Iron Man is a 1968 comic book series published by Marvel Comics. The comic is a Print Long Runner, running for 28 years. The series spun-off from Tales of Suspense.
Tony Stark was a Millionaire Playboy and industrialist until a battlefield explosion left him with a damaged heart that threatened to kill him. Captured by the enemy forces, he is forced into manufacturing weaponry to aid them. Instead, he secretly designed and built a suit of armor to keep his heart beating and to escape from his captors, and in the process became the superhero known as Iron Man.
Notable classic storylines include Demon in a Bottle, which deals with his alcoholism, and Armor Wars, where he goes on a vendetta after his technology is stolen and reproduced.
The first issue was released in February, 1968. The final issue (#332) was released in July, 1996.
The series ended in 1996 in the aftermath of the Onslaught event. The series was immediatly relaunched with Heroes Reborn: Iron Man, as part of the Heroes Reborn initiative.
Iron Man (1968) provides examples of:
- Amoral Attorney:
- As the head of Stark Enterprises' legal department, Bert Hindel was assigned by Tony to protect his technology by legal means after it was stolen by Spymaster and then resold by Justin Hammer during the Armor Wars arc. Unfortunately, Hindel completely fumbled the ball, forcing Tony to resort to attacking everyone who was using his stolen tech and forcibly deactivating it. Tony fired Hindel for his poor performance... and then when he was shot and nearly killed by Kathy Dare, Hindel reappeared as her defense attorney. He tried to portray her as an innocent victim reacting to Tony's drunken abuse, with the hope of parlaying the trial into a lucrative book deal. Unfortunately, he screwed up once again when Tony's new lawyer introduced testimony from Dare's psychiatrist, and Dare ended up being confined in a mental institution.
- Dare's lawyers over the years had, in fact, kept her from being institutionalized previously, and it was apparently her lawyers who got her on a prescription drug she shouldn't have been allowed near, that resulted in her committing suicide.
- Accidental Hero: In Issue #235, a French sculptor becomes a hit for the statues he apparently carves of terrified women. Fellow business tycoon Rae LaCoste gets Tony one as a gift. Tony accidentally chips it while finding somewhere to put it, and worries about getting hell from Rae. The statue suddenly turns into a living woman, who reveals to Tony that the French sculptor is actually the supervillain Grey Gargoyle. The Gargoyle
was turning real women into statues and selling them as sculptures. The Gargoyle's power usually wears off after an hour, but he coated the women with a special chemical polish that kept them from turning back to flesh and blood. When Tony chipped the "statue", he unwittingly disrupted the polish and freed the woman from the Gargoyle's power. Needless to say, Tony went after the Gargoyle as Iron Man. - A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Played completely straight in Issue #307 with VOR/TEX, a disembodied artificial intelligence which used Tony's artificial (at the time) nervous system to steal his body and take his place. While occupying Tony's body, he... misbehaves.
- Body Surf:
- In the third annual issue back in the '70s, anyone who held the wand of the (then-deceased) villain Molecule Man was eventually possessed by his essence. He is defeated when Man-Thing grabs the wand, and since he doesn't have a mind to possess, Molecule Man's essence disappears completely.
- Tony's body is hijacked by emergent artificial intelligence Vor/Tex.
- Break Out the Museum Piece: The Iron Legion in issues 299-300 were all obsolete when they were used.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: The "Crash and Burn" arc dealt with Stark having to deal with being accused as this, as the result of Stark Enterprises buying out Stane International (the company originally founded by Howard Stark, before Obadiah Stane took it from Tony). Stark had to deal with the ramifications of Stane International's shady dealings.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The conclusion of his first fight with Titanium Man is one from the comic's early history. The battles with Firepower at the end of the Armor Wars arc, and Ultimo in Issue #299-300 are textbook examples.
- Cutting the Knot: In Issue #238, the Ghost has attached a device to Tony's armor that makes him intangible and will make Tony die of hunger and thirst unless he can find a way to get the thing off. Tony manages to regain his solid form, but he still needs to think of a way to remove the device from his armor. Rhodey simply blows it to pieces with his gun.
- Driven to Suicide:
- When Obadiah Stane has made his final move and is facing checkmate, he chooses to cheat Tony out of his victory and calmly repulsors his own head off.
- When Kathy Dare - crazy stalker lady who shot Tony - attended his 'funeral', she ended up taking a gun to herself, weeping for herself and for Tony.
- Easy Evangelism: It was an easy matter for Iron Man to persuade the Crimson Dynamo to defect from his Soviet masters and come and work for Stark Enterprises by faking an order from Comrade K that he was to be liquidated as soon as he had completed his sabotage mission in America. Dynamo believed it immediately, "because he knew how treacherous all Communists are."
- Either/Or Title: "Alone Against A.I.M." or "What a Way to Start Out in Your Own Mag!!"
- Enemy Mine: With Doctor Doom during Doomquest.
- Epic Fail: Bert Hindel's attempts to legally protect Tony's technology during the Armor Wars arc...and his later attempt to get revenge on Tony after he was fired by portraying Kathy Dare as an innocent victim of Tony's drunken abuse.
- Extradimensional Emergency Exit: In Doomquest, Iron Man grapple with Doctor Doom, and be sent into the past via Doom's Time Cube. Doom allies himself with the sorceress Morgan Le Fey, and leads an army of zombies against King Arthur. Iron Man realizes that Doom hasn't the power to raise the dead, so he confronts Morgan in her castle tower. Morgan cannot leave the castle, which was made into her prison by Merlin's magic. She nonetheless escapes via a dimensional portal.
