Customer Reviews

Essential Iron Man Volume 1 TPB

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When the Marvel universe exploded and there were suddenly multiple Spider-Man titles and countless comic books devoted to mutants of one sort or the other, I gave up reading dozens of Marvel comic books each month and just kept up with two titles: "Daredevil" and "Iron Man." The latter selection was pretty ironic because I had ignored Iron Man for years. Outside of the story of his origin, I never read very many of these early stories from "Tales of Suspense," issues #39-72, collected in "The Essential Iron Man, Volume 1." In fact, if I picked up an issue of "Tales of Suspense" in the Sixties, it was to see what Captain America, the other half of the title before each was given its own title, was up to.

My problem was never with the character. I thought the idea of inventor Tony Stark coming up with and continually upgrading and specializing his Iron Man armor was a pretty good premise. The whole rich playboy bit was nothing special (the tradition goes back to Bruce Wayne/Batman and Britt Reid/The Green Hornet), and it was not until Stark became an alcoholic that his normal side became really interesting. I also though the weak heart bit was rather unnecessary, except that it provided an unnecessary rationale for why Stark did not let some healthier and heavily insured younger guy do the death defying heroics.

My problem was that I never really liked Don Heck as an artist. He was competent enough, but when the competition is Jack Kirby, Gene Colan, John Romita, Neal Adams, and Jim Steranko, it is hard to hold up to artistic comparisons month after month. Heck does most of the pencils in these "Tales of Suspense" stories, although Kirby does several issues as does Steve Ditko (with Heck usually doing the inking in those instances). For that matter, Stan Lee often does just the plot for these comics, leaving the actually scripting to others (including younger brother Larry Leiber).

A lot of these early stories put Iron Man in a Cold War context, which made him rather unique as a Marvel superhero. Iron Man first appears after Tony Stark is captured in Vietnam and his early villains include the Red Barbarian, a top Red general, the Crimson Dynamo, his Soviet counterpart, and the Mandarin, who is apolitical but lives in Red China. But you will also find American villains, such as the Melter (an obvious threat to a guy in armor) and even an early villain called Dr. Strange, who is not to be confused with the Master of the Mystic Arts. Meanwhile, Tony Stark, his best friend and loyal associate Happy Hogan, and the beautiful Virginia "Pepper" Potts, are getting more and more entangled in their own little unrequited love triangle.

Another thing I did not like about these early comics has to do with the 10-page stories we had to put up with for Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk, the Sub-Mariner, Ant-Man, Dr. Strange, and Nick Fury Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., during the Sixties. Actually, until issue #58, we were getting 13-page stories or longer for Iron Man until Captain America showed up for good (the two actually fight each other in that issue before sharing the magazine officially in the next issue). It is not surprising that the early, longer stories are better. But it was not until Happy and Pepper married and got out of the picture, the major subplots had to do with the business problems of Stark International, and Iron Man got his own comic book, that this title reached its heyday. Hopefully we will get beyond a Volume 2 with "Iron Man" so you can see this is indeed the case.

Don Heck, the artist of Iron Man gave the series a lot of class. While unfairly given bad reviews by the fan press Don was a drama and romance comics artist first. He wasn't a super hero artist in the Kirby method. He gave Tony a distinctive character and till this day I think of his version as the true version of Iron Man. Until Marvel makes the CD ROM version of the first issues of Iron Man available in color; this is an affordable collection of the first and best issues. I always did like his original costume best!

This book is well,pardon my pun but,essential for anyone new to Iron Man comics!They cover the early adventures of Iron Man,and of course reviel his,and his emimies origons!It contains over 20 issues! After reding about these characters you will want to pick up the current issues for sure,just to see what things are like now.

Iron Man keeps talking about his 'transistor-powered' armor. Transistors are not a power source!

The whole thing is silly. Tony Stark makes a living designing missiles for the United States government. Then he goes off as Iron Man and encounters villains who use things like time-travel and sorcery. Wouldn't it occur to him that with these sorts of villains running around, missiles are somewhat obsolete?