{"id":2461,"date":"2010-09-18T15:34:09","date_gmt":"2010-09-18T20:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/?p=2461"},"modified":"2025-02-08T07:22:44","modified_gmt":"2025-02-08T12:22:44","slug":"fifty-essentials-in-fifty-days-08-iron-man-vol-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/2010\/09\/18\/fifty-essentials-in-fifty-days-08-iron-man-vol-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Fifty Essentials in Fifty Days 08: Iron Man Vol. 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"cover<\/p>\n


\nEssential Iron Man Vol. 1
\nStan Lee, Don Heck and friends
\nReprints: Tales of Suspense #39-72 (March 1963 – June 1968)
\nGet this for: Don Heck at his best — three stars
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

\nHaving done Captain America’s run in Tales of Suspense<\/cite> yesterday<\/a>, it’s no more than fair to feature the guy Cap was sharing the title with today: Iron Man. Iron Man got his start in #39; this volume brings us roughly halfway through his run, to issue #72. Interestingly, Iron Man was one of the few Silver Age greats in which neither Ditko nor Kirby had much of a hand developing. Instead Don Heck is the principal artist throughout this part of his Tales of Suspense<\/cite> run. Heck might not be quite as good as those two, but his suave, streamlined style works quite well here.\n<\/p>\n

\nYou do get the feeling however that Iron Man, no matter what he became later, was a second tier title to Stan Lee at least. His writing misses the sparkle it has on Fantastic Four<\/cite>, Spider-Man<\/cite> or even Captain America<\/cite>. Evidence of this is also the use of scripters, with Lee only doing the plotting. It results in a run of stories remarkably less complex than the top tier Marvel Silver Age titles.\n<\/p>\n

\nMost of the stories revolve either around rivals of Tony Stark using their own inventions to become supervillains in order to put him out of business or a communist saboteur doing the same. Apart from the Mandarin there are no recurring villains here; even classic Iron Man villains like the Melter only appear once. Soap opera wise there’s not much going on either, apart from the love triangle between tony, his secretary Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan, his chauffeur. They’re not bad stories, just a bit samey after a while.\n<\/p>\n

\nOn the art front, Don Heck starts out decent and gets better over the volume, establishing a look for Iron Man and his armoured villains like the Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man that would be used by every artist after. Heck is a somewhat underrated artist, but if you do want to see him at his best, this is it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Essential Iron Man Vol. 1 Stan Lee, Don Heck and friends Reprints: Tales of Suspense #39-72 (March 1963 – June 1968) Get this for: Don Heck at his best — three stars Having done Captain America’s run in Tales of Suspense yesterday, it’s no more than fair to feature the guy Cap was sharing the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,7],"tags":[1127,1118,1126,1120],"class_list":["post-2461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-comix","tag-don-heck","tag-fifty-essentials-in-fifty-days","tag-iron-man","tag-stan-lee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2461"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11077,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2461\/revisions\/11077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cloggie.org\/wissewords2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}