Showing posts with label iron man. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iron man. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Super-Vixens: Bethany Cabe
Gorgeous Bethany Cabe: a kick-ass no-nonsense chick who has no problem doing what needs to be done, even if it requires taking on the US Navy in only her bra! (as seen in Iron Man #120)!
Although the later world would always remember her as the woman who helped Tony stark kick his alcoholic habit, the issues where she really made an impact were the “Hammer” storyline issues, where she emerged as probably the strongest character in the book, even finding time to chew out Tony’s “Bodyguard” Iron Man from time to time!
And ooh, in those Monaco issues, she looks just like a dream!
Bethany Cabe
First Appearance: Iron Man #117 by David Michelinie and John Romita Jr.
PS: It may seem to some that I'm featuring an awful lot of babes from the IRON MAN strip, and i'm not even gonna bother trying to deny it...one of the GREAT perks of reading Iron Man was the abundance of gorgeous women! Tony Stark WAS supposed to be a multi-million dollar playboy, after all!
Saturday, November 17, 2007
Favorite Comics: Iron Man #149-150
Without a doubt my favorite Marvel Comics villain has to be Doctor Doom, ruler of foreign country Latveria and arch-enemy of the Fantastic Four. There just isn’t a more intriguing and complex character than Victor Von Doom, and there have been many, many incredible stories written about or involving him, in the pages of the Fantastic Four as well as almost all of the other Marvel Comics titles out there, including The Avengers, Daredevil and…Iron Man!
A friend of mine turned me on to the whole Iron Man thing right as it was in the middle of what would become the famous “Demon In A Bottle” saga, dealing with Tony Stark’s alcoholism, and in our opinion, there has never been a more stellar run on the strip.
The Iron Man creative “Dream Team” behind this run started very precisely at Iron Man issue #114. This introduced John Romita, Jr. into the fold, and together with inker Bob Layton and the awesome writing of David Michelinie, they created some of my very favorite comic stories, not just in Iron Man, but in Marvel Comics, period! Although John Romita Jr. officially left the strip after #128, he would continue to appear sporadically in Iron Man for a good many stories after that. One of the tales that he came back for was the spectacular two-parter created to celebrate Iron Man hitting the landmark #150th issue, in a story called KNIGHTMARE!
* * * * * * AS USUAL, SPOILERS ABOUND!!! * * * * * * * *
Our story begins in Iron Man Issue #149. Stark International has just filled a huge and very profitable technological order for a distant foreign country. Unfortunately for them, they find out just a little bit late that the cargo is heading for LATVERIA, and the components have been ordered by none other than DOCTOR DOOM!
Iron Man is sent to retrieve the order and recompensate Latveria, stating that they cannot sell their goods to someone who might use it for World Threatening purposes.He manages to stop the ship enroute to make its delivery.
Predictably, Doctor Doom isn't too happy about having to return the goods, and sends mechanical robots to snatch back the cargo that he feels are already his. Knowing the property is just too dangerous to leave in Doom's hands, Tony Stark reluctantly makes a trip over to Latveria, where he must confront Doom and retrieve the cargo once more.
Naturally, Doom is waiting for Iron Man, and no sooner than the two meet, then they are off and fighting!
Meanwhile, Doctor Doom’s long-suffering assistant Hauptmann lurks in the shadows, eyeing the battle. He has been formulating a plan to get revenge on Doom for killing his brother years ago, and the opportunity to execute his plan seems to be coming to light- As Doom and Iron Man grapple each other, they unwittingly find themselves atop Doom’s time machine.
Before they know it, Hauptmann has thrown the switch and sent them spiralling into the past! As soon as the deed is done, Hauptmann smashes the Time Machine to bits – knowing that without the device, Doom and Iron Man are trapped in the past –FOREVER! This was the cliffhanger that led to issue #150!
Can you imagine the month that I had to wait to get the next issue?! I was in agony!
Doctor Doom quickly deduces what has happened. His assistant has sent them into the past. It had been set to come to Camelot for Doom had planned on making the journey to consult with the great sorceress Morgana Le Fey. Thanks to the turn of events, he has arrived- only in a much more permanent state than he’d planned!
