The Sinister Scarecrow!

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A chance encounter with Iron Man gives a vaudeville entertainer the inspiration to abandon his act for a criminal career as The Scarecrow!

Notes:

• The story begins with Iron Man pursuing an armed robber--but "the Uncanny Umberto", a contortionist who just happens to be performing nearby, actually stops the criminal with a well-timed tackle. Peter Parker (aka Spider-Man) once allowed a robber to run past him and escape, beginning a tragic chain of events that ultimately led to Parker accepting the responsibilities of a hero. Umberto brings down a fleeing perp but an opposite action produces an opposite result in this case . . . "Seeing how you operate, I'm mighty glad you're on the side of the law, pal," says Iron Man. "Yeah, I guess a guy like me would make a mighty tough opponent," responds Umberto. Whoa, there, fella! Being an exceptionally limber egomaniac doesn't qualify you to be a super-villain!
• Or does it? It's Iron Man's turn to feel the sting of humiliation in this issue. Right after defeating the Mandarin, who commanded a castle full of advanced weaponry and was capable of cowing an entire nation, our hero is bearded in his own penthouse lair by a sideshow performer armed with nothing more than bendy limbs and a couple of trained crows. Allowing two birds to tangle him in drapes really plumbs the depths of super-hero embarassment. (Well, maybe they were really expensive drapes and Tony didn't want tear them . . . It's one thing to wreck a place that belongs to someone else--like a Chinese super-villain, for instance--but this is Iron Man's crib!)
• "It was child's play to outwit that overrated fool!" boasts the Scarecrow just before escaping with secret weapon designs from Stark's wall safe. He may be right but he's punching above his weight class and probably should've quit while he was ahead . . . The Scarecrow also makes a fool of Happy when the ex-fighter tries to wade into him. "The only reason I lost so many fights when I was a boxer is because I was too soft-hearted to wanna hurt anyone," claims Hap. "But I don't feel that way about crooks!" Riiiight. Good thing Stark is his own bodyguard.
• The Scarecrow next tries to sell the stolen plans to a bunch of Castro look-alikes aboard a Cuban gunboat but the deal is interrupted by Iron Man. (Cuba is apparently only a short motorboat trip from Flushing, Long Island in the Marvel Universe.) This encounter doesn't go quite as well for the rookie bad guy and he ends up getting dragged to exile in Cuba by his birds in the story's preposterous conclusion. (Iron Man's "jet transistors" are low on power and he can't give chase.)
• Pepper sabotages Tony's date with a haughty fake blonde named Veronica Vogue. Tony suspects the truth but seems to prefer an evening playing cards with his chauffeur than trying to fix things with VV, establishing Happy Hogan as the most entertaining poker partner ever.
• The Scarecrow refers to his birds as his "little slaves". What a jerk.

Heck's art improves; Lee's scripting does not. 'Nuff said.

The Hands of the Mandarin!

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Who is the most powerful man in China? Who is the mysterious warlord whom even the Chinese Communists fear? Who is the Mandarin? The Pentagon wants to know and Iron Man is sent to find out . . .

Notes:

• A quartet of awestruck PLA officers is granted an audience with the Mandarin, a man who apparently rules his own feudal kingdom, complete with castle, deep inside Red China. They beg him to share his technological secrets. "With your help, we could menace the world with nuclear destruction!" offers General Ho Lee. The Mandarin has his own world-menacing ambitions, however, and sends the Chinese military men scampering back to their masters in Beijing empty-handed.
• Tony accepts a secret mission to investigate the Mandarin but the Mandarin is already aware of Iron Man even before our hero appears in his back yard. "Though you do not even suspect my existence, you head the list of those The Mandarin has sworn to destroy!" We also see Iron Man within the Mandarin's "all-seeing crystal globe", one of many fantastic devices found in the villain's castle. The Mandarin wears 10 rings, each of which possesses a different power. In this issue, he uses 2 rings on Iron-Man; one emits a deafening sound wave and the other a "paralyzer ray".
• Predictably, Iron Man's new armor spontaneously short-circuits almost as soon as his mission begins, leaving him dangerously low on power deep inside Chinese territory.
• Finally penetrating the Mandarin's castle, Iron Man is battered by this-rays and that-beams until the villain, obviously feeling rather chuffed, decides to deliver the quietus with his own hands. "And so, Iron Man, prepare to meet your finish at the hands of the greatest karate master the world has ever known!" he brags.
• Dodging karate strikes capable of shattering an iron bar, Tony flips open a "slide-rule calculator" concealed in his gauntlet and begins crunching numbers. Laughing, the Mandarin's hand slices down . . . and smashes against Tony's armor at the wrong angle. Then, the greatest karate master the world has ever known screams and passes out on the floor. Tony used his calculator to determine the correct way to turn his body to cause the Mandarin to break his own hand. Nerd fu rules! Hiiii-yah!!
• The final panel shows the Mandarin pouting on his throne with a bandaged hand. An ignominious debut for Iron Man's arch-enemy.
• This & That: Shouldn't a Chinese villain be a master of kung-fu? Pepper shows off a new hairstyle for the S.I. employees dinner, welcomed by a complete lack of interest by Tony Stark.

Don Heck draws a pretty Pepper but shows little aptitude for anything else. Kirby provides the cover, illustrating a very impressive throne for our new member of the rogues gallery. I'm still trying to decide whether the Mandarin's defeat was intentionally funny or not.

The New Iron-Man Meets The Angel!

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My renewed enthusiasm for blogging is tested severely in this issue as The Angel turns evil and only Iron Man can save him . . .

Notes:

• The splash page announces that "The Angel and The X-Men appear in this story through the courtesy of the editors of 'The X-Men' magazine!" The cover also trumpets a "special arrangement" with "X-Men magazine" allowing The Angel to guest-star. Stan Lee wrote and edited the entire line almost single-handedly in those days; I suppose he wanted the readers to think Marvel Comics was a bigger outfit than it really was . . .
• "Back, you young fool . . . get back!" shouts Iron Man as The Angel soars innocently over the site of a Stark Industries atomic weapon test on his way to Professor X's school. "A deadly atomic explosion is about to be detonated here!" And where is "here"? Westchester County, New York--home to nearly a million people and one of the wealthiest areas of the United States. Does the Atomic Energy Commission know about this? (Considering the government agency's cavalier attitude regarding the health of Americans exposed to fallout from nuclear tests back in the '50s, the answer is probably "yes".) Fortunately, by special arrangement, only one winged guest-star is affected by the blast . . .
  
• His personality inverted by a massive dose of radiation, The Angel quits the X-Men and goes on a TNT-tossing rampage, hoping to attract the attention of evil mutants so he can join them to attack "ordinary humans". Magneto probably read this issue's script, however, and he wisely stays out of sight.
• New Iron Man, same old technical difficulties. His boot jets flame out twice at high altitude, an obvious disadvantage when your opponent has wings.
  

Lee's premise is ludicrous and Ditko's art is marred by incompatible inking. Even by the current low standards of the strip, this is a very bad issue.

See The NEW Iron Man!

"It's finished!
I now have a complete Iron Man outfit . . . All new, all light-weight, and far more flexible than my former garb. And yet, this new iron armor is every bit as powerful! In fact, in some ways, it's more powerful, for due to its light weight, I'll be able to carry still more protective devices!" --Tony Stark

See the review of this significant issue in the previous post.

The Mysterious Mister Doll!

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Mysticism trumps transistors when voodoo extortionist Mr. Doll targets Tony Stark! This new threat requires an equipment upgrade . . . but will it be enough?

Notes:

• Despite his droopy horns and small-time criminal mentality, Mr. Doll pushes our hero harder than any previous adversary because his weapon is sympathetic magic, specifically a pain-inflicting voodoo doll pilfered from an African witch doctor. So, after nearly dying in what football analysts call "a bad matchup", Stark finally decides to shed the extra bulk of the high-tech turkey fryer he's been wearing and develop a sleeker, lighter suit of armor that doesn't lose its charge like an old iPod after 10 minutes of combat. A delicate antenna sticks out of the left shoulder, but the "classic" Iron-Man outfit is nearly complete in this issue.
• To escape the pain of the deadly fetish, Stark intentionally turns off his chest plate life support to deaden his senses and allow him to assemble the precision energy beam he uses to disarm Mr. Doll. It's a gritty move that establishes the character's toughness and ingenuity. This win feels well-earned by our hero.
  
• Steve Ditko would seem to be the ideal choice to illustrate a tale with a magical main ingredient, but other than a glimpse of Mr. Doll's collection of weird African artifacts in the corner of a single panel, his creepy mystical milieus are nowhere to be seen. Stan Lee tries a bit harder in this issue. It's still nothing special but it at least represents an improvement, mainly in its depiction of Stark's desperation.
  

Iron Man Battles The Melter!

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Stark Industries is once again under siege by a super-powered saboteur, threatening Stark's reputation and fortune as well as America's national defense. But how can Iron Man defend himself against a foe with the ability to simply melt his armor?

Notes:

• In this issue, we meet The Melter--the third prominent Iron Man villain to appear in as many months. Bruno Horgan is a former competitor who lost his contract when Tony Stark proved he used inferior materials to build tanks for the Army. Appropriately enough, it is another one of Horgan's defective products, an electronic inspection beam that actually starts to liquefy the items it inspects, that gives him the means to launch his vendetta against Stark.
• In their first encounter, The Melter completely melts the armor around Stark's left arm but somehow Stark doesn't lose the limb or suffer serious burns. It's more like the armor simply evaporates . . . but "The Evaporator" doesn't sound very cool.
• Steve Ditko illustrates this issue but very little of his unique style remains after a heavy ink job by Don Heck. At least Heck's brush makes Pepper look prettier than Ditko's usual oddly featured women. Stan Lee sheds Berns as a scripter but his solo story is just as formulaic as most of the preceding ones.

Iron Man Faces The Crimson Dynamo!

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It's Iron Man vs. Iron Curtain when the armored hero clashes with his opposite number from Russia, The Crimson Dynamo.

Notes:

• Another recurring nemesis makes his first appearance in this issue. Professor Vanko's combination of genius and ambition insipres awe and fear in Khrushchev, who plans to liquidate him after the completion of his mission to ruin Tony Stark and destroy Iron Man. Vanko, in the best tradition of the mad scientist, has experimented on himself to gain complete mastery of electricty. It is unclear from the story whether this ability is now natural or conferred or amplified by the Crimson Dynamo armor.
• The Crimson Dynamo's campaign of sabotage against SI defense plants is quite successful and results in withdrawn defense contracts and even suspicion in Congress that Stark himself is intentionally crippling national defense. Of course, when he tries to cook the spam in the Iron Man can, he is defeated but not before establishing himself as the strip's most formidable foe to date--even though Khrushchev says his armor looks "ridiculous" (true) and it electrocutes its wearer when wet.
• Vanko reforms at the end of the story, denouncing the "savage, double-dealing" Commie system and agreeing to work for Stark. I guess the departure of "Jack Frost" Shapanka left a vacancy for a shady foreign professor at Stark Industries.