Customer Reviews

Essential Iron Man, Vol. 1 (Marvel Essentials)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Iron Man has not been one of my favorite Marvel characters, but it was interesting to see more of his early appearances. With the short stories as they appeared in Tales of Suspense, character development is limited, and there is a lot of repetition from story to story ("If only they knew their indifferent boss is really Iron Man!" "If only I could tell Pepper how I really feel about her!" "If I can't get my chestplate plugged in, my heart will fail!"). I have a feeling when the stories get full-length, they'll be better. It will be interesting to see how they re-develop his origin in the upcoming live-action movie.

This early Iron Man stuff probably needs two reviews to do an honest job. Old-time comic fans will appreciate this collection of these early stories and the introductions of so many classic Iron Man enemies. The 1960s writing is a nice bit of nostalgia, and the art by people like Steve Ditko and Don Heck is very fun to look at.

But to a younger person, perhaps coming to Iron Man from seeing the movie...not so much. The stories and enemies will seem hokey and the "red menace" stuff will lack the meaning it had to people my age who lived through the Cold War.

I love the marvel essentials series, but let's face it...these are pieces of nostalgia. Early marvels were pretty poorly written stuff. Once Stan Lee established the formula of a hero who whined and carped about his personal life all the time, it became formulaic very quickly. These stories fit in that mold, 18 pages of fighting some communist and a few panels of Stark whining about the metal plate on his chest.

If you understand what you are getting this is a great inexpensive way to grab all these early Iron Man comics...but I wouldn't buy it for a kid.

Essential Iron-Man Volume 1


For those of you who have no clue who Stan Lee is (and yes, there are people like this, as shocking as that may seem), you would do well to read the early adventures of Iron-Man from the 1960s, written by Stan Lee, art by Don Heck, Jack Kirby and other great artists, in this compilation Essential.

The Essentials are reprint books that are black & white reproductions of the early stories of these superheroes. This is a cheap way to get the style of writing and the art of the time, read some exciting graphic storytelling and take a peek at the history of Marvel Comics.

This is a collection of Iron-Man's first appearance in Tales of Suspense 39 and goes to issue number 72

Since these are from the sixties and mostly boys were reading these issues, there's bound to be some sexist writing. Example, Iron-Man is told by his girlfriend (while as Tony Stark, millionaire playboy) that Iron-Man would look great painted gold "so his appearance matches his golden deeds!"

Stark later paints his costume gold and remarks, "Wow, what a difference! Leave it to a woman to figure out an attractive appearance!" Oh boy!

Meet Gargantus the Giant One, or stories about Soviet spies. Meet Kruschev, and sneaky Pentagon plots against the USSR. Kirby's art in Kala, Queen of the Netherworld is very cool. The man knew how to draw villianous women. Slinky!

Marvel prided itself on writing real life stories intermixed with the superhero'ing, and these issues are no exception. Pepper Potts follows Tony around wherever he goes. "How can such a walking dreamboat be such a hard-headed boss??"

And my favorite villain, The Mandarin, as only Don Heck can draw him. Silly stuff too, like Happy taking pictures of Pepper Potts in a swimsuit, but he laments "I've been out of film for the past hour! But I'd be nuts to tell Pepper!", as she slinks around posing for the camera.

Silly, charming and fascinating -- The Invincible Iron-Man!

OK, you know who Stan Lee is now, right?

Other Marvelous Marvel Essentials:


Essential Iron Man, Vol. 3 (Marvel Essentials) (v. 3)
Essential Power Man and Iron Fist, Vol. 1 (Marvel Essentials)
Essential Daredevil Volume 5 TPB

Returning to these stores after 40 years, I have to say I found them rather disappointing. The Iron Man idea was great, but many of the early stories are quite weak and not much thought seems to have been given to fleshing out the character or giving him a supporting cast. An indication that Stan Lee and company didn't much know what to do with the character is the story reprinted from Tales of Suspense 44 in which Iron Man goes back in time to save Cleopatra from an evil pharoh. This was obviously an attempt to cash in on the publicity surrounding the film Cleopatra that was released that year. The result was a story that makes little or no sense. Not until TOS 45 did they bother to provide Iron Man with any supporting cast -- the not very memorable or interesting Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan. For those getting back into Silver Age Marvels -- or encountering them for the first time -- I would recommend either the Fantastic Four or Spiderman. Those stories have aged much better than these Iron Man stories.

