Marvel Masterworks: Iron Man, Vol. 1

Rating:
Summary: inaugural appearance of Iron Man; collectible; hardcover
Review: "Marvel Masterworks: Iron Man vol. 1 HC" are written & drawn by Stan Lee & Don Heck respectively. This less than 250 pages of a hardcover tome constituted original comic issues culled from Tales of Suspense #39-50. These primordial issues mostly compose of 13-page story, sometimes l8 pages. During those times, Stan Lee had a very hectic workload, that he had no other alternatives but had to relegate the scripting chores to his auxiliary, Robert Bernstein. Mr. Berstein virtually scripted all issues from #39-46, while #39 was scripted by Larry Lieber, Stan Lee's brother. Stan Lee only did contributed his plots in those issues however. But, he commenced scripting, as well as plotting, both efforts, onward issue #47 forth.

In 1962, Stan Lee, the eminent creator of virtually all Marvel superheroes, conceived Iron Man as a new breed of hero the world has yet to come by. He deemed that there was a discernible void for rich, businessman type of character donning the ensemble of a superhero. In lieu of his theory, the creator single-mindedly molded his stories to be heavy political in flavor. Political as in connotation to the hero ways of life, the people encircling him & his set of cohorts & adversaries befitting to Iron Man yarns. Therefore, after a series of tumultuous brainstorming & planning events, born to the world the first time, a creation-- it is the Iron Man & his alter-ego Tony Stark.

As stated, the hub of these earliest stories are sheer political in nature. Akin to political as stories here are rife with spys & counter spys, spy rings, communist & communism, reds & chinese, POWs, sabotage, contractual supplying of armaments to federal government, government factions & VIPs. Secondarily, these stories likewise synanymous to business/commerce, as are most tales substantially pertinent to Tony's work-- his factory, his contractual weaponry business, himself, the person as an innovator & inventor of arms & paraphernalias, himself being a consequential personage to government officials & VIPs. These series of stories, in my opinion, are generally above average in qualities, although a mild few are weaker than should be. The ensuings are my point of views.

Tales of Suspense #39. A historical milestone. It featured the inaugural appearance & chronicling the authoritative origin story of Iron man & his alter-ego Tony Stark. Also notable, the first appearance of his forerunner armour & another significant character to Iron Man annals, Professor Yinsen.

Tales of Suspense #45. Pepper Potts & Happy Hogan both made their maiden appearance in this issue & they are two of the most important supporting characters in Iron Man's chronicle. Jack Frost, the villain also marked his first appearance.

Issues # 46 & 52. The introduction of Crimson Dynamo. The Reds sent the Crimson Dynamo by sabotaging & derailing Tony Stark factory operations, because the Reds thought if not for Stark's advanced weaponry, America would lag behind in the world's arm race. Their earliest confrontations were classical & memorable, as Crimson Dynamo displayed to us that he was undoubtedly the antithesis to Iron Man's living technology & harness.

Issue #47. The introduction of the Melter. This moment exposed crucially for the first time the intrinsic frailtiness of Iron Man's armour. Iron Man had to ingenously devised a way to vanquish his foe.

Issue # 48. Unfurled Iron Man's "silver age", famous V-shaped aromour mask for the first time. This timeless prototypic armor is very popular with readers, when we can still fondly reminiscent his ever evolving armour throughout the years. To specify in expanse his armour made-over, in issue # 39, the maiden appearance of Iron Man and as well his silver-colored, massive armor. The next issue, #40, he recolored by turning his silver to gold-colored armour, to make it less daunting & endearing to the people, as he said. In issue # 54, he further modified his V-shaped metal mask to a more contemporary-looking, akin to the present. However, this issue #54 is not included in this volume.

Anthony "Tony" Stark, alias Iron Man is a rich, handsome, glamorous playboy & a sophisticate. What wooed Tony Starks to readers, us, despite his upscale status is his character. Tony is an extremely down-to-earth person. He easily relate well with all kinds of people without any hindrances at all. This claim is made even moreso truer by substantiating a fact,-- his close friendship with both Pepper Potts & Happy Hogan, two of the integral supporting characters complementing by interposing with Tony Stark, the character & as well the honcho of this title.

Readers also easily symphatize for Tony because of his apparent frailties & foibles. Tony be necessity, entailed him to harness a chest plate like an interior clothe in his lifetime, as a device to keep his heart beating normally & to allay his shapnel-pierced heart. Because of his plight, he frequently, more than a few fleeting turns, saw & escaped demise both in & out of his armour. Just for once, to negligently amiss recharging his synthetic life-saving suit with electricity can cause him to lose his dear life. This is moreso true, when Tony as Iron Man in action suddenly feel the need to recharge but failed to do so because he still in the thick of incendiary. This is another reason why Tony refrain committing amorous relationship with girls,because he is widely-conscious he is living his life in a borrowed time.

Overall, these precursory of stories are all memorable, cherished, invaluable & historically significant. Stan Lee & Don Heck should be given with proper commendation & plaudit for their endeavor in this title, that shall transcend beyond the space of time for generation to generation to come. Long-time readers, like me, can still joyfully evoke memories once again with these legendary stories presented in this book, as well a good recommendation book for forthcoming & fervent readers alike, who will for the first time unravel who-is-the-Iron Man mythic.

An astounding book to buy and add to your collections.

Highly recommended !

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Summary: Stan Lee and Don Heck usher in the age of Iron Man
Review: 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 any of these early stories from "Tales of Suspense," issues #39-50, reprinted in color and collected in "Marvel Masterworks: Iron Man, Volume 1." In fact, if I picked up an issue of "Tales of Suspense" in the Sixties, it was to see what was happening with Captain America, the other Marvel superhero sharing the title with Iron Man. I never really read Iron Man until he got his own comic.

My problem was never with the character of Iron Man because 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: give me a suit of armor like that I am too will go out and fight the good superhero fight. However, 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 many years later when Stark was revealed to be 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, primarily Robert Bernstein.

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 in issue #50, 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, start to become 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. However, it is not until we get to Volume 3 in the Marvel Masterworks collections of "Iron Man" that you will get to see the character reach that stage.