Issue 168: The Iron Scream // Iron Man: Reforging a Hero

While my home burns around me in one of the worst heat waves of all time (as I write this), we’ll look back to a time when summers were more mild, and winters were often less severe. March of 1983! The future was coming fast, with Compact Discs hitting the market outside of Japan. American President Ronald Regan also announced what would become the Star Wars Project (a plan to shoot enemy missiles with lasers), and Bertha Wilson became the first woman to sit on the Supreme Court.

Tony Stark’s life was also fast coming undone as well. As we’ve seen, Obadiah Stane has been slowly ripping Iron Man’s life to shreds. Like everyone else in the world, he only knows Tony Stark as a financial rival and a fellow CEO… but he’s also been completely disassembling the Iron Avenger as well. He’s even been able to have one of his minions shatter Tony’s heart and drive him to drink.

And it’s going to get worse.

The Iron Scream is by Denny O’Neil, Luke McDonnell, Steve Mitchell, Rick Parker, and Bob Sharen.

While Tony has been losing his mind to the drink, someone has chosen to take this day to pay a visit to Tony Stark. It’s Jack Kirby creation Aaron Stack: the Machine Man!

He’s completely different from his time in the fan-favorite Nextwave: Agents of Hate, but he’s still awesome.

Problem is, Aaron isn’t telling anyone why he’s here, and no one knows where Tony Stark is either. He’s been missing for days, and some pricey government contracts are in danger of being taken away because Tony hasn’t been signing off on anything. Considering that research and development has been the lifeblood of Stark International, this is a big issue… and the financial department is also concerned that they’re running low on liquid funds.

Someone is finally able to reach Tony about the mysterious visitor, only calling it a robot. Tony drunkenly slurs an answer, not able to make an intelligible reply and sounding like a bad fast food drive-through loudspeaker. Not wanting to wait any more, Machine Man leaps over the fence and decides to go talk to Tony personally.

Tony gets the page for Iron Man, but figures that this is another robot threatening him on behalf of Obadiah Stane. He takes a quick dive under a showerhead to sober up, and tries to shove his armor on.

Tony is staggeringly drunk, and Luke McDonnell nails the body language here. He is somehow able to throw on the armor, however, as we cut away to Aaron Stack meeting with Tony’s secretary. It turns out he’s under the belief that Iron Man is a robot like himself. 

For those who aren’t sure of his history, Machine Man’s backstory is insane. Initially named Z2P45-9-X-51 (or X-51 for short), Aaron Stack was made by a scientist named Abel Stack for the US Military. He was the 51st attempt on the same model and design, with all 50 prior X units achieving sentience and going utterly insane as they did so. He was provided a more human face, and his self-destruct bomb was removed so he could try to live a more ordinary life. However, it was a chance meeting with the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey that provided him with true sentience.

2001: A Space Odyssey issue 8. July 1977. Written, Drawn, and Edited by Jack Kirby. Lettered and Inked by Michael Rover. Colored by Petra G.

Man, the insanity of 70s Jack Kirby cannot be underestimated. Aaron Stack would obtain his own limited series under the Machine Man title, and would later show up in a second mini-series in 1984 where he would fight the Iron Man of 2020. But here, he’s just on a quest to find more sentient robots.

Unfortunately, Tony is still smarting from being dumped by Indries last issue, and is still staggeringly drunk. Instead of assuming Aaron is here to talk and take him at face value, Tony lurches at Machine Man with the intent to kill!

Tony rips off Aaron’s right arm and throws it away, but the limbs of Machine Man can actually fly back under their own power. This merely pisses off the Inebriated Iron Man even more, so he rips a lamp post up from the ground, and almost crushes several Stark Enterprises employees at the same time.

Luckily, Aaron Stack likes the fleshy ones, contrary to his claims in Nextwave: Agents of Hate. He pushes the two out of the way, and decides to try and keep Iron Man away from innocents.

Meanwhile, James Rhodes, who had recently disappeared from his hospital bed in Scotland, escapes his kidnappers and steals a plane!

At first, I was wondering if this was another case of whitewashing characters. We’ve seen it a lot recently with popular B-list characters like Roberto DaCosta and even A-listers like Storm, where their skin is several shades too light. In the worst cases, they even look like white people in cosplay.

