By the fall of 1963, Tales of Suspense had, for all intents and purposes, become the official Iron Man magazine with a brief bonus anthology story packed in the back. There was no meaningful difference in story composition between Iron Man and feature titles like Fantastic Four or Spider-Man, and the expanded page allocation hints at a popularity steadily grown since the character’s debut in Tales of Suspense #39.
The series was far from nailing it though. Even after fixing the most pressing problems with the character and the premise, and improving his design to be more visually appealing and creatively expressive, Iron Man still needed good stories. The next two issues would indicate just how much the story still mattered, and how little the protagonist and his supporting cast can do about it if the narrative isn't working.
Tales of Suspense #49:
"The New Iron Man Meets the Angel!"
- Writers: Stan Lee
- Artists: Steve Ditko & Paul Reinman
- Editor: Stan Lee
- Publication Date: October 8, 1963
- Cover Date: January 1964
Issue #49 is again drawn by Spidey co-creator Steve Ditko, whose dynamic posing and off-beat action make a ton of sense for a tale circling around an extended aerial combat scene. This is the first issue that features Iron Man in flight for a significant period of time, as opposed to brief bursts or simple traversal, so we can consider it the origin of the exciting aerial maneuvers we now associate with the character.
The story is a cross-over with the recently launched X-Men comic, centered around Angel having his personality altered by a test explosion at Tony Stark’s weapons facility. It’s structured better than most cross-overs of its time, where the plot would feel forced and gratuitous, and characters would frequently make odd decisions just to keep the plot on track. Angel’s presence in the story doesn’t feel intrusive, and the story triggers naturally from believable circumstances.
I don’t often get hung up on specific dialogue, mostly because particularly in the Silver Age, comics dialogue was without fail goofy at best – the stories, good or bad, weren’t so much delivered in dialogue anyway, but rather communicated by the visuals. Even Stan Lee, who prides himself with writing dialogue the way people actually talk, only did so in a relative sense compared to older comics from before the Silver Age.
In this issue, however, the dialogue actively undermines the narrative in a couple of places. After being exposed to the explosion, Angel’s inner monologue describes him feeling "more evil", and even though the simplified moral landscape is expected, I’m sure there was a more nuanced way to handle this turn. Angel quits the X-Men to find and join the "evil" mutants, which is a good story beat, just made to seem a little silly by the way it’s phrased in the dialogue.
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| Art by Steve Ditko & Paul Reinman. © Marvel Comics. |
Angel never finds the evil mutants, and the rest of the book is centered around Iron Man trying to subdue and help Angel, who does his best to fight off the Armored Avenger. At the time of publication, the “evil mutants” as an institution wasn’t actually established yet, and there wasn’t much of a rogues’ gallery to speak of anyway. But this was an interesting tease for what would be introduced as the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants in the upcoming X-Men #4.
As mentioned above, the fight is visually fun in an off-the-wall way Ditko could be relied on to deliver, and it has some moments of clever turn-arounds and escalating tension, which is always fun to see. Ditko's creative, three-dimensional posing gives the aerial choreography a sort of physicality that makes it feel exciting and real.
The resolution is clever in a lot of ways, but it lacks just one link in the logical chain to be really genius. With Angel flying high up in the air, Iron Man ascends to meet him, only to have his jets run out of juice, causing him to fall to a certain death. Angel, considering the situation, snaps out of his edginess and races to rescue Iron Man, who reveals that he knew his jets would fail, but he trusted Angel would still be good inside enough to gamble his life.
It’s a really solid ending, but it’s just screaming for a better trigger than the evil effect just wearing off. This would have been an incredibly powerful turn of events if Angel had been having some sort of identity crisis, and snapped back by seeing someone in danger that he couldn’t just let die. But when the cause of his turn was implied physical alteration from an explosion, I don’t feel like the resolution is quite as strong. Even so, it’s close enough to be more dramatically satisfying than most Iron Man stories so far.
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| Art by Steve Ditko & Paul Reinman. © Marvel Comics. |
#49 is very light on plot, which is par for the course for both Iron Man and Marvel cross-overs during this time. We do get an appearance from Happy and Pepper, to no narrative consequence, but it’s a nice moment in any case – their banter and bickering keeps getting better, and Pepper’s insults to Happy in particular are clever enough to actually make you laugh.
While not my favorite Iron Man story, issue #49 feels like an entry in a now consistently good comic book series. It might be a bit of a filler, but it’s enjoyable enough, and it doesn’t evoke concern for the longevity of the book or the character. Iron Man himself is as good as he’s ever been, and now that we’re getting some visual interest in his action scenes, the potential is becoming more apparent by the panel.
Tales of Suspense #50:
"The Hands of the Mandarin!"