So, I've just finished reading the massive first volume of the Essential Iron Man series. The book itself is really neat in that it gives you all the story of those old, hard to find, expensive issues while paying only $10-$15 for the entire book. It is printed in black and white which is a bummer but, with the old-style feel of the comics themselves, it kind of adds to the vintage feel of it. This TPB (Trade Paperback) covers Tales of Suspense #39-72. It starts with the debut issue of Iron Man and continues through his adventures until the last issues in battle with Titanium Man. The stories are Saturday-morning cartoon-ish in that it basically involves Tony Stark in his efforts to stop the villain of the week from destroying his factory or from killing the hostages. There's also a wonderful love triangle between Tony, Pepper, his secretary, and Happy, his bodyguard. The action is pretty cool with Tony's transistor-powered iron suit of armor seeing combat in just about every issue. The villains range from awesome to horrible. Some neat ones that weren't seen all that much were the Commie defector Vanko and his Crimson Dynamo armor, the Black Knight, and Jack Frost. Some horrible mentions are Mr. Doll, the Melter, and the Phantom. The dialogue is something to get used to if you started yourself on more recent comics but it's all good 60's fun. The story's also a bit silly in that, despite all the times Tony ducks into a room and dons his Iron Man suit, no one has put together that Stark and Iron Man are in fact one in the same, despite Tony barely being able to conceal his identity almost every time he has to make a costume change. Also, in these original comics, Stark's suit is carried around in an attache case and the armor is 'flexible' in that it is flat in the case and expands when buttons are pressed; allowing Tony to slip it on quickly. Some notable issues are when Stark fights a confused Angel from the X-Men and there's even a big duel between Iron Man and Captain America! Speaking of which, Stark joins the Avengers early on in the TPB but it's done out-of-issue. I'm assuming he joins in an issue of the Avengers so don't be surprised when he's an Avenger all of a sudden.
Iron Man has 4 costumes that appear in this first TPB; his original steel armor, his gold Avenger armor, the classic red and yellow suit, and the red and yellow suit with the 'shell-head' helmet. The art is really well considering the time period and the writing, although dated, it done to keep you in suspense (thus the name Tales of Suspense!). The lack of color is a bit disappointing but to have such classic comics to read without worrying about ruining your mint issue #39 is nice and considering you also get the cover of each issue as well, it's a good deal. There's even a write-up at the end about how 2 issues got their covers changed which is really interesting! I would recommend this to anyone wanting to read the original comics but not to anyone who wants to really delve into the Iron Man story to catch up to present-issues.

Another hit from the house of ideas.Again Stan Lee writes about what he knows best---- super-heroes. Along with artists and letterers Marvel
has added one more super-hero to their list of great reading.
Make mine Marvel!

What a great way to read the old stories. The Essential collection from Marvel has always had both positive and negative aspects. In the case of Iron Man, volume one gives us the origins of his most popular villains. The work of Stan Lee, Larry Lieber, Sol Brodsky, Don Heck, Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers and Chic Stone is excellent.

Storywise, what can you say about tales that are so highly collected. Tales of Suspense #39-72 is a great run. Another bonus is the Bruce Timm cover.

[..]

The Iron Man idea is great, and Iron Man has lasted a while as a first tier Marvel hero, though often falling to the fringes of the first tier he would always return with strong story arcs such as Stark's alcoholism. These first stories though are fairly weak for a variety of reasons.

Appearing in Tales of Suspense, the length of these stories runs from 12-18 pages, not the complete 24 of a solo character in his own title. The abbreviated length really does make a difference in regards to plot and character development. For a while, Iron Man took over 18 pages of the comic, before sharing it with Captain America when his page count went back down to 12. Even having 18 pages as opposed to 12 or 13 makes a difference in story quality. The short length makes any one shot story almost a vignette, and requires the stories of substance to be multi-issue.

Villains. A hero is defined by his villains. A hero is made great by having powerful and threatening villains. Unfortunately, again due to space constraints, Iron Man has only second tier villains. The Mandarin, The Black Knight. The only two that really develop into something better are The Black Widow and Hawkeye. That is one of the upsides of this collection, the first appearances of Marvel universe mainstays Black Widow and Hawkeye.

The science. It's a comic book, so the less said about the science the better. But it is hard to have a willing suspension of disbelief when the science is so laughable. I'm not sure Stan Lee had any idea of what a transistor was when he wrote these.

After all that you probably wonder why it gets three stars. Iron Man himself does get some development and follows the successful Marvel formula of a flawed hero. We see both Tony Stark evolve, and we see the early evolution of the Iron Man armor. Once Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts are introduced we see his personal growth and anguish, albeit shown through a corny love triangle. The 3-4 issue story arcs are also reasonably good, showing the improvement the series would achieve once Iron Man got his own title.

Not great, but not bad. Just average with bad points and good points.

It came quickly, but I didn't realize it was going to be in black and white- so I'm a little disappointed that it's not in colour.

WOW, what else can be said about this collection of original Iron Man stories. I read all these as a kid, but like most kids of my time my mother threw them all out. Well, even though the originals may be worth many thousands at least you get to read the original stories once more. Too bad they are not in color the only draw back.