We all know Iron Man is the wealthy industrialist Tony Stark. He’s faced a few foes so far. But Kala. Queen of the Netherworld is a new deadly villain who comes from below the surface of Earth.

The issue opens up with a preview panel where Kala tells Iron Man he’s made the mistake of his life by entering her Netherworld. And she has a disintegrator cannon that will vaporize him into nothingness. But Iron Man has other plans.

Strange Tales continues to be an anthology book at this point, but the only 616 cannon story here is Iron Man. He’s becoming the star attraction in the comic and while the other stories can be interesting, the ones in this issue are ho-hum at best. In fact, even the Iron Man story is not all that enticing but there’s a bit of fun action involved.

To start the story in full, we see two scientists in the wind tunnel of Anthony Stark’s private lab. The problem? The wind velocity control exploded. The force of the wind is blowing the poor scientists all over the place. A guard comes in to check what’s going on and gets sucked into the wind. The scientist delivers a great order to him… if the guard wasn’t also being blown around everywhere.

As if the wind wasn’t enough of a problem, it tears the missile these scientists are testing off the mountings. I’m no scientist, but that sounds dangerous to me. The guards do frantically signal Mr. Stark but even they think there’s nothing he can do. But thankfully, Tony tells his crew not to worry, because someone is visiting Stark. Who could it be? That’s right, Iron Man is there. And the guards say over the phone, “Iron Man?! Gosh, what a break for us!” Totally coincidental and extremely lucky.

Tony puts on his Iron Man costume which is somehow made of armor that is also, collapsible. He muses to himself that no one dreams Iron Man is really Anthony Stark. If no one is figuring this out, I think Stark is overpaying his guards to be honest.

Iron Man has no trouble walking down the wind tunnel but how in the world can he stop the wind? If you answered, Iron Man will spin at super high speeds to become a human fan, you are spot on!

Doing this stops the wind. But it also destroys the blowers in the wind tunnel. Iron Man tells the workers there not to worry about it because Stark can afford to build new ones.

You’ll notice during the emergency at Stark’s lab, Anthony Stark never showed up. But he’s an intelligent scientist so he has a plan. He goes back to his office, changes out of his Iron Man armor, leaves it behind and goes to see the men working at the wind tunnel.

Anthony reasoned with a crisis happening so recently, there is no way a new one pops up. For a smart guy, Stark sure misses the mark here. Out of nowhere, a guard disintegrates. This man vanishes before everyone’s eyes, leaving only his gun behind. Next, a scientist named Evans vanishes. This is getting to be a real problem.

Just as the guards are wondering if they are having a mass hallucination, Anthony Stark is enclosed by some invisible force. And it’s sucking him underground somehow. Stark tries to break out but it’s no good. One of the scientists tries to smash it but that doesn’t work. And a guard shoots it. Luckily for Stark that does not work either.

This glass elevator Tony is in drops him into a strange underground world. When the elevator stops, a woman orders Stark released. And, I have to say, she is wearing some A+ headgear. Stark, for his part, is not intimidated whatsoever.

To Stark’s surprise his employees are also in this underground city. And although they have only been there for mere moments they already know, “We’re at the mercy of a brilliant, ruthless race!” Kala basically takes this as a compliment and brags the Netherworld has scientific secrets the surface world does not.

As advanced as these people may be, they are not perfect. The reason they have two of Stark’s employees is they were aiming for Stark but missed. Tony knows these people want something from him. Kala explains first who they are. The Netherworlders are descendants of the people of Atlantis. I don’t know if they have any relation to Namor or if we will find that out in time but it would make sense. These people survived an enormous tidal wave by hiding under a huge, unbreakable glass dome. But it ended up at the bottom of the sea. Eventually, that dome sank to the center of the Earth where they now call it Netherworld.

Now, Kala wants to invade the surface world. But before she does that, she shows the United States most prominent weapons manufacturer her cache of military weapons. I’m not sure how bright of an idea that is for her. Regardless, what she wants is for Stark to invent “…transistor powered machines such as you alone can create!” These machines will be used to power the deadly weapons to the surface.

Despite the fact Kala says they have been monitoring all countries of the surface world for some time, she doesn’t seem to know what happened the last time Anthony Stark was forced to design a technology against his will. In case you don’t remember, that’s how he got his Iron Man suit to begin with.

