12:01 PM
Brad
Cover Date: October 1963
Plot Overview: Anton Vanko has developed a suit for Communist Russia. The suit gives him control over all things electrical. He can use the suit to short circuit electrical equipment or to directly control it. He puts on an impressive display for his leader and is sent off to America to sabotage some of Tony Stark's weapons.
Stark is testing a new rocket and decides to watch the test as Iron Man. The rocket goes out of control thanks to the Dynamo and Iron Man is forced to save the day. The Dynamo continues to sabotage various Stark plants over the next few weeks and the U.S. government starts to lose faith in him. There are murmurings that Stark might be a Communist himself and they talk about pulling all his government contracts.
The Dynamo decides that he's had enough of sabotage and wants to face Iron Man head on. He shorts out the electricity at Stark's main facility and the battle is on. Iron Man immediately realizes that the Dynamo controls electricity and put up a shield to save himself. Iron Man takes to the air where the Dynamo can't hurt him and traps him with a bunch of uprooted trees.
Iron Man then picks up the Dynamo and threatens to drop him in the water which gets the Dynamo to surrender. Iron Man plays a fake conversation from Russia that convinces the Dynamo to defect to America. Stark later hires him to head up electrical research.
My Take: Fun issue this time out. The Crimson Dynamo and his electrical abilities were kind of unique as far as villains I've seen in the past. He didn't so much shoot electrical beams as he caused short circuits or took over other things. It felt like someone really thought outside of the box when they worked on him.
I really enjoyed the plot of this story. It was nice to see Iron Man squaring off with another guy in a suit for I think the first time in a series. It was also nice to get an actual fight at the end of the book. It was one sided but a lot of times in these Silver Age books you don't really get a fight. A lot of times you get a gimmicky way to defeat the villain and a really brief encounter. So I always get a kick out of an issue that gives me a fight of some kind.
The art on this issue was okay. The Iron Man suit fared a little better than usual as he wasn't contorting in weird impossible ways. The Crimson Dynamo suit was downright terrible though. I added a picture to this post so you could see how bad it was. It wasn't quite as bad as the Porcupine from the last issue of Tales to Astonish but you would have to try and look as bad as the Porcupine did. Just for the sake of comparison, I added a picture of the Porcupine as well.
I wanted to take this issue to go on a brief tangent. The last few months at Marvel has really seen the focus shift towards super villains and that makes me happy. During a lot of the early issues it was just Thor or Iron Man taking out a Communist threat or some one shot sci-fi threat. That's fine here and there but it really makes you yearn for some real baddies after awhile. In just the past couple of months we've been introduced to Jack Frost, the Super Skrull, Sandman, Doctor Octopus and the Eel. There's varying levels there but those are all super villains that had some staying power with multiple appearances over the years. It's nice to see them building a rogue's gallery for the Marvel Universe.
I give this issue *** out of *****.
Notes: This issue features the first appearance of the Crimson Dynamo. 4 or 5 guys take up the Dynamo armor over the decades at Marvel but he stays a fairly constant presence in the Iron Man titles. I would call him a strictly B list villain but I would also include him in Iron Man's rogue gallery. He definitely has a place in the lore of the Iron Man books.
There are also some other minor first appearances here. Senator Harrington Byrd makes a few more appearances in the Marvel Universe so I included him.
Next Issue: Amazing Spider-Man #5
Posted in: Crimson Dynamo,Happy Hogan,Harrington Byrd,Iron Man,Pepper Potts,Tales of Suspense
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