For Part One of these Iron Man 1970s classics click HERE.
IRON 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.
Synopsis: 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
THE STOLEN PLANET (1906) – Written by John Mastin. Jervis Meredith, a wealthy young British man and his equally wealthy friend Fraser Burnley are so brilliant they invent anti-gravity. Next the young tycoons have a spaceship built so they can use their anti-gravity device to tour outer space. 
The explorers make the eccentric decision to explore the region around Sirius first, rather than our own solar system. Enroute the Regina accidentally pulls an uncharted planet out of its orbit (?) and causes it to collide with another uncharted planet. This collision causes a new sun to be born. (Regular readers of Balladeer’s Blog will remember that this was apparently a big idea for a time since a lot of these old stories feature suns forming from colliding planets.)
ONE: 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 
IRON MAN Vol 1 #54 (January 1973) 
Elsewhere, 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. 
Weekends are the time for Balladeer’s Blog’s escapist forays into superheroes, who seem to be everywhere these days. This time around it will be a multi-week look at Iron Man and one of his most memorable story runs from the 1970s. 
IRON MAN Vol 1 #52 (November 1972) 
This afternoon all of the destructive devices and traps are overcome by Iron Man’s latest improvements. The test session over with, Tony Stark catches a flight to California. With his engagement to long-time girlfriend Marianne Rodgers called off recently our hero is off on a vacation. 
Superheroes continue to dominate pop culture right now, and as I’ve often said, I think hero tales work best when set in their original time period. 
HERO FOR HIRE Vol 1 #1 (June 1972) 
Using those powers, Lucas escaped Seagate Prison but misled the authorities into thinking he died in the ocean while trying to get away. With Carl Lucas pronounced dead, our main character settled in New York City under the name Luke Cage and became a literal Hero for Hire, using his superpowers to earn a living. 
CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #183 (March 1975) 
Dialogue from the four combatants lets us know that Nomad came to Harlem looking for the Falcon and hasn’t been able to find him. Gamecock and his two underlings make it clear they were looking for Falcon, too, to kill him. 
CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #180 (December 1974) 
GEORGES (1843) – Published just one year before The Three Musketeers, this novel is not only a rollicking adventure full of action, romance and double-crosses but it deals with racial issues in such a way that you would have thought it would have been adapted for film four or five decades ago. The title character uses his sword to fight slavery! 
CAPTAIN AMERICA & THE FALCON Vol 1 #176 (August 1974) 
NOTE: In spite of my joke above, I do recognize that THIS time that Cap quit let the Marvel Comics writers explore competing nationwide feelings of the time period. I would argue that this time also should have been the last time this gimmick was pulled. Everybody always knows that Steve Rogers will go back to being Captain America no matter how many times he quits.
