Tales of Suspense Issue 39- "Iron Man Is Born"

Plot: Stan Lee
Script: Larry Lieber
Art: Don Heck
Lettering: Artie Simek

Grade: B-

Synopsis:
Millionaire inventor, weapons designer and playboy Anthony Stark travels to Vietnam to help the American government design weapons to combat the Vietcong rebels. Stark has developed tiny transistors which can be used to miniaturise heavy artillery to allow American troops to transport their most powerful weaponry through the Vietnamese jungle. Sadly, when travelling with a group of American soldiers into the jungle, a booby trap is activated. This kills the soldiers and a piece of shrapnel is lodged close to Stark's heart as he is captured by the local warlord Wong-Chu.

Stark is then tasked with designing weapons for Wong-Chu. If Stark succeeds, Wong-Chu will allow a surgeon to remove the shrapnel from his heart and save his life. Stark is assigned Professor Yinsen, a famous physicist, as his assistant. The two agree to create an "Iron Man" suit to protect Stark's heart and to serve as a weapon to allow them both to escape from Wong-Chu's captivity.

As the Iron Man suit is charging after being completed, an alarm flashes informing Yinsen that Wong-Chu is approaching. Yinsen creates a diversion which sadly leads to his demise. The distraction succeeds and the Iron Man suit successfully activates. Using the suit, Stark escapes from Wong-Chu's camp after defeating him in a wrestling contest and blowing up a depot of ammunition in the process.

Analysis:
Tony Stark, as a character, was modelled after Howard Hughes. When creating the character, Stan Lee sought to create a hero who readers could relate to even though his profession and personality would lead a reader to automatically assume that Tony Stark was not a hero. This issue does a reasonable job at setting the groundwork of Stark's character. It successfully highlights that Tony Stark is a playboy. It emphasises the surface glamour of Tony Stark's wealth and position. It highlights that Stark is highly intelligent, a brilliant inventor and an extraordinarily creative thinker. When Tony Stark is creating the Iron Man suit it shows that Stark is a highly driven and capable person. He is able to create the Iron Man suit under a huge amount of pressure in a short period of time.

This is the issue's greatest strength. It manages to create the basic template of Tony Stark's character efficiently and effectively. This is the main function of an origin story and the storyline's success in achieving this is the story's main strength. After reading the issue, you get a good idea of who Tony Stark is, at least on a surface level. Personally, despite its flaws, I also enjoyed reading the issue. It's an enjoyable Silver Age story that isn't too ludicrous. This combination allows me to give it a B in terms of quality, even though the flaws in the story cause me to add a "minus" to that.

One of the major flaws in the story is a huge recurring issue within Stan Lee's run writing Iron Man. The purpose of the character is to be a character who is deeply flawed and often hard to like but who is a hero and a noble character who the reader cannot help but root for. When he is written well, Tony Stark often fulfils that role and can be a major protagonist in some excellent storylines.

However, this does not fit into the conventions created by Stan Lee in the Silver Age. The planned depiction of Tony Stark as a hero who is easy to dislike is softened by the cartoonish depiction of Wong-Chu as a Silver Age villain.

Tony Stark is a weapons designer who often works for the US government. This should be fertile ground for some highly effective storytelling. The first Iron Man film shows how this issue should be dealt with to create a version of Tony Stark who is both flawed and heroic. Stan Lee fails to do this. If the enemies of the US, in this case represented by Wong-Chu, are cartoonishly evil then the issues with Stark's profession are significantly mitigated to the point where its effectiveness as a storytelling device is practically eliminated. It isn't a bad thing to create weapons to fight and successfully overthrow a cartoonishly evil villain. Stan Lee is unwilling to really explore the implications of Tony Stark as a character in the context of the Cold War. The communists in his storylines are always villainous personalities with very little complexity to their personality. This means that Lee is unable to fully explore the implications of Stark's role as a weapons designer.

This largely appears to have been a conscious decision from Stan Lee. He didn't want to criticise the US' role in the Cold War but he often didn't want to praise it either. As this was a highly controversial issue, it makes sense from a commercial perspective that Lee would not want to alienate his potential readers by taking a firm stance on the issue. Sadly this stance stopped Lee from really exploring the dynamic which could have been exploited at the time to create a truly interesting and three-dimensional character. Storylines that emerged after the Iraq war, such as Extremis and the original Iron Man movie, did a far better job at exploring these issues in an interesting way. Given the context of the Vietnam war and the Cold War, this could have been an exceptional run for Iron Man as a character. Sadly the tropes of Silver Age storytelling were often too simplistic to allow for the type of storytelling which could have allowed Stark to really flourish as a character at the time. Instead Stark often simply comes across as a generic hero and the issues caused by his role as a munitions designer are ignored in favour of more typical Silver Age storylines.

