Iron Man

In the Spring of 1963, Marvel Comics rolled out another in a series of wildly popular characters, Iron Man, in it's anthology title Tales of Suspense (issue #39).

An egomaniacal, high-livin' playboy, genius weapons engineer/ millionaire Tony Stark is injured while being kidnapped by "the communists", purportedly to have Stark build them a weapon of mass destruction. He, instead, attempts to save his own life by building a suit of armor that both keeps the shrapnel embedded in his chest from becoming fatal, and allows him to overcome his captors with an arsenal of built-in weapons...Smart guy, right?

Well, it turns out that Stark has to live the rest of his life with his "chest plate" in order to keep from kicking the bucket. So he does what every other millionaire-playboy would do, he refines his armor and it's weapons and decides to become a super do-gooder! Stark then tells everyone he knows that Iron Man is his "bodyguard," so that his frequent appearances did not arouse suspicion - and it worked!

A myriad of icnoniclastic villiains that would be recurring characters - not just in Iron Man Stories - would be introduced : The Mandarin, The Melter, Crimson Dynamo, Titanium Man, The Black Widow, the Unicorn, Hawkeye (originally a bad guy),The Black Knight (resurrected as a bad guy, too), Ultimo, Crusher, Whiplash...

In 1968, Marvel started to end most of their "anthology" titles, that is, books which featured 2 characters in one book, each with their own half of the comic...so it was when Tales of Suspense ended that Iron Man received a book of his own.

Notable key books of value where in this initial run, including issue #54, which introduced Moondragon, and the very next issue #55, which introduced THANOS (and Kronos and Drax)!

Other interesting periods included the 1979 storyline, oft referred to as "Demon In A Bottle," which saw Tony Stark hitting rock bottom in his struggle with alcoholism! This era also featured early artwork by John Romita, Jr., with David Michelinie handling the writing.

This particular Iron Man title finished it's run in 1996.

Shortly after, Iron Man would have a successful screen presence in some of the first huge money-making offerings from the Marvel Pictures dynasty. His popularity continues to rise in the 2010's with the character's reccurring role in many Marvel Studios franchise movies...

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