- "Freaky Friday" Flip:
- In Issue #198, Obadiah Stane had used the mad scientist Dr. Atlanta to switch the minds of Bethany Cabe and Madame Masque. The gambit came into play after Stane's death, but the two were eventually switched back.
- In Issue #255, a bizarre mutant with the ability to manipulate radio signals (who settles on going by "Freak Quincy") inadvertently links up with the Russian microwave satellite that was empowering Devastator during a training exercise against the Crimson Dynamo, somehow switching the minds of Tony Stark (who was trying to stop Quincy as Iron Man) and Valentin Shalatov (the Dynamo). Shalatov's lack of familiarity with the Iron Man armor resulted in a rather... unfortunate accident for Quincy, but Stark and Shalatov were able to find a way to reverse the process. The incident, although a "filler" issue as the comic was transitioning to the team of John Byrne and John Romita, Jr. at the time, was referenced much later on, when Shalatov needed Stark's help to stop the rampaging Titanium Man (the original, Boris Bullski).
- Friendship Moment:
- In Issue #184, James Rhodes and two other guys were working on creating their own tech company, they were getting ready to leave for California. Tony Stark came up asking for a job. In the past few months he had lost his company, lost access to his money, gave up being Iron Man and is homeless. Not only that but he had only spent a week being sober. Tony was afraid that he would be rejected for what happened. But Rhodey and the others promptly accepted him.
- Tony and Rhodey would fight soon afterward, though, because Rhodey was suffering from migranes that caused him to believe Tony was going to take the armor back from him. Rhodey went on a rampage that forced Tony to don his new prototype suit to stop him; at the end of the fight, Tony was able to convince Rhodey that he wasn't out to take the armor back, and the two shook hands again. (Rhodey would later discover his headaches were caused by his own guilt, and when Tony ultimately did become Iron Man again, he accepted the change.)
- Future Me Scares Me: In Issue #250, when Iron Man and Doctor Doom are stuck in 2093 during Acts of Vengeance, they are not at all pleased with their future namesakes. The villainous future Iron Man is just a relative of Tony's, but the future Doom is Doom himself, a century older and much the worse for wear. Doom kills him without hesitation and walks away vowing never to become "that". A shame, then, that he gets a dose of Laser-Guided Amnesia at the end of the adventure.
- Hauled Before a Senate Subcommittee: In the 1960s, Stark is faced with this situation and it takes so long that the batteries of his hidden chestpiece/external pacemaker run low and he collapses from his heart condition. When an attending doctor opens his shirt, it is finally exposed to the world that Tony Stark is a very sick man.
- Healing Shiv: The Ghost slaps a device onto Tony's armor that makes him just as intangible as the Ghost. Tony can't remove it and can't touch anything at all, not even food or water. Tony's afraid that he'll die of hunger or thirst if he doesn't find a way to get the device off. He eventually uses an electromagnetic pulse to short the device out and become solid again, but it's still stuck to his armor. Unless they can find a way to remove it in six minutes, they're back to square one. That's when Rhodey pulls out his gun and tells Tony to brace himself. Putting the gun right over the device, Rhodey shoots Tony at point-blank range and shatters the device:Iron Man: I never thought I'd say 'thanks for shooting me,' but that seems to have done the trick!
- Science Is Bad: The Mandarin decides on this in the Hands of The Mandarin arc, creating an enormous mystical ritual to shut down technology world-wide as part of his plan to conquer and "restore" the world.
- Stalker with a Crush: Kathy Dare, who shot him for rebuffing her and then tried to claim he was the abusive one at her trial
- Supernatural Sealing: In Doomquest, Iron Man battles Doctor Doom, and both combatants get plunged into the past via Doom's Time Cube into the days of Camelot. Doom had been doing research on the sorceress Morgan la Fey with an eye toward learning more of the mystic arts from her. Morgan la Fey has been sealed inside her castle by Merlin's magic after her last failed attempt to overthrow King Arthur.
- Warrior Undead: Issue #150 of the original volume has Iron Man teaming up with King Arthur's knights to battle an army of corpses raised from their graves by the dark magic of Morgan Le Fay and led by Doctor Doom. Most of these zombies have armor or chain mail, and most carry a weapon, having been buried that way. One of Arthur's knights remarks about these zombie warriors: "Tis dark magic indeed that moves these carrion. Limbless or lifeless, they fight on!"
- Wrong Genre Savvy: In the Crash and Burn storylinenote , Tony learns that one of the plants he'd acquired in buying out Stane International had been producing gamma bombs for the Pentagon, and the press had become aware, meaning that the Hulk was going to find out. Expecting the Hulk to come in to smash the place, Tony orders the plant evacuated, and waits for the Hulk to show up wearing Hulkbuster armor. When the big green guy does show, Tony throws the first punch. Hulk (who has Banners' intellect during this period) calls him out on this, stating that he only came by to discuss a timeframe for shutting the plant down, not to smash anything. Having reached an accord, Tony decides there's no time like the present, so they end up leveling the plant themselves.
- Yandere: Kathy Dare, Tony's ex-girlfriend who shot him after they broke up. He wasn't even the first guy she got revenge on, as she burnt down the mansion of a previous boyfriend and her psychiatrist had recommended that she be institutionalized.
