Tales of Suspense #39

Iron Man is born

By Stan Lee, Larry Leiber and Don Heck

Villains: Wong-Chu

So, What Happens?

Playboy inventor Tony Stark manages to fit weapons sales to the US military in between charming high society beauties. Meanwhile in Vietnam American troops face ever increasing pressure from communist guerrillas.

Stark flies out to Asia to see some of his weapons in the field but is captured in a communist ambush and left with shrapnel in his chest.

His communist captors give him a lab and force him to design new weapons before the shrapnel reaches his heart and kills him. Their leader Wong-chu provides Stark with an assistant, fabled scientist Professor Yinsen to help him work. Together they design a suit of iron armour that will keep Stark’s heart running and allow them to face Wong-chu in battle.

Yinsen sacrifices himself to allow stark to try and escape and with his new transistors, magnets and finger saws he deals with Wong-chu and his men, magnetically shrugging aside bazooka shells and grenades and throwing away weighted filing cabinets as if they were nothing.

With his heart still damaged and needing the iron man armour to survive Stark returns to the US a changed man.

So is it any good?:

Yes, it’s a good story with a level of intensity above most of the origin stories we have seen so far. While the series as a whole isn’t one of my favourites it is a strong origin story that sets up Stark’s essential characteristics very well, we get a brief glimpse of his ‘having it all’ lifestyle before it is taken away from him and he is put through a genuinely dramatic set of events that are made all the more serious by Yinsen’s sacrifice.

Stark is well defined immediately and you can see why he will have to remain as Iron Man in future, both because of the damage to his heart and what it must have done to him to be captured in Vietnam. It's probably the strongest origin story to date although, to be fair, the Hulk and spider-man also had very intense first appearances.

Not every story over the years would use these factors well, the heart damage and the curious society girls wondering what had changed Tony Stark would soon become melodramatic and over used but it is a strong opening and one that happens well away from what was already becoming the established Marvel Universe.

Here the threat of communism is not some overly paranoid fear f spies and missile bases but involves jungle guerrillas overwhelming American troops and as such is more dramatic. Our knowledge of what the American involvement in Vietnam led to gives it even more weight.

Some of the gimmicks Iron Man uses against them might be quite outlandish but the threat still rings true.

An excellent start that sets up an intriguing character concept.

Are there any goofy moments?

Wong-chu is fleeing for his life and throws a filing cabinet down the stairs in the path of the oncoming Iron Man. Only for Iron Man to note that wong-chu had filled it with rocks. I guess it was the only way to explain why it would slow Iron Man down at all but it’s still pretty goofy to imagine the fleeing bad guy taking the time to do it.

Not exactly goofy but worth mentioning is the practically fluorescent yellow colouring of every asian character. This is true even in the re-coloured omnibus volume.

Some of the transistor stuff is quite funny as well. The phrase ‘top hat transistor’ will get used a lot in the early stories to explain all sorts of things.

Trivia:

Despite his important role in this story Professor Yinsen largely disappeared from the Iron Man mythos until the Sons of Yinsen storyline in 2000.

Is it a landmark?:

Yes of course.