Category Archives: Superheroes

IRON MAN: 1970s CLASSICS 9 – THE CRIMSON DYNAMO, MODOK AND THE BLACK LAMA

For Part One of these Iron Man 1970s classics click HERE.

im 73IRON MAN Vol 1 #73 (March 1975)

Title: Turnabout: A Most Foul Play

Villains: The Crimson Dynamo and Kuon Set

Synopsis: This issue picks up a week or so after the end of our previous story. Tony Stark is back in Manila at the Stark International Regional Headquarters in the Philippines. He is conferring with Pepper Potts-Hogan and her husband Happy, his Executive Assistant and his Security Chief respectively. Pepper has been informed that Tony is really Iron Man, so now both she and Happy know the secret.

Amid this relaxed setting Tony discusses Stark International’s new food processing plant in Manila, part of Tony’s ongoing reorganization of his company to leave his days as a weapons manufacturer behind him.

black lama standingThe married couple ask their boss about his recent trip to San Diego, and Tony tells them about his battle with Whiplash, the Melter and the Man-Bull as part of the Black Lama’s (at right) unfolding War of the Supervillains. Our hero also mentions returning to Stark International’s Headquarters on Long Island for a few days and his eyewitness account of seeing the Man-Thing in action.

NOTE: That refers to Tony Stark’s guest appearance as himself – NOT Iron Man – in Giant-Size Man-Thing #2.

Next, Tony shows Pepper for the first time how he dons his Iron Man armor which he carries around with him in segments in his briefcase. In a comic book coincidence, shortly after Tony becomes Iron Man an explosion rocks his Manila buildings.

Iron Man flies to the boiler room and manages to bring things under control before an even more destructive explosion can occur. Leaving Pepper and Happy to deal with the aftermath of this industrial accident, our hero tells them he is flying off to Vietnam to investigate Roxie Gilbert’s disappearance a few installments back. Continue reading

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IRON MAN: 1970s CLASSICS 8 – THE BLACK LAMA, WHIPLASH, MELTER AND THE MAN-BULL

For Part One of these Iron Man 1970s classics click HERE.

im 72IRON MAN Vol 1 #71 (November 1974)

Title: Tooth and Yellow Claw

Villains: Black Lama and the Yellow Claw

Synopsis: This issue picks up right where the previous one left off. With Ultimo defeated, Iron Man flies toward the Mandarin’s former castle, now occupied by the Yellow Claw, who is exulting over having killed the Mandarin through trickery last time around. 

NOTE: Naturally the Mandarin is not really dead and in 1977 will return in time for Iron Man # 95-100.

robert downey jr iron manThe Yellow Claw seized the Mandarin’s castle and killed his rival supervillain as the opening battles in the War of the Supervillains which has been set in motion by Iron Man’s old foe the Black Lama. The latter villain is offering his Golden Globe of Power as the world-conquering prize to whichever Marvel supervillain wins this deadly war.   

Iron Man bursts through one of the castle walls, suprising the Yellow Claw. The Claw sics one of his biological constructs – a mutated “blob”-like creature – on our hero. After Tony defeats the cyborg creature, the Yellow Claw unleashes a swarm of his robots on Iron Man, robots which explode upon being defeated. Tony overcomes them, too, and survives a death-trap they maneuver him into. Continue reading

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IRON MAN: 1970s CLASSICS 7 – THE MANDARIN, BLACK LAMA AND SUNFIRE

For Part One of these Iron Man 1970s classics click HERE.

im 68IRON MAN Vol 1 #68 (June 1974)

Title: Night of the Rising Sun

Villains: The Mandarin, Sunfire and Unicorn

Synopsis: We pick up months after our previous installment. Tony Stark has been spending most of his time in the Far East managing the reorganization of the Stark Regional offices there now that his company no longer handles weapons manufacturing. All of that is just the excuse to justify frequently loaning out his “bodyguard” Iron Man to Roxie Gilbert’s combined humanitarian mission and hunt for Eddie March’s M.I.A. brother Marty.

mandarin pictureAs this issue opens, Iron Man is using his repulsor rays to blast a path through the jungle for Roxie, U.N. escorts and North Vietnamese escorts plus the joint armed forces and aid workers. The communist army officer is especially hostile, making it clear he’s not fond of having Americans like Roxie Gilbert and Iron Man on hand. He also vows to retake Saigon some day.

