Tales of Suspense 49- The New Iron Man Meets The Angel
Written By: Stan Lee
Illustrated By: Steve Ditko
Inked By: Paul Reinman
Lettered By: Sam Rosen
Grade:
DCover:
Synopsis:
The issue starts with Angel flying over Stark Industries to get to Westchester more quickly. Sadly, Tony is conducting some nuclear tests on the site just as Angel is flying over. Despite Iron Man's warnings and attempts to rescue the Angel, he ends up being caught in an explosion. Iron Man is protected by his armour while Angel is transformed by the radioactive rays into an Evil Angel (*gasp!*).
Iron Man then continues to chase after Angel until he reaches a high enough altitude that his boot jets stop working and he plummets towards the ground. He uses his magnetic repellers to slow his descent and the fall does not kill him, instead causing minor damage to his chest plate. Tony heads to his lab to fix his armour.
Meanwhile, Angel returns to the X-Men to quit. The X-Men try to stop him but he defeats them before fleeing to New York to make contact with the Evil Mutants. His method of contacting them involves stealing some TNT and setting off a few harmless explosions to attract their attention. The Evil Mutants see Angel's attempts to contact them but, assuming it's a trap, decline the offer.
The X-Men contact the Avengers but only Iron Man picks up and he flies to New York to deal with Angel. The police are threatening to shoot down Angel but Iron Man intervenes to attempt to find another way to deal with the situation. This involves him attempting to engage Angel in aerial combat and Angel flies rings round him until Iron Man's boots give out and he falls to the ground. Angel then realises that he is not evil and flies down to catch him, successfully saving him. Everyone is now friends again:
Analysis:
This is an interesting issue of Iron Man. I'm going to start with the positives here. There are some action scenes in the air involving Iron Man and Angel that are pretty nice and are good fun to look at. Moreover, the story is fairly charming and it's interesting to see a Crossover from such an early stage of Marvel's history.
Sadly, I feel like this story would have worked better if it had been a more straightforward team-up issue rather than an Iron Man vs Angel issue. My biggest issue with this story is the use of the dreaded reset button at the end so that everything ends up ok again. The dreaded reset button is difficult to use right. The classic Simpsons episodes are a good example of how to use it well. Here though... it just doesn't work. Everyone knows that Angel is going to magically become not evil by the end of the story and it kind of sucks a lot of the suspense (pun intended) out of things here. If this had been a team-up issue it might have been interesting to see how Iron Man and Angel actually get on as characters given that they have fairly similar personalities. Would they be rival playboys or would they strike up a good friendship? I kind of feel like turning it into Iron Man vs Angel kind of sucks a lot of the potential from the story.
I've also got to admit that trying to make Angel into such a big threat also didn't land. Angel is the weakest of the original X-Men. Flying really isn't a particularly powerful or useful superpower. Plus Angel often comes across as a bit of an idiot which doesn't really help his case. I mean, the fact that Angel is causing a few harmless explosions and a large police squad converge to deal with him seems like a slightly disproportionate response. And, frankly, I struggle to suspend my disbelief enough to figure out how Angel defeats the rest of the X-Men on his own.
It does make some sense that the Angel has the upper hand in his aerial battles with Iron Man. Iron Man doesn't have his repulsors yet and the Angel has to be good at something. Although Iron Man is meant to be a pretty strong tactician so I question why he engages Angel in aerial combat. Seems like a poor strategy to me.
There's also an idea here where Professor X considers disbanding the X-Men and then changes his mind. I'm not entirely sure what to make of that. I'm also not entirely sure what to make of Professor X yelling during the entire story. Seriously, does he have a sentence without an exclamation mark at any point?
There is also more Happy and Pepper bickering and Happy being insecure about whether Tony actually intends to use him as a chauffeur or a bodyguard at any point. Although, Iron Man's growing affection for Happy and Pepper is shown pretty well throughout the issue.