On a more positive note, the storyline does a decent job at laying the groundwork of one of Iron Man's more distinctive character traits. Often Iron Man is compared to Batman as a character. On the surface there are similarities. They are both highly wealthy. They are both playboys. They both have an alter ego who fights crime. But there's a panel on page 9 of the story where Iron Man laments that he will have to spend the rest of his life wearing the metal chestplate. Often Bruce Wayne's role as Batman takes priority over his Bruce Wayne persona. Batman does not enjoy being Bruce Wayne a lot of the time. This is different to Iron Man who enjoys being a playboy millionaire industrialist and is frustrated when he cannot do so. Nobody reads a Batman comic because of Bruce Wayne. I often find, when reading an Iron Man story, that Tony Stark's role is more interesting than the antics of Iron Man. The events of this story significantly curtail Tony Stark's ability to be Tony Stark. Sadly, this storyline is abused in the Silver Age to the point where it ceases to become interesting. It would have been interesting to create an arc exploring this aspect of Stark's character. The fact that this becomes the melodrama for Iron Man throughout the Silver Age starts to wear thin fairly quickly. But, this storyline does a good job at establishing that aspect of the character and I cannot blame this story for the failures of its successors. I'll rant more about this and the overuse of Stark's heart problems in his early storylines in later reviews.

Overall, this is a good opening story for Iron Man. It is not the best Silver Age origin story. It's not as good as, for example, the origin of Spider-Man. But it does a competent job establishing Iron Man's character and showing his transition into Iron Man and lays the basis of an interesting character. Sadly it is let down by an unwillingness to fully explore the most interesting aspect of Stark's character, namely that he is a deeply flawed hero. When reviewing this story I cannot help to compare it to the first Iron Man film and this is a case where I think that the film deals with the origin story more effectively than the source material does. The film focuses more on the implications of Stark as an expert in munitions and how his role as Iron Man changes him and his view on life. As Stan Lee is unwilling or unable to fully explore the political implications of Stark's role as a weapons designer in the Vietnam War he is unable to explore this aspect of the character. Instead the focus shifts to Stark's heart condition and the limitations on his role as a playboy. This could have been an interesting storyline, and this story does a good job of laying the groundwork for a potentially interesting story and character arc over a short period of time. But this aspect of Stark's character becomes far too melodramatic in future storylines and these issues drive his character arc for far too long. Stark's heart problems become old very quickly. However, I cannot hold the flaws of future storylines against this story so it gets a B- as it's an enjoyable read with competent, if basic, characterization.

Any feedback or comments are welcome!

Welcome to the forum and good luck with the thread. Iron Man is a favorite of mine and he has been blessed with many great artists through the years. I also enjoyed the Michelinie/ Romita Jr/ Layton run. I also loved the alcohol addiction run with O’Neil and McDonald.

I'll see what I can do on that front. Still trying to figure out how to format these reviews in a way which will make them enjoyable to read. 

Wow! That first review was detailed. I am jealous. I usually struggle writing reviews and therefore mine are so brief.

I also think adding some pictures would be great. And I am also one of those fans that didn't get into Iron Man until the 70's. I agree with your assessment of Stan writing Iron Man as well as codystarbuck's analysis.

You are off to a great start and I look forward to this thread since the Tales of Suspense Iron Man stories are something I have not read much of.

I completely agree with this. The issue with these early Iron Man stories isn't the concept but it's the execution. A Howard Hughes figure who is turned into a superhero by a transformative experience? This happening in the context of a weapons designer during the Cold War? That's... really fertile ground for complex and compelling storytelling. The core premise is very strong. But Stan Lee just isn't the right writer for that type of story. It requires a more subtle writer who is more willing to ask difficult questions and explore complex themes and characterisation. The comics industry just wasn't ready for that character in 1963. It was Stan Lee's era after all. So instead we got a 1950s hero in a completely different context which becomes problematic pretty quickly. 


I'll admit that I'm more willing to forgive this type of thing. I accept that comic book science is always going to be a little bit wonky. I'm more interested in characterisation, interesting themes and an entertaining story. If those fundamentals are in place I'm willing to forgive a lot of wonky science. But in a context where those basic fundamentals are a little bit lacking the issues with little things like inaccurate science start to become more of an issue for me. Kind of in the sense that it's another black mark against the story in question. Still, interesting stuff for anyone who's more interested in the scientific aspect of these stories.