NOTE: This story is set after the last American troops withdrew but before Saigon had fallen and been renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Marvel’s editors must have been scrambling to keep their comic book stories in synch with real-world events. Continue reading

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IRON MAN: 1970s CLASSICS 6 – DOCTOR SPECTRUM, THOR AND THE FREAK

For Part One of these Iron Man 1970s classics click HERE.

im 65IRON MAN Vol 1 #65 (December 1973)

Title: The Cutting Edge of Death

Villain: Doctor Spectrum 

Synopsis: This issue picks up right where the last one left off: Near the wreckage of Roxie Gilbert’s health food store, caused by the destructive battle between Iron Man and Dr. Spectrum. The huge, energy-charged scimitar that the villain created via his power ring Power Prism is trying to slice through our hero’s armor to kill him.

Meanwhile, the exhausted Iron Man is barely able to use his repulsor rays to hold off the enormous energy-sword. Dr. Spectrum gets distracted by another argument with the alien intelligence inside his Power Prism AND by a blow to the face by Roxie Gilbert, who is briefly abandoning her pacifist principles to save Iron Man, who has saved HER multiple times in the recent past.

Dr. Spectrum easily smacks aside Roxie, who runs to a fellow bystander, the former boxer Eddie March. Roxie tells him Iron Man needs more help than normal human beings can provide and wants to call in the Avengers. Instead, Eddie says he has a quicker idea but we are not yet shown what that idea IS. Continue reading

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DOCTOR STRANGE: HIS EARLY STORIES FROM THE 1960s

With the movie Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness hitting theaters I figured it was time for a look at the early stories of that Master of the Mystic Arts.

dr str treasurySTRANGE TALES Vol 1 #110 (July 1963)

Title: Doctor Strange, Master of Black Magic

Villain: Nightmare

Note: Dr. Strange was a backup feature to the Human Torch in his earliest appearances. He would eventually split Strange Tales equally with the Torch. Strange wouldn’t even be mentioned on the cover for a few issues at first.   

Synopsis: A man suffering from intense nightmares hires the famed occultist Dr. Strange to help him. Strange mystically enters the man’s dreams where he sees that the man is being tormented by the dark entity called Nightmare. After an intense battle, our hero drives off Nightmare and saves his client’s life. Continue reading

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IRON MAN: 1970s CLASSICS 5 – WHIPLASH AND DOCTOR SPECTRUM

For Part One of these Iron Man 1970s classics click HERE.

im 62IRON MAN Vol 1 #62 (September 1973)

Title: Whiplash Returns

Villain: Whiplash

Synopsis: We open a few weeks after the end of our previous installment. Tony Stark and Pepper Potts-Hogan have been at the Cincinnati Regional Headquarters of Stark International as part of Tony’s ongoing reorganization of Stark Industries’ projects and mission statement now that he has refused to do any more munition work. 

Pepper, still working as Stark’s Executive Assistant, is trying to cope with her husband Harold “Happy” Hogan’s decision that he is through with their marriage since she refuses to leave her career and become a housewife.

Elsewhere in Cincinnati we see Iron Man’s old foe Whiplash, returning after his first clash with Iron Man back in Tales of Suspense #97-99 (January 1968-March 1968). Whiplash is in his secret laboratory in costume, using his high-tech metal whip which can even pierce Iron Man’s armor.

rdj as tony againWhiplash is practicing by whipping to pieces steel statues of Iron Man while indulging in a Villain Rant about how he and our armored superhero got separated by chance after their previous battle on the cruise-ship sized seaborne HQ of the Maggia. (Marvel Comics’ fictional version of the Mafia.)

The villain also reflects on the improvements he has since made to his costume’s tech, making it capable of absorbing the energy from Iron Man’s repulsor rays and unleash it back on our hero with the next lash of his whip. Continue reading

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IRON MAN: 1970s CLASSICS 4 – FIREBRAND, THE MASKED MARAUDER AND STEEL

For Part One of these Iron Man 1970s classics click HERE.

im 59IRON MAN Vol 1 #59 (June 1973)

Title: A Madness in Motown

Villain: Firebrand

Synopsis: This issue opens up with Tony Stark in his office at Stark International’s Long Island headquarters. He’s on a phone call from the psychiatrist treating Marianne Rodgers at Milford Sanitarium in Connecticut.

