life lessons in my comic books I could have avoided some of that (probably not).

See you next time!

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February 12, 2013 · 7:00 pm

Project: Iron Man – Iron Man Issue 20

I won’t spend a lot of time talking about about how long it’s been between posts, we’ve all noticed and I’m not proud of it. So I’m just going to go right into this…

Invincible Iron Man #20 is a stand alone issue that follows the very dramatic events of the “Death of Tony Stark” arc, when he received his heart surgery that made it so that he was no longer dependent on wearing his armor’s chest plate.

It was actually nice to take some time off and come back to reading this issue, I was able to see it through fresh eyes. One of the things that made Marvel Comics so popular in the 60’s was that the stories were more about real problems and real social issues. They treated their super-heroes like regular people with regular people problems. This is one of those issues where the regular person is actually the star of the issue. Iron Man is in the issue, but it actually focuses on a disgruntled security guard and his frustrations as he reaches a mid-life crisis. I watched Twilight Zone episodes today as I was reading this issue and I noticed that the storytelling in the book was very similar to what I saw in the Twilight Zone episodes, highly dramatic and with grave stakes.

Things start out appropriately bombastic – with a literal bomb!

This is all well and good but it’s the security guard, Charlie, who’s really stewing in this issue.

See, he misses his glory days and resents his family; and the fact that Iron Man gets so much attention just drives him nuts! I have been very fortunate in that I have always had a good support system around me and I had a pretty good career from a young age…
…but now that I’m getting older I’m starting to understand where he’s coming from. Now I’m far from being the angry wretch that Charlie is, but things aren’t as easy to accomplish as they used to be. Some of the hurdles come from financial things beyond my control (thanks economic meltdown!) but some things I definitely could have made better choices about. As the years keep piling on, I have started to feel like instead of “the future being laid out before me” there’s more of a “the future is NOW!” feeling where I have far less room to make mistakes and need to do whatever it is I’m going to do before I get too old to do it. As far as it relates to Charlie, there but for the grace of God go I. It’s easy to get bitter when it feels like your life and your dreams are passing you by. Hell, I’m essentially “living the dream” but it can still feel like things are getting away from me!

So Charlie takes a stroll and his bitterness and rage attracts the attention of X-Men villain Lucifer!

Lucifer has all kinds of powers, but he’s been trapped in a prison dimension and wants Charlie’s help to escape. Naturally Tony Stark has the device Lucifer needs, so he finds someone bitter at the Stark company and Iron Man to do his bidding. Through the magic of comic book science Charlie is granted the power of Lucifer:

And immediately starts flaunting his power and beating people up, even (unintentionally) his wife who is concerned about him and looking for him.

Naturally Iron Man comes to the rescue, but it’s actually Charlie’s wife who saves the day. She reminds Charlie of all the good things in his life, like his family and their marriage, and reminds him that he doesn’t need “false glory” and if he does he isn’t the man she married. Seriously, she lets him have it. Check out the panel where she’s wagging her finger and crying.

So Charlie gives up the power, Lucifer is defeated and they all live happily ever after. Once Charlie realizes that the grass isn’t always greener and leaves with his wife even Iron Man can’t help but be effected. In the last panel he starts to wonder if he should still be Iron Man with his heart repaired.

Seeing at how there are at least 500 issues to go I’m pretty sure you can tell what he decides, but check out the next issue!

See you next time!

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August 24, 2012 · 6:00 pm

Project Iron Man: Iron Man Issues 17, 18 & 19 –

Sorry for the long delay. As many of you know I was away in Oregon training for a new job and it was difficult to blog while I was gone. But now I’m back and it’s time to get back into the world of Iron Man!

This three issue arc shows the strength of Tony Stark, that it’s not just the armor but the man inside of it that makes Iron Man…

…and it also introduces the Madam Masque that we all know and love and the villain Midas (and possibly Tony’s cousin Morgan Stark, but I’m not sure that this is his first appearance).

Frankly, this story has quite a few twists going for it:

The LMD (Life Model Decoy) that Stark used to trick the Mandarin a few issues ago gains sentience and takes over Tony’s life (a storyline that is re-used in the late 90’s, early 2000’s).
Since everyone thinks the real Tony Stark is a fake he is kidnapped by Madam Masque to impersonate himself for Midas – confusing, I know, but hang in there.
Tony plays along with Masque and Midas so that he can gain access to his company again and defeat the LMD.
It works, Tony and Madam Masque fall in love, and Midas is defeated.
Oh, and while we’re at it all of Tony’s friends turn on him, including the Avengers, and he dies, kinda’.

This is a motif that will be played and replayed in the issues of Iron Man over and over again whether it’s business rivals or inventions gone evil, someone is always gunning for Tony’s company and/or inventions. Sometimes they win, but only for a while until Stark can re-group and overcome.

But the story isn’t what I want to focus on with these issues. See I remember a Christmas many years ago when my parents got me almost all of the back issues I was missing. It was boxes and boxes filled with bagged newsprint and I remember specifically that they used a large clothes basket to hold a majority of them. It was the package under the tree that had me completely stumped and when I tore it open it was like looking in Marselleus Wallace’s brief case.

It’s memories like that that make it very difficult to seriously consider selling the collection. Even just revisiting these first couple dozen issues brings me back to all of the good memories that go along with the years I spent building the collection up. It wasn’t just me, it was my Mom and Dad and relatives. Something really simple that that made powerful emotional memories. I don’t want to put too fine a point on it or make it seem like it was an overwhelming experience – it was, and still is, a very simple pleasure. It’s just nice to feel sentimental about it.

Next Time:

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June 4, 2012 · 6:00 pm

Project: Iron Man – Iron Man #15 & #16 or Unicorn’s Back & He’s Got A Red Ghost

This is it.

This is the two issue stretch that gave me nuthin’.

I found nothing inspirational about these two issues nor do I have any strong memories attached to them.

I was so unmotivated that I looked at issue #17 just to see if I could tie it in with these two and fill out this blog post more, but that’s not going to work out.

It’s not that they are bad issues, they just aren’t special issues.

Plot summary:

Unicorn didn’t die in issue #4, his boot jets saved him.

Red Ghost is using Unicorn to steal the Cosmic Ray device from tony Stark so he can get his own powers back.

Unicorn steals the device.

Red Ghost uses it and betrays Unicorn.

Unicorn and Iron Man team-up to beat Red Ghost.

Red Ghost’s Super Apes actually save the day.

I thought I could write about how the hero and the villain must overcome their differences to succeed, but they don’t actually overcome much of anything.

I thought I could write about the relationship between man and animals, but that plot point kinda’ gets thrown in at the end without a lot of build up and Red Ghost uses apes again later so no lessons really carry on past this issue in regards to that.

Instead we get Stark flying in a funny looking ship instead of an airplane.

I really hope this isn’t the start of a trend.

Next Time:

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Category Archives: Project: Iron Man

Project: Iron Man – Iron Man #28 The Controller Lives!

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Project: Iron Man – Iron Man #27 “The Fury of Firebrand!”

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Project: Iron Man – Iron Man #26 Death in a Dark Dimension

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Project: Iron Man – Iron Man Issue #25 This Doomed Land – This Dying Sea!

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Project: Iron Man – Iron Man #24 “My Son… The Minotaur!” or Self Esteem Issues a la 1970

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Project: Iron Man Issue 23 or Check out the threads on this guy!

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Project: Iron Man – Issues 21 & 22 Fandom & Obsession Leads to Misunderstandings & Tragedy

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Project: Iron Man – Iron Man Issue 20

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Project Iron Man: Iron Man Issues 17, 18 & 19 –

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