Category Archives: Superheroes

Sorry about this being late. I’ve had a bit of a relapse. Balladeer’s Blog’s look at 1970s Iron Man classics comes to a close with this review of the Return of the Mandarin storyline leading up to the hero’s 100th issue anniversary. For Part One of these Iron Man 1970s classics click HERE.

IRON MAN Vol 1 #95 (February 1977)

Title: Ultimo Unleashed

Villains: Ultimo and the Mandarin

NOTE: We jump ahead to issue #95 from where we left off with issue #81 and the end of the Black Lama storyline. By this point in the 1970s Marvel considered it okay for Tony Stark to go back to selling “defense systems” to the government and the military. 

Synopsis: At the Long Island headquarters of Stark International, Iron Man tests his armor’s latest upgrades against an atomic piledriver. Witnessing the test are a few Stark employees, including the blonde Krissy Longfellow, Tony’s newest executive assistant and his replacement for the departed Pepper Potts-Hogan.

The atomic piledriver is destroyed and Iron Man switches back to Tony Stark and dives into his latest office work regarding his company. Soon he winds up pondering Krissy Longfellow’s enigmatic appeal and that leads him to contemplating some of the previous women in his life, like Pepper, the late Janice Cord and Roxie Gilbert, whom he has finally given up pursuing.

His reverie is interrupted by a phone call from Senator Andrew Jackson Hawk in Washington D.C. Hawk informs Tony that he and his committee have frozen all of Stark International’s new defense contracts because of evidence that Tony is selling classified information to the Communist Chinese and the Soviet Union.

NOTE: The “evidence” has all been faked by the Mandarin for reasons that will be made known below.  Continue reading →

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

IRON MAN Vol 1 #75 (June 1975)

Title: Slave to the Power Imperious

Villains: Modok, the Mad Thinker, the Yellow Claw and the Black Lama

Synopsis: This issue picks up right where the previous one left off. Modok, with his squat body and enlarged head resting atop the kaiju-sized mechanical body that he wore to fight the Hulk months earlier, has burst into the Mad Thinker’s subterranean headquarters in the forests of Michigan.

Per the Black Lama’s ongoing War of the Supervillains, Modok plans to kill his first opponent the Mad Thinker (at right) then take on the war’s frontrunner – the Yellow Claw. Modok tosses aside the defeated and unconscious Iron Man, whom the Mad Thinker had used as a pawn against Modok and A.I.M. last time around.

Before Modok can finish off the Thinker, the latter unleashes one of his kaiju-sized androids, the green, faceless kind that are powerful enough to battle the Fantastic Four (the Mad Thinker’s usual foes). While the fight between that Android Warrior and Modok goes on, Iron Man regains consciousness, then realizes that the damage to the Mad Thinker’s laboratory has destroyed the equipment with which the villain was controlling his armor. Continue reading →

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

IRON 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 →

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

IRON 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.

Whiplash 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 →