Iron Man Run Part 11

Picking up with IM #7, we discover that the Maggia is almost ready to attack Stark's plant, but they've got to figure out a way of dealing with Iron Man. The Gladiator (longtime Daredevil villain) volunteers to handle Shellhead.

Jasper Sitwell is still angry over Iron Man kayoing him in the previous issue (to prevent him from getting killed by the Crusher), so mad that he forgets about security:

Meanwhile, Janice Cord and her lawyer approach Tony Stark about selling off her father's factories. Janice finds Tony charming at first:

Later, as they are touring the Cord facilities, the Gladiator and Big M kidnap Stark, Janice and her lawyer, as a ruse to get Iron Man to come save them, not knowing that with Tony a captive he can't change into his metal suit. This forces Tony to escape even though he's been warned that this will result in the death of Janice and the lawyer:

But Iron Man appears before the Gladiator can kill the pair and they have a good fight. Meanwhile, Big M and the rest of the Maggia attack Stark's plant through the southern wall. But Big M is conflicted by her romance with Jasper Sitwell, and in a flashback we learn how she became the head of the Maggia.

She had been the daughter of a very wealthy financier and lived the jet-set lifestyle among the beautiful people. She had a successful and politically ambitious boyfriend, and the sky seemed to be the limit. But when her supposed father passed away, she learned the truth; that he had been laundering money for the Maggia and, more shockingly, that her real father was Count Nefaria, the head of the mob. She initially refused to become a criminal, but when her boyfriend found out and dumped her as a political liability, she turned to her real father for training, and eventually succeeded him as Big M.

As the battle between Iron Man and the Gladiator has turned into a stalemate, the latter abandons the fight and heads for Stark's plant. Meanwhile, it turns out that Sitwell has been suspicious of Whitney Frost all along, and has prepared a trap for the Maggia. In the end, Iron Man and Sitwell defeat the Gladiator and the Maggia, but Whitney gets away:

In the following issue, a mysterious villain from China has somehow gained control of the Incredible Hulk, and sends him off to kidnap Janice Cord. We also learn that Cord's lawyer, Sandhurst, has reasons of his own for trying to convince Janice to sell her father's plants. This time Tony acts fairly bravely as she's grabbed by ol' Greenskin:

But the Hulk gets away with the girl, with Iron Man in hot pursuit. During the battle which ensues, the Hulk seems quite a bit smarter than he has in the past, using terms like "repulsor ray". In the end we learn why:

Who indeed is behind this? It turns out that the mysterious villain from China is the Mandarin. He has deduced from the fact that Tony Stark vanishes whenever there is danger just before Iron Man appears that the two are one and the same person.
As IM #10 begins, the Mandarin has prepared some phony photos, purporting to show Tony palling around with some communists. As Janice Cord and Tony are out at a nightclub a bunch of reporters and photographers burst in demanding a statement:

Tony quickly discovers that the photos of him with the communist agents were taken at times when he was on missions as Iron Man, and thus he has no alibi that he can present. He's contacted by a Chinese gal named Mei Lin, who advises him to come to her antique shop if he wants to find out why he's being persecuted. When he does so, he discovers the truth:

The Mandarin freezes him with a ray that stalls his circuits. But when he goes to unmask Iron Man, he gets a surprise:

And at the same time, Tony Stark appears on the television at an upstate hunting lodge giving a press conference. The Mandarin stalks off, needing to revise his plans for this new development, leaving Iron Man paralyzed by the rays with Mei Lin.

IM goads Mei Lin into anger by telling her that the Mandarin doesn't really love her. She leaves in a rage, slamming the door and propelling a lamp into the path of the paralyzing rays. Now free, Tony removes the mask which made him look like someone else, and reveals that the Tony on the TV was actually a robot.

IM flies to the upstate lodge where the robot Tony gave his press conference, arriving just in time to prevent the Mandarin from discovering that it's not really Stark. They have a classic battle. The reporters outside, hearing the sounds of a struggle, manage to record the Mandarin admitting that the photos of Tony with the communists were faked.

