As the countdown to the movie’s release reaches its climax, Tom Brevoort remembers his own history with Iron Man:
The first Iron Man story I read was literally the first Iron Man story–his origin, from TALES OF SUSPENSE #39, as reprinted in the SON OF ORIGINS OF MARVEL COMICS collection Simon & Schuster issued in the ’70s… Truth be told, I wasn’t all that knocked out by Iron Man. His first story was all right, but the second, more modern Iron Man story they’d included (illustrated by Gene Colan, who’s one of my all-time favorite Iron Man artists) didn’t really strike my fancy. Could be because it was a middle chapter of a longer storyline, in which Iron Man didn’t do much other than writhe in agony and recharge his armor from a car cigarette lighter.
But comics were relatively cheap in those days, and as I got deeper and deeper into the Marvel line (sampling modern issues of X-MEN, AVENGERS, DAREDEVIL and so forth), I eventually picked up a copy of IRON MAN on some slow week. That issue, #111, was right in the middle of an extended sequence itself, and probably wasn’t the best place to come in. IRON MAN was a series that, unbeknownst to me, had been limping along for some time, and while Bill Mantlo (who wrote this issue) had done yeoman work on the book, it wasn’t really setting the world on fire… While I like him just fine, Iron Man’s never really been a big favorite of mine. But I sure am looking forward to seeing the film in a day or so’s time.
