This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at the period during the 1980s when Tony Stark’s latest bout with alcoholism prompted him to let his pilot Jim Rhodes take over as Iron Man.
IRON MAN Vol 1 #169 (Apr 1983)
Title: Blackout
Villains: Magma and Obadiah Stane
Synopsis: Iron Man (Tony Stark) is very drunk but is recklessly flying around New York City. His lapse back into heavy drinking was triggered by a combination of being dumped by his latest love interest Indries Moomji and corporate rival Obadiah Stane (Jeff Bridges in the movies) outmaneuvering Stark in several business deals recently.
Tony faces trouble from the mayor over minor damage caused by his “employee” Iron Man. NOTE: This was back when Tony kept it a secret that he was Iron Man and claimed the hero was just his high-tech bodyguard to explain why they both often showed up at the same locations at the same time.
At a board meeting, Stark gets more pressure regarding his careless spending and mountains of debt he has run up. Obadiah Stane is trying to talk the angry creditors of Stark International into letting him buy and assume the debts, which would give him very serious leverage over Tony’s business.
Tony’s personal pilot and friend Jim “Rhodey” Rhodes, who had been a supporting character in the series for years at this point, catches Tony drinking even more after the meeting. Iron Man’s old supervillain foe Magma, his tank and troops attack Stark’s Long Island HQ.
When Tony proves too drunk to handle his Iron Man armor, Jim Rhodes dons it instead and flies out to face Magma and company. Continue reading
THE MAD SCIENTIST: A TALE OF THE FUTURE (1908) – Written by Raymond McDonald, a pen name for two Canadians – Raymond Alfred Leger and Edward Richard McDonald. An unusual aspect of this novel was the publisher’s offer of a thousand-dollar reward for any reader who deciphered and provided the best breakdown of a coded message in the story. 
RIDDLE OF THE SULIOTEN MOUNTAIN – Kapitan Mors and his crew land their air ship on a mountain on a Greek island between Korfu and the Ionian Isles. A Suliot sponge diver sees the Luftschiff land and informs the villainous autocrat who imposes his own iron rule on the locals. 
SECRET SOCIETY OF SUPER-VILLAINS Vol 1 #1 (Jun 1976) 
Identical invitations are received by the supervillains called Gorilla Grodd, Copperhead, Sinestro and others. Everyone but Catwoman accepts. When they are all assembled in the aforementioned Citadel they meet the new woman using the Star Sapphire nom de guerre. They also meet their butler, Carstairs.
WONDERWORLDS (Wunderwelten) (1911) – Written by Friedrich W. Mader. This novel was published in its native German in 1911 but not translated into English until 1932 under the title Distant Worlds. Some sources mistakenly list 1932 as its original year of publication. 
THE GHOST RAILWAY BRIDGE ON THE SHAHO – Our masked hero and his crew on their Luftschiff are in the sky above the River Shaho. They observe the Russian and Japanese armies preparing for another monumental battle. NOTE: The Kapitan Mors tales are like the Sherlock Holmes stories in that they often jump around in time. This one is set during the Russo-Japanese War, so much earlier than most of the Mors stories. 
FANTASTIC FOUR Vol 1 #158 (May 1975) 
The pair fight it out, fueled largely by their former romantic rivalry for Crystal. The Thing (Ben Grimm) and his girlfriend – the blind sculptress Alicia Masters – arrive back from a night at the Metropolitan Opera and the Thing joins the Human Torch in attacking Quicksilver. Mr. Fantastic calls a halt to the fighting and asks Quicksilver why he invaded the Baxter Building. 
A TRIP TO THE MOON BY MR. MURTAGH MCDERMOT, CONTAINING OBSERVATIONS AND REFLECTIONS MADE BY HIM (1728) – The real author of this is unknown, since it was published using the pen name Murtagh McDermot. Unless, of course, the writer used their real name for the main character. 
THE PRISON ON DEVIL’S ISLAND – Near the mouth of the Orinoco River in French Guyana a huge deposit of diamonds has been discovered. Inmates of the notoriously hellish prison on nearby Devil’s Island have been making frenzied attempts at escape to go diamond hunting. 
GADGETMAN 
CAT-GIRL 
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