- Writers: Stan Lee
- Artists: Don Heck
- Editor: Stan Lee
- Publication Date: November 12, 1963
- Cover Date: February 1964
For the culture-conscious reader, whenever a pre-21st-century story featuring foreign characters comes up, it tends to evoke a sort of bristling, cringing feeling in preparation for what could be a thoroughly offensive and/or ignorant portrayal of an ethnicity or nationality. The debut of the Mandarin certainly caused that for me on the first reading, but it soon turned into a modest relief after seeing the character wasn't nearly as problematic as it could have been. If it wasn't for an entirely unnecessary later reveal that he's also a karate master for no reason, I would have considered this an admirably respectful take on a Chinese character for its time.
The opening of the story is, in fact, surprising in how it specifically doesn't grab the easiest possible story threads for the Mandarin. Rather than use him as a Communist champion in the way of Crimson Dynamo from #46, we introduce him in a sequence where he rejects the Communist govenment's pleas for aid. Why they're asking a sorcerer to help them with atomic weapons, I'm not entirely sure, but it's a cool character moment to establish that he isn't in fact co-operating with his country.
The introduction doesn't really have anything to do with the actual story, and we only involve Iron Man in it because at the same time American authorities ask him to investigate the Mandarin because that's probably something they should be doing, for no particular purpose. This is a rather flimsy premise, because it gives the story zero urgency -- if he doesn't do it, then so what? We know a little less about some guy in China? There's no actual threat we're countering or problem we're resolving, we're just going on a scouting mission with no actual end goal.
Tony enters China in a pretty cool scene where he drops out of an airplane and breaks his fall using his jets just before hitting the ground. He breaks into the Mandarin's castle, gets captured by a magnetic device, and then fights the Mandarin after breaking out, while accusing him of being a mad despot. Here the lack of urgency actually turns into a concrete story problem -- the Mandarin hasn't actually done anything wrong, as far as the reader knows. He hasn't threatened anybody, he hasn't hurt anybody, and the only reason he's now antagonistic with Iron Man is because Iron Man invaded his home. Better yet, he even rejected the government's request for help in the arms race. We're given absolutely no reason to consider the Mandarin a bad guy on any substantial level.
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| Art by Don Heck. © Marvel Comics. |
To add to the weirdness, the Mandarin explains he intended Tony to escape his captivity as a "test", and then goes on to "test" him further. The purpose of these tests is never explained, and it plays as just lazy writing for displaying the various powers the character has, which are a little poorly defined at this stage anyway. The concept of each of his ten rings giving him a different power is established and sounds cool, but it doesn't actually play into the story in any meaningful way.
The fight scene itself is sort of messy and wobbly, with the aforementioned karate angle serving no purpose other than messing with the introduction of the rings being the source of the Mandarin's power. There's nothing wrong with the illustration as such, just that the fight is narratively tangled, which weakens the sense of stakes (which were already barely existent due to Stark having no business fighting the Mandarin in the first place). I do like the conclusion though, where Iron Man uses a calculator to determine an exact angle that he needs to block the Mandarin's karate chop in order to take him out. It's a nifty little idea that works just because of who Iron Man is, and because it makes Tony Stark seem smart.
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| Art by Don Heck. © Marvel Comics. |
Far stronger than the main story about Mandarin is actually the minimal B-plot involving an employees' dinner Stark was meant to give a speech at. He has to cancel due to his assignment to investigate the Mandarin which has to happen this exact minute (for no reason at all, as we established), and a character representing his employees grumbles about him not caring about his workers. To make matters worse, Pepper Potts, despite being slighted by Stark in issue #47, hopes to accompany her boss to the dinner, and is disappointed to hear about his cancellation.
Pepper ends up going with Happy Hogan instead, who insists on there being something between himself and Pepper, with the latter showing absolutely no such signs. It's a funny running gag, but one that also gets a mildly sad undertone when we see her chatting up various Stark employees wth Happy watching patiently from afar.
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| Art by Don Heck. © Marvel Comics. |
Finally, Stark makes it to the dinner after all, his business with the Mandarin concluded, and we're treated to a surprisingly complex emotional end-point for the story: Pepper worries that now Stark will never want to date her because he'll think she's with Happy, and Happy in turn is self-conscious about making Stark angry for dating Pepper. It's a melodramatic soap-opera situation, but it's honestly quite engaging, even though Stark himself still has essentially nothing to do with the entire plot, not expressing any genuine romantic interest in Pepper. This B-story takes barely a couple of pages of the story, but because it deals with actual human behavior involving character's we're familiar with by now, it feels meaningful.
Issue #50 is a disappointing step down from a pretty solid streak of Iron Man stories. It's also shorter than some of the recent ones that hovered around a full 20-page length, which would ideally mean a tighter story, but main plot is noticeably weaker than anything we've seen since #45. We can only be thankful for Happy and Pepper bringing in a measure of fun and complexity.
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