His plot foiled, the Mandarin grabs Janice Cord as a hostage and summons Mei Lin with his flying escape craft. But as Iron Man tries to rescue her, the Mandarin makes a fatal mistake:

Mei Lin, realizing that the Mandarin doesn't really feel the emotion of love, steps in the way of a blast intended for Janice. As IM and the Mandarin battle, the plane they're in careens out of control and:

The plane crashes apparently killing the Mandarin (Mei Lin had already died from the Mandarin's blast.

However, as Iron Man and Janice return to the hunting lodge, they discover that an ambulance has arrived for Tony and he's being taken away. Will he be revealed as a robot?

Comments: Solid set of stories here, with good continuing characterization. I like that Sitwell figured out that Whitney Frost was up to no good although it does make me question then why he was so upset with Iron Man for knocking him out. Janice Cord's conflict over Tony is realistically portrayed, and her heroic plea for Iron Man not to let the Mandarin go on her account is impressive.

Although I was not initially impressed with Tuska's art, as you see see here he was experimenting with page layouts and the effect is quite pleasing to the eye.

How Times Have Changed

This panel is completely unretouched, from a copy of New Funnies #247, September 1957. And yes, that is Woody Woodpecker.

Update: Another one that doesn't read quite the same as it did when we were kids, from Little Dot #89:

Trivia Quiz #30: The Atom

1. True or false: Ray Palmer is a professor at Ivy University.

2. What retired professor at Ivy invented the Time Pool, by which the Atom travels into the past?

3. At what high school did Ray Palmer deliver the commencement address?

4. Ivy Town had more than its share of criminals. Of the following, who was not a crook:

A. Bates, the caretaker.
B. Clinton, the watchmaker.
C. Phillips, the newspaper reporter.
D. Dudley, the horticultural expert.
E. Elkins, the photographer.

5. What did Jean Loring's father do for a living?

Single Issue Review: Adventures into the Unknown #82

I have talked a bit about American Comics Group in the past. ACG was a small publisher, putting out about 1100 comics over from 1945-1967, or about 4 issues a month. Adventures into the Unknown was their longest running title, lasting 174 issues before finally folding with the rest of the ACG line during the height of Batmania. They had generally good artists, including Ogden Whitney, who did the cover shown above, and a terrific editor/chief writer, Richard Hughes.

AITU had started out life as the original horror comic book, featuring stories involving vampires and werewolves and the like, although the stories were much tamer than the famed EC Comics line that followed it. After the advent of the Comics Code Authority, Hughes refocused the series on more light science fiction plots, without going into the excesses of the "monsters and aliens" that were common at DC and Atlas (the 1950s Marvel). Hughes excelled at the O'Henry twist at the end, and the story that leads off the issue demonstrates his superb plotting abilities.

A Bucket of Paint features Edward Finch, a meek, unassuming clerk for a Wall Street firm. In his daydreams, he's a sports star, a financial tycoon, a pirate sailing the high seas, but in reality, he's henpecked by his wife and bullied by his boss. But he consoles himself that if ever he got a big break, he'd know what to do with it.

Assigned to repaint the house, Finch notices a new paint store, and picks up the supplies he needs. The manager of the store gives him a free bucket, which he advises Edward to use on his cellar.

The first afternoon, as Edward paints the cellar wall, he's startled to see a scene coming to life:



Suddenly he finds himself in the scene, at the Olympics, competing for the United States. He wins the Pentathlon, setting records in every event as he does so. Then he spots the store manager who gave him the free bucket of paint, who tells him:



He decides to take the medals, as that way he'll have proof that he won all those events. But when he gets back to the normal world, he realizes that his wife will think him crazy if he starts showing off his Olympic medals.