Iron Man is quick to make peace with the king and demonstrates some of his armor’s abilities. Doom is not so forthcoming, and states that in his homeland HE is a king, and won’t lower himself to perform “parlour tricks”. They are kept as permanent guests for the time being.
I love this scene- Tony’s in a melancholy mood. He’s such a product of the technology age, of circuits and machines, he couldn’t be more hopelessly out of place than here in the past.
Doom is able to wring a girl’s mind for information on Morgana Le Fey’s whereabouts. Once the knowledge is obtained, he immediately leaves the castle, locates Morgana’s Castle and offers his services to the Dark Sorceress. (And GEEZ, LOOK AT HER…DAMN, IMHO No One has EVER portrayed her so sultry and beautiful- JUST GORGEOUS!)
Doom explains to the Sorceress how he has been visiting the great magicians through time using his timecube machine with one purpose: to free his mother from the prisons of hell. Morgana Le Fey listens and strikes a bargain with Doom- she will help him if he will lead her undead soldiers in the final battle with King Arthur. Doom readily agrees.
And so the battle is begun- the good side of King Arthur led by the Golden Avenger, and Morgana Le Fey’s undead army led by the sinister Doctor Doom!
The battle is raging until Tony puts two and two together- Le Fey’s Soldiers are Undead, so the only way to truly stop them is to stop them at the source- Morgana Le Fey herself! While the battle goes on, he leaves and makes his way the the Castle, where he starts another battle- of science versus magic! In the end, Morgana is defeated, and she leaves the land, never to return.
Meanwhile, back at the battlefield, once the undead soldiers become inanimate again, he knows that Le Fey has gone, and his chance of rescuing his tormented mother has once again slipped from his grasp! In a rage, he speeds over to the castle, and smashes in on a startled Iron Man.
He threatens to kill Iron Man, then shocks the Avenger by adding…”Someday” And Why?
The battle over, even Doom must concede that there is no reason for him to exist here anymore. He decides the time is right for his return to his own time. And here’s where the story just blew me away, as Doctor Doom reveals his plan to Iron Man:
It is just possible that they CAN return to the present, but only with their COMBINED GENIUSES and CANNIBALIZING BOTH OF THEIR ARMORED SUITS and using the intricate circuitry to create a device that might warp time around them and return them to the present day! Yes, they realize the only way they will get back home is to work TOGETHER!
The two minds work together all through the night, and by dawn have come up with an elaborate construction wired into both armored suits for power. They make a truce that if the device should happen to work, they will allow each other to go their own way.
When the final connection is made, the fabric of time rips around them, and the two find themselves back in the present time, the collaborative construct reduce to molten slag around their fried mechanical parts. Doom leaves with a remark: “We WILL Meet Again”, to which a weary Iron Man simply states, ”I’ll Be Waiting.”
Then the two turn around and go their separate ways.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
At the time I read this story, I had already fallen in love with the character of Doctor Doom, having recently read the Fantastic Four story “The Coming Of Overmind”, where Doom finds himself allied with his arch enemies to overthrow an Alien Attack, and this new dimension to his persona just about sealed the deal for me. I mean, having Doom and Iron Man dismantle themselves together to build a time device was just ingenious!
The intricate artwork only made it more impressive, and a special point MUST be made here, about the incredible inking talent of Bob Layton. In my opinion, there is NO ONE out there who does “metal” like him. Everything he embellishes REALLY looks hard as steel, I remember him illustrating a cover of Captain America, and even then, Cap’s Sheild looked so tough!
After this there was only more to come, tales such WHAT IF DOCTOR DOOM WAS A HERO? and an excellent Red Skull battle in SUPER-VILLAIN TEAM UP, not to mention the incredible John Byrne Fantastic Four issues that were still to come!
Friday, October 5, 2007
Super-Vixens: Madame Masque
They say clothes make the person, and if it truly does, that would go a long way in explaining why I thought one-time Tony Stark fiance Whitney Frost was so darn sexy! I mean, as Madame Masque, she kept her identity under a golden mask (to cover up a scarred face) all the time, so you would think there wasn’t much to go on, attractive-wise, but as for the rest of her body, man, could that woman accessorize! Whitney always wore the sexiest and most fashionable outfits, which always made her look cute and fun despite her metallic features, and there was even this memorable scene (for me) where they showed her getting up in the middle of the night wearing a sexy negligee! That golden mask never looked better!