This is different. It turns out Rhodey was in whiteface!

In a bright move, Rhodey covered himself in a mixture of egg yolk and flour to make something resembling a white man’s skin. After all, he figures a black guy would be easier to spot in Scotland. I don’t have the slightest idea how accurate that looks in reality, but this is a great bit of character building. It totally makes Rhodey seem clever and able to make quick decisions on his feet, and the fact that it worked only helps build Rhodey’s rep with the readers.

Things are getting worse back at Stark Enterprises. The men of the Machine and Iron variety are wrecking their way through the main research and development building. Aaron Stack is trying to find a way to shut down what he feels is a malfunctioning robot, and Tony is just too drunk to give a crap about the very machines supporting his own company. In fact, one of the major projects we were introduced to earlier on… isn’t anymore.

Tony doesn’t even care about the scientist he whacked. He’s laser-focused on petty revenge now. It gets so bad that Aaron drags the armor up into the sky and floods it with impulses that shut the armor down. The thing is, Aaron realizes that there’s a human inside just as the armor starts to fall. Catching Tony and reviving his armor, Machine Man takes the chance to skedaddle and leaves Tony to recover on his own.

Tony doesn’t care one bit about talking to his chief of security, much less to the partner of the scientist who’s being put in the hospital. He needs to get to safety. To his private lab. Pulling off his helmet, we see a truly wretched human inside the armor.

Or a good image for the Comics Out of Context After Dark twitter tag.

Again, Luke McDonnell is utterly nailing it. Stark is drenched in sweat, he’s exhausted, and he’s suffering from either acute alcohol poisoning or a hangover at this point. This looks just about as good as some of the movies that try to express alcoholism in a serious light, and it is wonderful.

Tony is able to shower, shave, and put on one of his finer suits. He ignores complaints about Iron Man wrecking the place, and has a private car summoned to take him home. Shoving a thousand dollars into the pocket of his doorman, he asks for privacy before realizing he’s out of liquor.

Seeing Tony Stark, dressed as nicely as possible, slowly walk to his own destruction is actually kind of eerie. The man had said he couldn’t be bothered by anything at work, but here he is, saying it’s no problem for him to get some drink. The doorman should know better than to let Tony have the booze, and seems to make excuses so he can’t get them. However, Tony is determined to destroy himself and won’t take no for an answer.

We ahead in time reach to issue 173 for the letters from this issue. And honestly, it seems like fans back then also thought this issue was stupendous.

Agan, gotta hide those spoilers!

Thrill abound from readers, such as Arthur Berenstein, who loves the hole that Stark is continuing to dig for himself. Jim Jackson also agrees, adding that he feels that Luke McDonnell and Steve Mitchell have become a fantastic team together.

And then there’s Terry Nims, where this was his first issue of Iron Man. What a bonkers issue to start with!

Now we flip over to the Bullpen Bulletins for the day, March 1983.

This month, the Bulletins come from writer David Michelinie! Michelinie had worked on Iron Man prior to O’Neil coming on the book, and at this time was actually writing for Star Wars and The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones. He would spend this half-page granted to him by Shooter to good-naturedly poke fun at everyone else working at Marvel. My particular favorite goes to the paragraph under STAN LEE GIVES BIRTH, where he gripes about misleading covers. Most of this would be aimed at DC’s habit of misleading covers from the Silver Age, but many artists had been making covers with no idea of what the interior for the book would be.

As for remarkable comics this month, we’ve got some gold. The New Mutants would emerge onto the scene from their premier in the Marvel Graphic Novel with a multi-issue storyline that would tie in loosely with the X-Men’s Brood Saga. Written by Chris Claremont with art by Bob McLeod, this was one of the best-reading comics on the block that month. Walt Simonson’s legendary The Star Slammers also came out this month, and The Incredible Hulk issue 281 would feature the Hulk teaming up with Bruce Banner’s mind to go into space and fight the Leader! The cover alone is worth checking out:

Next week, things finally reach a breaking point, as Tony Stark hits his lowest low… while in the Iron Man armor, at least! Join us for Blackout!