He tries stopping by the paint store, but it's closed for the weekend. That night, he decides to paint another wall with the free bucket. This time it reveals the Wall Street office of a business tycoon. Finch makes brilliant moves and this time when the paint store manager shows up, he takes the money back to the real world with him. He blows off his boss and opens up his own investment firm, but his ability is not as high as his daydreams:



He stops by the paint store again, only to find that it's closed for a vacation. He has only enough paint left in the bucket to do one last wall. This time he's a pirate on the high seas. He wins a lot of treasure and when the store manager shows up again, he takes the gold and jewels back with him.

But once again, his investments don't pay off and within a week he's ruined. He goes back to the store and is relieved to see it's open. But the store owner has bad news for him. This was Edward's second chance at being a success, but he'd blown it every step of the way. Instead of taking the health and vitality of a top athlete, he'd taken the worthless medals. And:



Finch begs for another chance, but he's already had that; he will have to go back to his old boss and plead for his job back.

Comments: Terrific story; it's kind of a mixture of the classic "three wishes" plot and Damn Yankees. The art is rather humdrum, but it suits the mood of the piece.

The second story is entitled Strangest Job In the World, and it's of interest chiefly because it was the subject of an obvious swipe by DC a few years later. In House of Secrets #23, DC introduced Mark Merlin. Compare and contrast:





In both stories, the investigator solves a supposed haunting that has the current owner ready to sell at a bargain. In both stories, they discover a secret behind a wall:





In each case the story closes with a bit about a supernatural event that may have been real. So it seems obvious that either both stories were written by the same person, or the Mark Merlin story (which is currently uncredited at the GCD) was a swipe of this Adventures into the Unknown tale, which predates it by two years.

Update: Commenter Jonathan Miller notes the possibility that both stories were inspired by a third, earlier story and points to the interesting Carnacki stories from around 1910. I read one and while the idea of a supernatural detective does seem to originate with Carnacki, I would note that Carnacki is significantly different from Mark Merlin or the psychic detective in this story; he's very much part of the mystical world, drawing pentagrams and the like to protect himself from evil spirits. Still, he may have inspired a similar detective character who in turn inspired the two comic supernatural detectives.

The third story is also interesting. Bob Morrison had strange abilities to foretell the future; he predicted World War II while in high school. He graduated and enlisted shortly after Pearl Harbor, and because of his precognition he correctly predicted the date for D-Day, and that the German offensive known as the Battle of the Bulge would be a disaster for the Allies. He meets a nurse named Alice whom he strangely refers to as Miriam. But it turns out that he's got another life far in the future as the President of the United States and that's his wife then. When he's wounded in battle, he realizes that he's not going to make it, but not to worry; that they will meet again in the future.

Batman and the Aliens, 1961

In 1961, Roger Maris clubbed 61 home runs, breaking Babe Ruth's longstanding record. The Green Bay Packers defeated the New York Giants for the NFL championship, starting a run of 7 years in which they would win five titles (including the first two Super Bowls). The hit song of the year was I Fall to Pieces by country crooner Patsy Cline. The top TV show was Wagon Train.

In Batman #137 (January 1961), Robin abandons Batman to join up with the new crimefighter in town, Mr. Marvel, who has an amazing collection of ray guns. It turns out that Mr M had blackmailed Robin into teaming with him by threatening to kill Batman. But Robin manages to defeat Mr. Marvel and when they unmask him:



Status: True alien, white and human-sized. It's not really much of a surprise when he's unmasked, since his ray guns and other gadgets definitely seemed otherworldly. Two Klaatus out of five.

In that same issue, Batman and Robin encounter The Teacher from the Stars:



Status: True aliens, yellow and human-sized. It's very rare to see alien children, so we'll give this appearance four Klaatus.

In Batman #140, the most famous alien in the DC universe shows up:



However, since this is not what people usually think of when they consider Batman and the Aliens, I'll ignore this appearance for now.

In that same issue, Batman and Robin are accidentally transported to another planet. While they wait for the aliens to send them back to Earth, they make a horrifying discovery:



Status: True aliens, green and human-sized (the actual aliens look just like Batman and Robin in that panel). Fortunately the effect wears off a day or two after they return to Earth. Batman transformed into an alien? Five Klaatus, easily.