Kala is smart enough to know Stark won’t just do this so she threatens the lives of Stark’s employees. Thinking fast, Stark tells Kala there is someone on the surface who could defeat all of her forces. Who? Iron Man, of course. He doesn’t mention there is a literal god of thunder who could do that also. And there’s an angry green guy who’d have a shot too. But I digress.

Stark goes on to describe some of the amazing feats Iron Man can do. Kala’s general, a man named Baxu, thinks the Netherworld should hold off since Iron Man is rather invincible. But Kala says he has a machine that can literally reverse the Earth’s axis. This would be a huge problem for surface dwellers but not for the Netherworlders since it’s at the center.

Stark’s employee’s beg him not to cooperate with Kala, figuring their lives aren’t worth the rest of the world. But Stark agrees. You can probably guess how this goes. Stark agrees but we know he’s not really going to doom the world.

But first, Baxu complains to Stark that he hates taking orders. “…from a woman!” And also says he is in love with Kala.

Inevitably, Stark recreates his Iron Man armor. And to smoothly cover his tracks, Iron Man says to Baxu, “Stark tricked Kala! He spent the night making his escape to the surface, and then sent me down here to foil your invasion plot!”

A tip to villains in the Marvel 616 universe, when you throw Tony Stark in a lab, put some cameras on the guy so you can see what he’s doing. Somehow, I don’t think this advice will be heeded in future issues.

Iron Man makes short work of Baxu and his sexist ways, tossing him to the ground. Baxu is sure Iron Man will kill him but he lets Baxu live. And he says Baxu should be the one in charge, “…instead of that beautiful but vain creature… Kala!” Yeah, Stark holds some rather sexist beliefs himself. But then again, Kala did threaten to kill a whole bunch of people so, maybe Baxu is a better leader here.

Baxu warns Iron Man Kala’s weapons might still destroy him. But Iron Man shows what he can do with electronic powers. Kala tries to kill Iron Man with her disintegrator cannon. Iron Man aims an electronic reverse energy beam at the bolt coming at him. Yeah, I have no idea what that is either but seems like it works. The beams collide and explode and the deadly weapon is no more.

Kala is not out of tricks. She has a, “super-sonic flame-thrower” she fires. Iron Man tosses “concentrated chemical crystals” at the flames and they turn into a block of ice. I have no idea what kind of chemical crystals could do that. Yet, Kala is still not done. She has a “magnetically-directed-machine-gun which fires atomic bullets!” Sounds serious. But Kala didn’t know about Iron Man’s “tiny transistor-powered magnets.” Those redirect the bullets upward, rendering them useless.

Iron Man has, up to this point, been defending, not attacking and he reminds Kala of that. Next he asks her to imagine if he protected all “earthmen” by multiplying them electronically with countless images. He creates mirror images of himself. This is enough to confuse and distract Kala. Iron Man grabs her and flies up, breaking the supposedly unbreakable glass dome and through the ground up to the surface using, and I am not kidding here, “nuclear powered clippers.” Aren’t gadgets fun?

After arriving on the surface, Iron Man reveals to Kala that the surface atmosphere is much different than the one down below. This ages her tremendously. She begs to go back so she can be young and beautiful once more. Down below, Iron Man all but commands Kala to marry Baxu and never return to threaten the surface world again. Baxu, for his part, says Iron Man is welcome back any time.

And we end on an awkward panel meant to show off the playboy status of Anthony Stark. A man looking at Stark says, “…at least his adventure under the earth kept him away from the girls for a while.” To which Stark thinks to himself, “That’s what you think, Bub!” Bub. That’s a good nickname, maybe a Marvel character should use that more often sometime in the future.

Thus ends another epic journey of Iron Man’s. I’ll admit there is a lot left to be desired in this story. It’s pretty silly, the technology mentioned here is borderline magic at best, the misogyny comes through in heavy doses from two of the main characters in the story. We can say, this was closer to what the attitude of the time was but that doesn’t excuse it.

As far as a science fiction story goes, it’s got its fun moments and there are much worse stories (I’ll be reviewing them eventually). The art is great but this one feels more like it was thrown together just to get something out there. Totally understandable if that was the case because Marvel was putting out an incredible volume for the time.

The story does cement Iron Man more as a powerful figure, as someone who has a secret identity to protect, and shows Anthony Stark as a wealthy, brilliant, playboy who will ultimately make the right choice when the time comes. Other than that, this doesn’t do a whole lot to progress the overall story of Marvel 616 but each small piece adds up to a larger whole.

Next up on the reading list, we’re checking back in with America’s space faring family in The Fantastic Four #15!

