Category Archives: Project: Iron Man

It’s fitting that the walk down memory lane starts in the easiest kind of way, Tales of Suspense 39 is the first appearance of Iron Man and is also the first time that I bought a re-print of a comic, that I really wanted the original of, on purpose. Released in 1993, this Marvel Milestone Edition of Tales of Suspense 39 was released for the 30th anniversary of the year of creation of the first wave of the most popular super-heroes in the Marvel universe. Even though at the time Iron Man was not a popular hero, copies of the actual, original ToS 39 were going for far more money than I could justify spending. Now that the movie is out this issue is skyrocketing! I satisfy myself with this facsimile, but it has some desirable aspects.

First, let’s start with the fact that the book itself is still in amazing shape. No creases, no bends and no discoloration. It’s printed on modern 90’s paper so it’s glossy and really shows off the color, which leads us to…

…the art in this version looks fantastic! It’s easy to think of old 60’s artwork as cheap or less sophisticated because comic books were printed on newsprint so the lines and color would run. This “fully restored” version shows the art how it could never have been printed before. My appreciation for Don Heck exists mostly on the presentation of his art in this copy.

The story itself is the height of 60’s comic book storytelling. In thirteen pages we are introduced to Tony Stark and his amazing life, see him showing off his scientific genius for the U.S. military, getting blown up in the jungles of Vietnam, given the “deal with the devil” offer from the Vietcong, see him build the suit, watch Yinsen die and then marvel at Iron Man reaping his vengeance against Wong Chu and the Red Army. It almost takes thirteen pages just to list it all! In today’s decompressed style comic books this would have been a six issue arc. In the end it promises that we’ll see more tales of the Iron Man in the next issue, but we’ll get to that later.

There are other stories in the book, very Twilight Zone-type stories. They are enjoyable, but have nothing to do with Iron Man so I’ve decided not to mention them here.

Now Tales of Suspense 40 is a whole different story! This issue is beaten, bruised and smells like an attic. The edges of the cover are ragged and this issue is probably barely worth more than its cover price.

I scored this issue from a baseball card shop that had a single short box of comic books on the floor by the front counter in West Covina. My sister used to ice skate and her training rink was there. During the summers I had very little to do. They had an arcade, I got VERY good at Crystal Castles and Discs of Tron, but I went through quarters like it was Kleenex in allergy season. There was another boy there, his parents owned the snack bar I think, and we would go raise the pre-teen, well behaved equivalent to hell. Checking out the card shop next door was part of that. This issue features more plot by Stan Lee, a script from R. Berns (don’t know what the “R.” stands for), art from Jack Kirby, inked by Don Heck and lettered by Duffi (this might be wrong).  Part of the spine of the cover just tore, this issue is so old. The difference between the “fully restored” 39 and the “authentically worn” 40 is astronomical. Having seen how the art looked in 39 it’s easy to imagine what the original boards must have looked like, but… I don’t even know what to say, just look:

Even faded, the gold of the armor is striking versus the grey. The important part of this story is that Iron Man painted his armor gold this issue so that he didn’t look frightening to women and children. Comic story aside (he fights a robot cave man sent to Earth by little green aliens that never make an appearance in a Marvel comic again, oh but that’s after he battles a bunch of big cats that get loose at a circus – why do circuses play such a large role in 60’s comics?) the real story is how I snaked this issue. I don’t know that I was unethical, but the other boy at the rink mentioned that he saw an Iron Man comic at the card shop when I told him that Iron Man was my favorite. He’s the one who showed me the issue. Now, he never expressed any interest in the issue, he was a Batman guy from what I remember, but after I bought it I showed him and I still have a clear memory of his face dropping and him saying, “Oh, I was gonna’ get that.”

Now, really, I don’t think he really was going to get it. He often talked about stuff that never happened, but that look on his face in the booth by the pinball machine is still stuck in my head.

That being said, my enjoyment of the issue never suffered. I’m not sure what that says about me.

Then there’s a massive gap in my collection – I never had much luck finding affordable back issues of ToS – so the next issue is Tales of Suspense 97.

I have no memory of purchasing this issue. When I pulled it out of the long box I was surprised to see it. It is an important issue in that it is part of the story that leads up to Iron Man number one, but I didn’t even remember the cogent points of the story except that Whiplash is in it  – but I know that from the cover.