In Batman #142, an alien Batman had befriended sends him a protective robot:


Of course, you can probably guess how that story played out; the robot was too protective and kept preventing Batman and Robin from going into action.

Status: True alien, orange and human-sized. Since he doesn't actually appear on Earth, we'll give him only one Klaatu. Taldar previously appeared in Detective #282 (August 1960), so we'll encounter him again.

In Batman #143, they encounter a strange creature:



Status: This one's tricky, because the creature never communicates with Batman and Robin directly. We know it's an alien creature, but in one panel Robin speculates that it was an alien animal, sent to Earth on a test rocket (as one of the early astronauts for the Russians was a dog, named Laika. Since unintelligent aliens are excluded from our count, he's not a true alien, but an alien beast.

In Batman #144, Batman and Robin find themselves in the middle of the alien feud on Earth as a pair of aliens duel for the hand of a woman:



True aliens, yellow and human-sized. Rare appearance of a female alien gives this five Klaatus.

In Detective #287 (January 1961), Batman and Robin battle the Raven and the Wasp, two ordinary Earth crooks who have extraordinary weapons. It turns out that rival aliens are using the crooks as surrogates to obtain three pieces of a meteor that will give them fantastic powers Batman and Robin hypnotize them into going back to their home planets:



Status: True aliens, one white and the other yellow, both slightly smaller than humans. Two Klaatus.

In Detective #291, the Dynamic Duo face the Creature from the Bat-Cave:



While it's from Jupiter, it's unintelligent, having been sent to Earth by its master to locate four small pyramids as part of a contest.

Status: Not an alien; an alien beast.

Detective #292 includes another Superman cameo, but otherwise no aliens.

Detective #293 Batman, Robin and other passengers on a ferry boat are transported to an alien planet:



Status: True aliens, pink and oversized. Three Klaatus.

In Detective #295, Batman and Robin go back to the ancient Egypt, where they encounter:



Status: True aliens, yellow and human-sized. Four Klaatus for aliens in the past.

Comments: Wow! The other years surveyed so far (1962 and 1963-64) didn't have anywhere near the number of appearances by aliens as 1961:

Batman #137: True alien, white and human-sized and true aliens, yellow and human-sized (two separate stories).
Batman #140: Superman appearance; not counted in the tabulation, and true aliens, green and human-sized.
Batman #142: True alien, orange and human-sized.
Batman #143: Not a true alien, an alien beast.
Batman #144: True aliens, yellow and human-sized.
Detective #287: True aliens, one white and the other yellow, both slightly smaller than humans.
Detective #291: Not a true alien, an alien beast.
Detective #292: Superman cameo, not counted in the tabulation.
Detective #293: True aliens, pink and oversized.
Detective #295: True aliens, yellow and human-sized.

So in total we have 8 stories with true aliens (counting both stories in Batman #137), two stories with alien beasts and two Superman stories.

1962:

Detective #299: True aliens, several, green or white, human-sized.
Detective #303: Fake aliens.
Batman #148: True aliens, green and human-sized
Detective #305: True alien, orange and human-sized
Batman #152: Fake alien.

Three real aliens, two fake aliens.

1963-1964:

Batman #153: True aliens, green.
Batman #153: True aliens, multi-colored.
Batman #156: Fake alien (dream sequence)
Detective #320: No alien visible but implied.
Batman #160: Fake Alien

Two real aliens, two fake, one not seen.