Unfortunately for Tony and Whitney, it all came to a head in the awesome IRON MAN issues #115-116 where Whitney betrays Tony to save her dying father, the villainous Count Nefaria. It really bummed me out to see her leave the strip, because I think that John Romita Jr.’s pencils in these two issues have her looking the best she’s ever looked in any of her appearances!
I was so intrigued by the mystery of Whitney’s hidden face that for years I tried in vain to dig up her “origin”, but back in the days before the internet, it really was hard to find information about comics, and the more obscure they were, the more impossible! Your only real chance to find backgrounds on older strips were the Marvel Origin Books like "Origins", "Son Of Origins" "The Super Hero Women" and "Bring On The Bad Guys" But these series were pretty selective and only covered (more or less) the basics. So if you didn’t know someone who already knew her origin or had the key issues, you were outta luck. And back then, there wasn’t a whole lotta people interested in Madame Masque.
Turns out there’s kind of this long and convoluted history to Madame Masque. Although her “first appearance” was in Iron Man #17 as an associate of Midas, she first FIRST appeared (in the “flesh”, i.e.: no golden mask) as Whitney Frost in Tales of Suspense, then was revealed as the Big M, the daughter of Avengers and X-Men baddie Count Nefaria. Then she finally appeared in the Midas back story as Madame Masque before turning up (in disguise) as secretary Krissy Longfellow, and FINALLY revealing herself as the Madame Masque we know and love...
This was all overwhelming to me, as the first time I laid eyes on her, all she was to me was a gun-totin’ hottie with a killer bod who just happened to have a golden mask for a face. And since those issues had both Tony Stark AND Jasper Sitwell fighting over her, it seemed a lot of people agreed! This, in my opinion, is THE definitive version of Whitney, from her first reappearance in Iron Man #103 to her tearful departure in at the end of Iron Man #116.
When she eventually returned in IRON MAN #139, I have to admit I was pretty disappointed with her depiction; she’d clearly been delegated to a second story villainess, and emotionally she’d gone to that crazy place all Tony’s ex-fiances tend to go (see: Marianne Rodgers), and all her subsequent stories just haven’t “done it” for me, either. Sigh.
Oh, and I grew up pronouncing Whitney's name as Madame mas- KAYE (you know, like risque...)
Took me a while before I realized it was more or less just a variation of the word "Mask"... D'oh!
Madame Masque
First Appearance : Iron Man #17
by Archie Goodwin and George Tuska
Favorite Artists:
George Tuska
John Romita Jr.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Super-Vixens: Marianne Rodgers
I once read this joke book full of rude but hilarious sayings, and one line that I distinctly remember said, “Cute, but psycho…things balance out!” And if there was any Marvel character that deserved this title, it’s the scrumptious but flaky Marianne Rodgers, fledging precognitive and one time fiance to Tony Stark.
Marianne was introduced in Iron Man #40, a gorgeous looking girl who harbored a secret power- the ability to see into the future! This was all good and Marianne & Tony found themselves about to tie the knot… until Marianne saw a premonition that she’d be responsible for Tony Stark’s death. She absolutely has her panties in a bunch worrying about this, and proceeds to become an emotional wreck because of it.
Enter The Super-Adaptoid. Iron Man has a fierce battle with the old Avengers foe, battling him to the extent of his energies. Tony does manage to defeat the Super-Adaptoid, but barely has enough reserve energy to crawl home. It is a life-or-death situation, because if he doesn’t recharge his suit, in time, his heart will fail as well.
Suddenly Marianne shows up, and he asks her to help him recharge his armor… She doesn’t want to be responsible for his death, so she does what comes naturally, mainly getting her ass out of there as fast as she can, leaving Tony dying on the ground.
I’m sure every reader was like me, going “WTF?!”, but Tony was able to recharge himself in time, and rewarded the readers by dumping Marianne’s butt out the door.
In later issues, poor Marianne’s situation only got worse, and she was sadly later committed! Too bad, she sure was a purty little filly!
Marianne Rodgers
First Appearance: Iron Man #40 by George Tuska
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