In the Marvel Cinematic Universe there was a time when Iron Man was without question the most popular character Marvel had ever put on screen. This is largely due to the excellent portrayal of the character by Robert Downey Jr. and the deft handling of the adaptation by Jon Favreau. But none of that would have happened without Issue 39 of Tales of Suspense where the character was first introduced.

Tales of Suspense is yet another anthology comic book put out by Marvel comics. This seems to be one of the best methods the creators had to experiment and introduce new characters. It was easy to know what heroes were popular by the fan reaction. If there was not much reaction, they could just stop making stories with that character.

Oddly enough, this issue has two stories which are cannon to the Marvel 616 universe but of course Iron Man is Born! is the one most remembered. I’ll talk about both stories in this post but I’ll be digging much deeper into Iron Man than in the other story.

The story in Iron Man is Born! is written by Stan Lee but this time the art duties fall to Don Heck. While he might not be quite as dynamic as Jack Kirby was in his art style, Heck is a fine artist and helped bring several characters to life including the Wasp, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and Wonder Man. In other words, he has an impressive portfolio and handles the introduction of this new character deftly for the most part.

The story begins at the laboratory of Anthony Stark where soldiers are on guard 24 hours a day to keep an eye out because, “the commies would give their eyeteeth to know what he’s working on now!”

For those who are keeping track, Reed Richards, Henry Pym, Bruce Banner, and even Don Blake have all had run ins with communists and the government has had to protect them in one way or another. I think we can presume from the very first panel in this story it’s likely these scientists know of each other and quite possibly have met one another. This will become important later when teams like The Avengers become established. We’ve still got a while until that happens but the introduction of Stark gets us a huge step closer.

Inside the lab, Stark is demonstrating small but powerful transistors that can intensify magnets he has developed, strong enough to open locked vaults from a far distance. In the modern era of the movies the power source of Iron Man’s suit is his arc reactor but in these early comics it’s a series of transistors, magnets and other small but clever devices.

Stark tells a general at the demonstration his transistors are capable of solving his, “problem in Vietnam.” It’s worth noting, this is the first mention of the real world conflict of Vietnam in Marvel 616. This grounds the story more in reality than some other comics might and it’s an interesting choice. While Vietnam at the time was seen as a proxy war between democracy and communism, all of the issues before have just mentioned, reds, commies, or some similar name to refer to communist enemies. It seems Marvel could no longer ignore real world events in their pages.

Reading the start of the story is interesting because in so many ways it does mirror the opening of the movie. We’re given a bit of background about Stark and find out he is handsome, glamorous, constantly in the company of beautiful women, a sophisticate, and a scientist, and a millionaire bachelor as much at home in a laboratory as in high society. Change the word millionaire to billionaire and this could be the Netflix description of the first movie.

But the narrator tells us he is soon destined to become the most tragic figure on Earth! I assume they forgot about Bruce Banner when they wrote that but this is Stark’s story so we’ll let it go.

Now, I would be remiss if I did not talk about the negative aspects of this first Iron Man story. We get some absolutely awful stereotyping against Asian people, and Vietnamese people specifically to set up the story. We read about a cruel military leader named Wong-Chu, the Red Guerilla Tyrant who is going village to village in South Vietnam to take over. The artwork here is as offensive as you might imagine and the story is fairly insulting at this part but we have to get through it to get Iron Man. Wong-Chu challenges anyone in a village he is about to take over to a wrestling match. If the challenger can beat Wong-Chu he promises to let the village go free. Wong-Chu defeats all challengers and talks in broken English, again in some of the worst of stereotypical ways. Anyway, we have our villain set up now.

We flash over to Iron Man who has landed in South Vietnam with some American soldiers. They tell him they could beat the Red Guerilla’s army but they can’t get their tanks through the dense jungle. In a typically arrogant and uniquely American way, Stark has miniaturized mortars so the army can bomb the hell out of a bunch of people. The weapons are, of course, effective.

Unfortunately for Stark, he stumbles over a tripwire and is injured in a blast as a result. In the movie, you’ll remember this as the armored vehicle scene where Stark is captured. This is definitely something the movie does better as the comic makes it seem as if Stark is just kinda clumsy.

Stark is captured and we find out he has shrapnel near his heart. This shrapnel can’t be operated on and he’s only got a week to live. Wong-Chu decides to try to trick Stark into working for him. Stark sees right through the ruse but agrees to do the work. Wong-Chu just seems to think Stark is being self serving, and considering what we know about him so far, it wouldn’t be that hard to believe.