Black Hand Versus Green Lantern

With this character currently featured in the DC universe, I thought I'd go back to his first appearance in the Silver Age, in Green Lantern #29 (June 1964). As the story begins, Green Lantern defeats some crooks. But after the fight, someone comes along and apparently collects leftover radiation from the scene. In a "breaking the fourth wall" moment, Gil Kane himself talks to us:



I confess that I generally don't like these popping out of the story moments, and this is no exception. It's not hard for me to guess that this is a John Broome story; he did this a fair amount. But in the next sequence, Broome breaks even more rules as he has the crook himself explain things to us:



I can see why he did it; it would take pages to "show" rather than having him tell us in three panels. But you can also see the negative; how are we to understand our presence within the story, and the fact that a character is interacting with us? This is unusual in comics to say the least and somewhat off-putting. However, it does allow Broome to shoehorn in a very complex plot and an unusual character.

Black Hand explains that he is a very methodical man; he has kept track of everything he's learned in a notebook that he has committed to memory, so that if a situation arises, he's prepared for it, as here:



Personally, I found that very cool as a young man; indeed that scene of him realizing that he can use a penny for a fuse stuck with me from the first reading. Of course, nowadays we have circuit breakers rather than fuses, so the knowledge is pretty useless.

Broome (and his editor Julius Schwartz) were pushing the envelope here. The Comics Code Authority, under Part A (General Standards) noted:

2. No comics shall explicitly present the unique details and methods of a crime.

In addition:

5. Criminals shall not be presented so as to be rendered glamorous or to occupy a position which creates the desire for emulation.

As you can see, Black Hand is also a big fan of what Broome refers to as "cliches" but which are really aphorisms. Knowing that he will eventually have to face Green Lantern, Black Hand has been absorbing energy from the Power Ring that he intends to use against the Emerald Gladiator.

As show on the cover, he uses the energy to try to blast Green Lantern to another dimension, but he only succeeds in banishing half of GL (fortunately the half that has the Power Ring remains). By so doing, he has half of GL's power, but he needs to get just a little more to get rid of GL forever.

Meanwhile, in nearby Coastville, his brothers are being honored for their achievements, but Black Hand shows up to spoil the party:



Fortunately GL shows up before Black Hand can rob everybody. And his body is whole again, even though Black Hand discovers that he still has half of Green Lantern's power. He puts BH down for the count, then reveals that his other half was just a mirror image, created to trick the crook. And much like the Joker, Black Hand has a Scrooge-style reaction to his beloved aphorisms being used against him:



Comments: Black Hand is definitely an above-average villain for the Silver Age. In a way he seems a throwback to the Batman villains of the Golden Age, who always seemed interested in self-improvement.

El Mano Negro returned in Green Lantern #39 for his only other Silver Age appearance. This time his costume was changed slightly, now he had a complete down arrow on his forehead instead of the upside-down triangle:



But obviously he has not lost his penchant for monologuing with Green Lantern's readers. Black Hand explains that he has committed perfect crimes, having stolen two of the most famous art objects in the world, a painting (probably the Mona Lisa, although DC with typical coyness calls it the "Donya Maria") and a sculpture.

Hal Jordan is surprised to find that he alone cannot see the art objects (although this turns out not to make sense given the rest of the story). So he realizes it must be his old enemy, the recent escapee Black Hand, who has stolen the treasures. But as he tries to track BH down, the latter has managed to hypnotize everybody into believing GL is actually the Black Hand, including Hal himself:



Okay, so why did Hal not see the Donya Maria and the sculpture in their places at the museum?

In the climactic battle, both are reduced to using their fists. Black Hand gets in the first punch but GL delivers the haymaker:



Comments: Cute story, but it loses a lot of the interesting aspects of Black Hand from the first tale, like the resentment he feels towards his family, and the notebook he has with every possible situation mapped out. IIRC, this was the last appearance of Black Hand in the Silver Age, although he did pop up once in a Green Lantern/Green Arrow adventure around 1971.

Scipio at the Absorbascon has a series of posts on Black Hand that I don't entirely agree with as you'll see when you compare our reactions to BH, but they are as usual interesting and well-executed.

And Dan at the Down Beat suggested this post with his review of the current Black Hand saga, which sounds like it positively wallowed in William Hand's resentment towards his family. Yeeesh!