Reading it was actually really nice because it was like reading it for the first time! By this time ToS was re-branded to be the monthly adventures of  Iron Man and Captain America. The differences between the storytelling style of 1963 and 1967 is actually pretty big. There’s definitely less “gee wilikers” and more, actually I’m having a problem coming up with a clever two-word distillation for this, depth and intrigue. Instead of always being at a circus where animals are always getting loose Iron Man has just defeated the Grey Gargoyle and his armor is out of power. Iron Man’s major nemesis until the late 70’s was not The Mandarin or the Crimson Dynamo or even Titanium Man, it was his battery life. This guy was a generation 1 iPod as far as how long he could hold a charge and, of course, his power would always give out at the worst moment. This is a plot device that we’re going to see a lot more of. SHIELD is involved, there are cool spy gadgets, there’s a mob gambling sub-plot that involves Tony’s cousin, Morgan – more about him in later issues – and a secret new leader for the preeminent crime family in New York – The Maggia!

The end is a cliff hanger: Iron Man is freshly out of juice, Whiplash is about to attack and we find out that Tony’s cousin, Morgan Stark, is a shit.

Next time:

I’m an Iron Man fan. I have been since my mom bought me my first comic books back in 1984. I still remember being in the back of our “brown car,” a Buick, being picked up from Elm Grove Lutheran School and my mom passing to the back seat a copy of Transformers, The Last Starfighter and Iron Man. Transformers were a no brainer. Like every other boy my age I had a complete fascination with giant robots from outer space, but I wasn’t familiar with the story in the book and it was, what I now understand to be, the middle of a story arc so I flipped through it but it didn’t really catch my imagination. The Last Starfighter was cool, but it was very clear on the front of the cover that it was number two (maybe three?) of a four (maybe five?) part mini-series. There were lots of cool space battles, but the themes were a little more than my seven-year old brain was ready for.

Then there was Iron Man.

Even though the story was also smack dab in the middle of an arc, the design of the Iron Man armor, being drawn by Luke McDonald at the time (still one of my favorite Iron Man artists), and the image of a man getting shot in the hand had me completely fascinated. I flipped through it over and over. I became an instant fan of the Red and gold armor and, when I found out that there were more of these things, I became a rabid collector of Iron Man comics. It made up a very big part of my pre-teen/teenage years.

I have very fond memories of hunting down back issues with my dad at local comic book stores like Adventureland and 21st Century Comics. We went to comic book conventions, especially the Shrine Auditorium shows, where I spent way too much money over the years. Every birthday and Christmas got me closer and closer to a complete collection and led to more and more Iron Man memorabilia that filled every flat surface of my bedroom. Many character fascinations have come and gone, but Iron Man has been consistent for almost thirty years.

So I kind of surprised myself yesterday when I started considering selling off my massive Iron Man collection.

I have a nearly complete run of Iron Man in all of it’s various volumes and all of his incarnations, with the exception of a section from the mid-90’s when Tony Stark was made crazy and killed so that a teenage Tony could be pulled from another dimension and take his place. Yes, it was as stupid as it sounds. This is around 500 issues taking up two long boxes that currently sit hidden under a table in our dining room. As an adult it is very easy to say that these symbols of my childhood and keepsakes of hundreds of happy memories are really now just dust collectors taking up a lot of space that we really don’t have…

…but the kid in me smells the newsprint, sees the armor and remembers what it was like when my biggest concern was finding a toy store that hadn’t liquidated it’s stock of Mattel Secret Wars toys so I could try and find an Iron Man action figure (a problem the kids of today no longer have).

So I started thinking really hard about why I was hanging on to these issues. The stories are 100% available in digital form, pristine and perfect and ready for viewing from any number of devices. Also digital takes up the desired amount of space (meaning none). But, as Tom Katers is so right to mention, there really is something about cracking open a really old Silver Age book, getting that musty news print smell in your nose and feeling the pages. The problem with that is I really haven’t cracked open any of the old books in a REALLY long time. In fact the oldest I’ve opened recently was stuff from the late 80’s, not even the stuff that made me dig the character in the first place.

So I made a decision. I’m going to read through every issue, from start of my collection to finish, and at the end decide whether it gets to stay or it gets sold.

I’m also going to blog about it.

Because I’m really busy with pre-production stuff I know that, at least here in the beginning, I’ll only be able to do about an issue a week, but there’s no real rush on this so I’m not too worried about it.

Huh, I just realized that an issue a week for over 500 issues is, like, 44 years. I’m probably going to pick up the pace there.

Anyhow, I’m going to go through, I’m going to read them and here I’ll talk about them and we’ll see where this all ends up.

See you tomorrow!

P.S. The images from the issue are from that first issue my mom got me. The issue itself is so worn the cover is still barely on. Wow, this might be tougher than I thought.

Next Time: