The Hands of the Mandarin!

Tales of Suspense 050

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.