Just as he does in the movie, Stark gets to work designing, and building a weapon. As he is doing this, another prisoner, Professor Yinsen, is thrown in the cell with Stark. Lucky for Stark, Yinsen is a physicist and Stark has read his books. The world thought Yinsen had died but instead he was forced into slave labor. It’s Yinsen who names the weapon Stark is building calling it, “An Iron Man!”

It’s a suit of armor which not only is capable of extending Stark’s life but also has a ton of firepower to it. Stark is pretty much knocking on death’s door when he puts on the suit for the first time. But as the suit is powering up, Wong-Chu arrives and Professor Yinsen has to buy Stark time. This proves fatal to Yinsen and Stark swears Yinsen’s death will not be in vain.

It takes Stark a few minutes to get used to moving and walking around in the suit but once he does, he’s got a bunch of tricks up his sleeves. He has suction cups which allow him to stick to the ceiling where he hides from his attackers. After they leave, Stark finds Wong-Chu and… challenges him to a wrestling match? Checks notes. Yep. He challenges his captor to a wrestling match. The newly made Iron Man has no trouble dispatching his enemy.

The army attacks Iron Man but small arms fire just seem to bounce right off of him. Stark uses his transistors to repel a bunch of the army and they flee from him. The next bit is a little chase and some more neat tricks Stark has built into his suit, including a buzz saw inside his finger container and transistors which increase his strength. All the use of the suit does drain it, however. A quick thinking Iron Man shoots out a stream of oil right near an ammo dump and lights the whole thing on fire, causing a major explosion.

Stark wins, even if he has doomed himself to a life living inside an iron suit. He goes to where Yinsen was slain and tells him, “Now, Professor Yinsen, rest easy! You, who sacrificed your life to save mine, have been avenged!”

Avenged, huh? Might make a good name for a superhero team somewhere down the line. I hope, Stan Lee remembers that one. Stark kind of walks off wondering what’s in store for him in the future. The reader knows more is to come because we’re told not to miss more of Iron Man in the next great issue of… Tales of Suspense!

While it is great we are getting closer to a full roster of Avengers, the terrible stereotyping in this issue makes it tough to read. I can’t emphasize how bad it is. Not only is the dialogue in broken English, every Asian character here is drawn not in a realistic flesh tone but in a sickly yellow color and with the most stereotypical features you can imagine. There will be great stories with Anthony Stark in them to come, but this one is only significant in that it establishes him as a character and a hero.

There will be more stories to come where the stereotyping is a major problem. And while we might say times were different back then and writers and artists weren’t as concerned with staying away from stereotypes as they are now, that still doesn’t excuse it.

The story does set up major elements which will be prevalent in almost all Iron Man stories to come. Stark needs the suit to live because without it he’ll essentially die of a cardiac condition. Stark is a brilliant, wealthy scientist, and a womanizing playboy. Also, the government wants and needs this man to be protected at nearly any cost. We’ll have lots of great stories with Iron Man soon enough but for now, he’s sort of waiting in the wings to really come into his own as a hero.

As I mentioned above, there is a second story in this issue which is Marvel 616 cannon. This one is the D story, titled Gundar! This is written by Stan Lee and drawn by Steve Ditko who first drew Spider-Man.

The story centers around a shipwreck survivor out on the ocean in a lonely lifeboat. He comes upon an island and thinks he is saved. It should be noted this is clearly a modern (for 1962) lifeboat with a modern sailor. He’s immediately found by a clan of Vikings. The man is understandably confused, thinking maybe he’s on a movie set. But the Vikings tell him they await the coming of Gundar.

It seems these Vikings sailed on a ship under a cruel master known as Gundar. This Gundar goes a little mad and attacks his own crew. They are able to subdue him eventually but not before he puts a curse upon them all. He condemns them to be cast away on an unknown isle, to spend eternity alone. He also says only he can lift the curse.

As we see a panel of the ship struggling through a storm, we see Odin in the background hurling lightning at the sea. This is the reason, and the only reason, this story is Marvel 616 cannon. After all, Odin is Thor’s father so his appearance counts.

The twist of the story at the end is that the shipwrecked man is a descendent of Gundar and the Vikings all disappear and go back into the past. That’s the whole story. Not an incredibly memorable one but it was fine for a short story in an anthology comic.

Next up we’ll be checking in on a pint-sized hero with Ant-Man in the pages of Tales to Astonish #41!