Tales of Suspense #40

Iron Man versus Gargantus

By Stan Lee, Robert Bernstein, Jack Kirby and Don Heck

Villains: Gargantus, aliens

So, What Happens?

Tony Stark balances outfitting the US military and romancing society beauties with battling gangsters and mad scientists as Iron Man.

When a date at the circus is interrupted by escaping big cats Stark goes into action in his new suit of armour. The lions and tigers are easily dealt with but Stark is shocked to find that his bulky grey armour terrifies all the children present.

After a design suggestion from his date, Marion, he soon goes to work on a new golden design.

His next date with Marion fails to start when she isn’t on her flight. Investigating Stark learns that her home city of Granville has been surrounded by a giant wall and nobody has been in or out since.

Iron Man tunnels his way in but is soon attacked by townspeople intent on driving away any outsiders. They keep shouting about their leader Gargantus and, when they aren’t attacking Stark, seem to be worshipping a statue of a Neanderthal. Stark smashes the statue and issues a challenge to Gargantus.

A huge Neanderthal arrives to attack Stark and to try and hypnotise him with a beam from his eyes. At first Stark thinks this is reflected sunlight but notices the sun is being blocked by a strangely static cloud. This is enough information for Stark to realise Gargantus must be a robot constructed by aliens hiding in the cloud.

Stark throws a set of transistor boosted magnets in every direction and the robot is torn apart. The aliens flee, angry that earth isn’t still populated by the Neanderthals they had met on an earlier visit.

So is it any good?:

No, not really. It shows us the three different aspects of Tony Stark’s personality quite well and in fact explicitly mentions that this multiple personality is important. However after quite a dramatic first story this is a run of the mill twist ending story that could have featured any super hero.

The idea of an American town being mind controlled and worshipping a giant Neanderthal could actually be quite interesting if it was spun out a little more and had a bit more drama but the Granville sections of the story only last 6 pages in total and it all just becomes a very generic super hero story. I think a flashback to this story by a talented writer could actually make something both creepy and readable out of the rookie iron man in the mind controlled town but that isn't what we get here.

I did quite like Marion’s contributions, including suggesting the armor’s redesign but I’m not sure she ever appeared again.

The art is quite interesting, while nominally Kirby it is Don Heck who dominates this issue. It doesn’t quite look like his regular style, it isn’t sleek enough but aside from a few panels of Gargantus’ face which are classically Kirby it looks more like Heck over all. A strange mix.

While this issue features the suit’s first redesign, changing colours from grey to gold it is still pretty clunky. The armour would continue to evolve over until Ditko came in and redesigned it in Suspense 48.

This issue and the next few all suffer in comparison to the debut. Iron Man has a very good concept but was then handed out to be scripted by Robert Bernstein, a long time DC scripter responsible for the creation of Mon-El, Aqualad and Congorilla. Bernstein was a competent enough writer in a DC house style but he didn’t inject his early Iron Man stories with anything special although they are far better than his work on Thor. The need to reintroduce the different aspects of Stark's life at the start is partly to blame as it takes up quite a lot of a fairly short story.

Are there any goofy moments?

They try their best to make the concept work but the transistor powered roller skates that Stark fits to the Iron Man suit and sells to the US Army are pretty goofy. Especially as they are the first thing we see invented after Stark is introduced as a hot shot weapons designer. Someone clearly liked them, we see them again in issue 44 and 45.

As he still needs to wear the Iron Man chestplate to keep his heart working I can understand why Stark doesn’t want to go for a midnight swim with his latest conquest but the stories delivery of this information is incredibly melodramatic and silly. Especially funny to anyone who has ever read Bongo comics Radioactive Man who is unable to remove his hat in civilian life.

Trivia:

The aliens tried again with another robot in Captain America Sentinel of Liberty 5, one of Mark Waid’s retroactively inserted stories from the late 90s.

Is it a landmark?:

Not really, Iron Man takes a little while to get going.