Blogroll Roundup

Jacque Nodell is back from the San Diego Comic-Con, with reports on the panels she sat on, including her handout discussing several romance artists, including Jim Steranko's lone romance story. Definitely an interesting pair of posts.

While we're on the subject of the con, 4th Letter covers a panel on making comics more relevant to the youth of today. There are so many terrific points made in this post, but this was where I knew I had to link it:

And even then, should we be looking at superheroes for racial sensitivity, anyway? This past year has convinced me that the only sensible answer is… no. Superhero comics, by and large, aren’t built for nuance. They are built to punch bad guys, be deconstructed occasionally, and to have large explosions. Nine times out of ten, superheroes are going to approach a subject from a black and white point of view, there is right and there is wrong, and that really isn’t how race and racism works. You can’t beat up racism. There are too many shades of gray, too many varied experiences, and too much baggage for that to ever happen. Sorry. Time to look elsewhere. There’ll be the occasional gem, but then there will also be Superman making proclamations and an entire generation rolling their eyes so hard that they go blind.

Amen. I like an occasional "message" story, but there are few writers that can carry it off gracefully, without making it seem like a "lecture". And I did have to laugh at the idea that "This panel explores one reason for this shrinking market: the divergence between the identities of mainstream comic icons, who are typically straight, white, male, and American, and the demographic makeup of a new generation of readers."

Of course, comics companies have labored mightily to introduce gay, ethnically diverse, female and international characters for years, only to see them not sell. DC right now has a lesbian Batwoman as the headliner in Detective. I'm not objecting, but I am saying that the idea that comics don't sell because they don't have enough gay, female or ethnically diverse lead characters is silly.

H at the Comic Treadmill covers five Brave & Bold issues, including two issues that I have reviewed in the past, B&B #64, and B&B #69. As H points out, Bob Haney did improve quite a bit from those issues, but those particular stories were worse than even the depths of the Jack Schiff era.

I wholeheartedly second the thoughts of Nashville Beatle on why he's not much of a fan of modern comic books.

When I finished reading I didn't feel entertained. I felt bad. Movies like Saw and Hostel have the same affect. They aren't entertainment, they are an all out assault. My opinion is that if comics are to survive they need to be more like Brian K Vaughn's "Runaways" and Grant Morrison's "All Star Superman" which are everything that has been and will be great about comic books. In the mean time I will be happy to re-read my Silver Age comics.

This is in regards to the new "Black Hand" storyline in Green Lantern; I should break out my copy of the first Black Hand appearance back in the Silver Age and do a review.

Trivia Quiz #29: Answers

1. The Zeta-beam that transported Adam Strange to Rann only appeared where?

The Zeta-beam only appeared in the Southern Hemisphere; the idea was that it only appeared on the closest half to Earth, and that was (spatially) the area south of the Equator.

2. With what museum was Adam Strange associated?

Adam Strange was associated with the Metropolitan Museum as we found out in Mystery in Space #87:



Incidentally, this story established that Adam's museum was located in New York City; there is no doubt about that as Carter and Shiera are mentioned as driving, "along a highway entering New York City," and the couple also attend a Broadway play during their visit to the Big Apple.

3. Who was Adam's girlfriend?

Adam's girlfriend was Alanna.

4. Who was Adam's girlfriend's father modeled after?

Alanna's father Sardath was modeled after Julius Schwartz. From Schwartz's wonderful and entertaining autobiography, Man of Two Worlds (pg 85):

"... incidentally, Sardath, the father of Alanna, was based on an Infantino characterization of me."

5. What villain picked up amazing mental powers from a rock Adam brought back from Rann?

Ira Quimby, aka, IQ, shown with the purple suit and blue bowtie at the extreme right of the panel shown in the answer to #2 above. Quimby gained mental abilities from a rock stored at the Metropolitan Museum that enabled him to plan elaborate robberies with amazing gadgets. However, he was a Hawkman villain, not an Adam Strange character except as to his origin.