NOTE: Marianne is Tony’s ex-fiance whose psychic powers have recently begun driving her crazy with grotesque images.

The doctor informs Stark about how serious Marianne’s condition is, and that she has even taken to ranting about him, her former fiance. After getting off the phone, Tony ponders the situation and blames himself for Marianne’s condition. He even takes to trashing his office. Continue reading

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IRON MAN: 1970s CLASSICS 3 – THE MANDARIN AND UNICORN

For Part One of these Iron Man 1970s classics click HERE.

im 57IRON MAN Vol 1 #57 (April 1973)

Title: The Mandarin Strikes Back

Villain: The Mandarin

NOTE: This is the REAL Mandarin, Iron Man’s archenemy since 1964, NOT the comic-relief figure used in movies like Iron Man 3 and in the recent Shang-Chi movie. The Mandarin is sort of a hybrid of Doctor Doom, Fu Manchu and Chiang Kai-shek. As his nom de guerre would suggest, he wanted to return China to its glory days under the old imperial dynasties. He opposed the Communist Chinese and had carved out a little territory of his own on the mainland, as opposed to the island of Formosa used by the Taiwan government.

This villain’s powers came from his ten power rings which he took from a crashed Makluan spaceship. Each ring has specific powers. He uses other elements of reverse-engineered Makluan technology in his schemes for world conquest.

mandarin picSynopsis: We pick up an unknown number of days or weeks after our previous installment. Tony Stark returns to Stark International’s Long Island headquarters only to learn that while he and the other Avengers were occupied with taking on Magneto (Avengers 110 & 111) the workers at Stark International re-organized under a whole new union. (It’s a comic book. Ignore the real-world problems with that happening so quickly and just go with it.)

That new union, headed by the mysterious and reclusive Gene Khan (really the Mandarin himself) has convinced the workers to go on strike until Tony Stark agrees to return his company to handling national defense contracts. Gene Khan has convinced labor that the real reason that Tony ended Stark’s Defense Department contracts was so he could share technology with Soviet Russia and Communist China. Continue reading

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CAPTAIN AMERICA CHAPTER LINKS

Somewhat belatedly, here are links to each installment of Balladeer’s Blog’s look at 1970s classics for Captain America and the Falcon.

ca f 156ONE: This four-part story dealt with Cap and Falc taking on the revived 1950s substitutes for Cap and Bucky. The worldviews of two Captain Americas from different decades came into conflict. Click HERE.

TWO: A three-part tale pitting our heroes against the Viper and the supervillain team called Crime Wave. Plus Captain America gains Spider-Man level strength. (That higher strength level lasted from 1973-1978.) Click HERE.

THREE: These three issues saw Captain America and the Falcon go up against the new supervillain Solarr as well as Captain America’s old foe Doctor Faustus. All this and the return of Peggy Carter! Click HERE. Continue reading

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IRON MAN: 1970s CLASSICS 2 – THANOS, SUB-MARINER AND THE BLOOD BROTHERS

For Part One of these Iron Man 1970s classics click HERE.

im 54IRON MAN Vol 1 #54 (January 1973)

Title: Sub-Mariner: Target for Death

Villain: Moon Dragon (Her first appearance)

NOTE: This issue was co-written and co-illustrated by Bill Everett, who created the Sub-Mariner back in 1939 (BEFORE Aqua-Man), when Marvel Comics was known as Timely Comics.

Synopsis: We pick up an unknown amount of time after the previous issue. Tony Stark is now in Seattle, restructuring much of the Stark International corporate activities there to fit into his company’s new direction of no weapons manufacturing.

Our hero reflects to himself how the mysterious new supervillain the Black Lama escaped in our previous installment after his disciple Raga was defeated. (The Black Lama will emerge as a major adversary of Iron Man in the near future.)

Moon DragonElsewhere, deep below the waters of the Pacific Ocean, a vessel constructed through the superior technology of the Eternals of Titan travels like a submarine for the moment. This vessel launches a futuristic satellite into orbit, a satellite with cloaking tech and other capabilities.

On board that subaquatic vessel is Moon Dragon (Heather Douglas), currently using the idiotic nom de guerre “Madame MacEvil.” (LMAO) Besides the stupid name, Marvel’s writers had clearly not yet fully decided on her backstory or on what role she would play in the Thanos War being set up in this issue. Continue reading

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