Jim got 1, 3 and 5 correct, and later identified 2. Ian correctly identified 4 as Julius Schwartz and later chipped in the answer to 2. Robert McKinney got 1, 3, 4 and 5 right. Michael Rebain answered 1, 3 and 4.

Where In the World is Midway City

This came up in a chatroom I was in the other day, and I thought it made an interesting and oddball topic. In the first Hawkman Silver Age tryout, we learned that they had followed a Thanagarian thief to Midway City, on Earth.

Now of course, the logical conclusion is that Chicago is Midway City; one of Chicago's major airports is Chicago-Midway. One assumes that Midway refers to halfway between New York and the West Coast. Which means it's a lie; in fact it's only about a third of the way.

Update: Looking at Wikipedia, it turns out that Midway was originally Chicago Municipal Airport, but was renamed Midway in honor of one of the key naval battles of World War II against the Japanese,

But... as you probably guessed, locating Hawkman's Midway City does not turn out to be that easy. The DC Wikia gives the location of Midway City as east of Sault Ste. Marie (Canada) on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

Which is something of a joke. Here's a map of the area; Sault (pronounced Sue) Ste. Marie, Michigan is a town of 16,000 people, and while the Canadian Sault Ste. Marie has a population of 74,000, that's still way too small an area to be credible as Hawkman's home base. For example, the man they confide in, George Emmett, is described as Midway City's police commissioner; but in a small town like Sault Ste. Marie, they would just have a police chief.

And in the very first cover for Hawkman, we are shown the "Bi-State Tunnel":



A four-lane tunnel in each direction? Even the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels aren't that big. So you're going to tell me that East Nowhere and West Nowhere have a bigger tunnel between them? It's simply not credible. And look at that skyline in the distance; that's clearly not some small burg; it's a major metropolis.

Not to mention the obvious problem with the name "Bi-State Tunnel"; there's no other state in 100 miles of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan; Canada calls them provinces. It would be the "International-Tunnel" or the "Bi-National Tunnel". On the other hand, Chicago is very close to the border between Illinois and Indiana, and while there's no tunnel between them near that border, the rest of the setting clearly fits; we're seeing the Indiana side, Lake Michigan and Chicago to the right.

Still, we must look for further clues. From Brave & Bold #43 (the fifth tryout issue), we get some definite geographical markers:



Okay, so Buffalo is roughly due east. Here's a map:



There are a number of cities that are west of Buffalo but still in the United States. Detroit, Chicago and Milwaukee strike me as the most likely candidates; as you can see, Buffalo is southeast of Sault Ste. Marie, far enough south that the idea of it being described as east is a bit ridiculous.

Here's another tantalizing clue from Mystery In Space #90's Planets In Peril:



They are on their way up out of the atmosphere, and where are they? Looks to me like somewhere south of Lake Michigan, and nowhere near Sault Ste. Marie (which is near the far eastern corner of the disappeared Lake Superior). They are reasonably close to Chicago; certainly closer to there than SSM.

So on the whole I would say for now that Midway City is Chicago. Now I will have to revisit this post in a week or so, because Midway City is not solely the home of Hawkman and Hawkgirl; it's also the base of the Doom Patrol, and evidence from their stories must be taken into account as well.

Trivia Quiz #29: Adam Strange

1. The Zeta-beam that transported Adam Strange to Rann only appeared where?

2. With what museum was Adam Strange associated?

3. Who was Adam's girlfriend?

4. Who was Adam's girlfriend's father modeled after?

5. What villain picked up amazing mental powers from a rock Adam brought back from Rann?

Iron Man Run Part 10

We pick up again with Iron Man #4. Tony helps the Freak become Happy again, and Hogan and Pepper again depart the scene. Meanwhile, behind the Iron Curtain, Soviet scientists are working on making the Unicorn (last seen in an IM story way back in Tales of Suspense #56) stronger and more powerful, although they acknowledge that the treatments they are giving him will shorten his lifespan. But as usual, there's no honor among commies:



The Unicorn decides to attack a meeting of scientists from all over the world, in the hopes that they will be able to save him from the shortened lifespan that his treatments have guaranteed. Meanwhile, Tony's been noodling and wonders if he should reveal the secret of Iron Man:



But before he can act on that idea, the Unicorn bursts in. Tony finds himself separated from his armor-carrying attache case, and each time he tries to recover it, the Unicorn blasts him. But the third effort succeeds and shortly Iron Man and the Unicorn are battling it out on the snow-slopes outside the convention hotel. The Unicorn uses his heat ray to try to melt Iron Man's armor, but now the thermal coupling that Tony put into the suit does its job, recharging him. He is able to destroy the Unicorn's power belt, and tosses it off a cliff. The commie rat dives off the cliff after it and vanishes into a lake below. And Tony realizes that he's got to maintain his Iron Man identity, no matter what the personal cost.

In IM #5, Tony finds himself transported into the future, where the humans want to kill him. It seems he created a computer called Cerebrus, which gradually grew and grew in power and responsibility, until eventually it decided to take over. Now the humans are forced underground, rebelling against their silicon overlord. They have decided that by eliminating Tony, they will prevent Cerebrus from ever being built.

But before they can carry out his execution, Cerebrus attacks. Tony gets away, aided by this gal:



Krylla leads him to an old museum, where one of his suits of armor is on display. Tony dons the costume and starts his quest towards the master computer complex, the source of Cerebrus' power. He battles a few robots along the way, and eventually faces a manifestation of the computer itself:



It looks like Cerebrus is too powerful for Iron Man, but Tony has a brilliant idea:



This causes Cerebrus to hesitate just long enough to allow Krylla to throw a blast pellet into the master computer complex, destroying him. And there's a tender moment as she sends Tony back into the past:



And as the story closes, Tony muses, "... [N]o matter what challendges I meet in this age, a part of me will always be in the future... with her!"

Nice sentiments, but by the next issue Krylla's apparently forgotten, as Tony's wooing another gal:



We learn that the reason Janice Cord is not replying to the flood of flowers is because she's still conflicted over Tony being indirectly responsible for her father's death. This was a frequent plot point used by Marvel in the 1960s and 1970s; Betty Brant blamed Spiderman for her brother's death, just as Gwen Stacy and Harry Osborne blamed him for the deaths of their fathers, and Professor Warren and Ned Leeds would blame him for the death of Gwen.

Meanwhile, the Crusher, whom Iron Man had made so heavy in Tales of Suspense #91 that he sank down into the Earth, has managed to return to the surface. He is consumed with the desire to avenge himself on Shellhead. At the time I reviewed TOS #91, I speculated that he would next turn up in a Mole Man story, but as it happens he fell into the cavern of Moley's worst enemy, Tyrannus (who had amnesia and was not around at the time). The strength of the potion he'd been given eventually wore off, as did the excess weight. He was able to formulate a new potion that would not be susceptible to Tony's centrifugal force ray, and then clawed his way to the outer world again.

Whitney Frost, the leader of the Maggia, has been pursuing her seduction of Jasper Sitwell. Arriving at Stark Industries shortly after the Crusher attacks, she discovers the factory being abandoned, and takes the opportunity to try to steal one of Tony's weapons. She gets caught in the middle of the battle and the Crusher seizes the opportunity to use her as a hostage:



Iron Man has to kayo Sitwell to prevent him from committing suicide by Crusher. Then he agrees to turn over the centrifugal force ray and submit to being bathed in it. But:



Iron Man then lifts the Crusher into the air, but he breaks free and falls into the waters off Long Island, apparently to drown (just like the Unicorn in IM #4). As the story closes, Sitwell is furious with Iron Man.

Comments: A solid series of stories, marred only by the flighty emotions of Tony Stark from IM #5 to IM #6. The situation with Whitney Frost looks to be building to a climax. George Tuska took over on pencils with #5, although Johnny Craig remained the inker.