Issue 171: Ball and Chain // Iron Man: Reforging a Hero
It’s June, 1983. The Pioneer 10 space probe has become the first man-made object to leave the solar system, taking over a decade to go from Earth to what we consider deep space. Sally Ride is also the first American woman in space, trailing Russian Valentina Tereshkova by literally 20 years. And during this time of awesome things in space, the comic of The Invincible Iron Man rolls ever onward.
Tony Stark has given up being the Iron Avenger. As such, it’s up to James “Rhodey” Rhodes to pick up the slack, and he’s become the newest person to wear the armor. And unlike before, there’s no fake-out or immediate resolution.
Ball and Chain is by Denny O’Neil, Luke McDonnell, Steve Mitchell, Rick Parker, and Bob Sharen.
We open with Thunderball of the Wrecking Crew using his massive ball and chain to destroy the counter of a hotel. He’s looking to hunt down his former girlfriend Rhonda, and the cop she married. It turns out he’s at Niagara Falls, intending to catch the two of them, and leaves massive holes in the place when it turns out Rhonda and her beau left earlier in the day.
For those who’ve not had a run-in with Thunderball before, his name is Eliot Franklin. A physicist, his claim to fame was inventing a micro-sized gamma bomb. While often being called “the black Bruce Banner” in the apparently racist scientific community, he would commit crimes at night to fund his research and development. This eventually got him caught by the police, and he wound up in jail alongside a supervillain known as The Wrecker.
A man with a magical crowbar, The Wrecker was able to use lightning to share his enchantment with three other people. Eliot was one of them, gaining an enchanted wrecking ball. Calling themselves the Wrecking Crew, they’ve tangled with Thor, the Avengers, and multiple heroes on many occasions. They consider themselves a demented kind of family, despite the multiple backstabbings, but it’s reasonably rare to see one of the Wrecking Crew alone.
The Amazing Spider-Man issue 247. December 1983. Roger Stern, John Romita Jr, John Romita Sr, Bob Sharen, Joe Rosen.
Meanwhile, Rhodey and new cast member Morley Erwin are testing out the Iron Man armor. Since it looks like he’s going to be using it for quite some time, James wants to make sure he knows how to use the suit. Luckily, it’s going a lot better than Rhodey’s first time with the suit.
Erwin and Rhodey have some friendly bonding over how awesome the armor is, making Rhodey think about his pal Tony. However, Rhodey makes sure to also compliment Erwin’s brains, seeing how Rhodey isn’t the tech wiz that Tony was. As they wrap up, Morley mentions he’s planning to head up to Niagara Falls to meet with his sister. Feeling generous to his new friend, Rhodey drives him up himself, deciding they’ll make an afternoon of it.
Slam cut over to Manhattan, Tony Stark is hiding in a dark room inside his apartment. He mentions how he’s feeling guilty about shoving the armor off onto Rhodey, and leaving Stark International in the hands of his company VP. Maybe he’s been hitting the drink too hard. Maybe he won’t drink today.
Unfortunately, the starlet he left to go have drinks with last issue shows up with the room service he ordered earlier. As it turns out, drunk Tony had ordered a ton of food and booze. Dropping a $100.00 tip into the hand of the delivery man, he shrugs and starts to drink away the day with his new girl.
Meanwhile, Thunderball has found his way to the power plant at Niagara Falls. Throwing his wrecking ball through a wall, he takes everyone he sees hostage, demanding to be able to make a statement. Unfortunately, there’s a problem.
That’s right, Morley’s sister Clytemnestra is one of the people being held hostage! Rhodey tosses on the armor, and establishes it’s been a month in-comic since his last fight as Iron Man. It’s a nice tongue-in-cheek reference to Marvel’s comics being written in real-time… whenever they cared. Clytemnestra has the chance to escape, but actually claims she wants to stay. While she just hopes to limit the damage Thunderball can wreck, she claims to him that she’s never seen a big-time supervillain before. He returns the compliment by hitting on her, but claiming his heart's been taken by Rhonda.
Then the wall explodes.
Beautiful.
Rhodey shakes the cobwebs from his head, chastising himself for warning the villain. After all, it’s not like Thunderball is going to follow the rules. The two are starting to get the expected in-comic fight running when-
Clytemnestra shoves her way in, and tries to limit the chance of a 4-state power outage from happening. Reluctantly, Rhodey agrees to a cease fire until Thunderball has a chat with Rhonda. Unfortunately, she doesn't want to chat with Eliot. Rather understandably, actually.
Flying back off to Thunderball, Rhodey realizes he’s going to have to fight. And now, why Tony Stark has so many issues.
Meanwhile, we cut back to Tony Stark. He’s in the middle of a massive society party, and getting blitzed out of his mind. He’s there with Heather, and spends time with another drunkard who is also an attempted comedian. However, when someone with the Mayor’s office wants to speak with Tony, well…
While Tony can drink quite a lot, he still is only human. And now he’s also being publicly humiliated, which is only an insult on top of injury at this point. And speaking of injury, Rhodey isn’t really doing much better, either.
Thunderball is a professional villain, even if he doesn’t have the most successful record. The wrecking ball itself being an enchanted item like Thor’s hammer also completely throws Rhodey, putting him well out of his normal experience. Suits of armor, he can deal with. Giant robots piloted by angry capitalists? Sure. But magic? That’s gonna take some getting used to.
Thunderball tosses Rhodey across the generator room, and the armor damages the generator badly. The white space of the page is filled with the screeching of the machinery as Rhodey can't hear anything but his own thoughts anymore.
It’s a really neat effect, and frees up the art to hold just thought bubbles and the art. Bonus kudos to the art crew and letterer for this one.
The wrecking ball attached itself to Rhodey’s chestplate, and begins to suck the energy out of the suit. Jim doesn’t have a clue what’s happening, but Clytemnestra gets it. It’s way too noisy to shout what needs to be done to fix it, but she has an idea.
Clytemnestra’s warning about the X-Men character Cable went unheeded.
Morse Code! It’s not exactly what she intended, but the boost in power is enough to remove the wrecking ball. Luckily, Eliot isn’t actually that tough without his wrecking ball, and Rhodey backhands him after shutting down the power generator. It’s another win that isn’t a solo victory, but all it took this time was some advice rather than a literal deus ex machina. This keeps Rhodey feeling like an everyman who fell into the armor, and it works wonderfully.
Luckily, everyone has made it out intact, and the power plant at Niagra falls is still mostly ok as well. However, life has some truly bizarre twists in store for Iron Man.
Why was Tony put in jail? We’ll have to wait until the next issue to find out!
This was a fantastic little one-and-done comic. Sure, it’s nothing compared to the earth-shaking glory of issues 169 and 170. However, it’s a fantastic chance to give new readers a chance to get used to a possibly unexpected status quo change, and to give old readers a chance to get used to a new man under the helmet. Some readers admitted in the letters pages we saw last time that it would take some time to get used to, and they expected good things from Rhodey. It’s a nice way to please everyone, and works well.
No letters from the future this time, but we have more Bullpen Bulletins to examine.
Despite coming out in the middle of 1983, this column was made alongside the rest of the comic in December of 1982. As such, Jim Shooter takes the time to crow about how Marvel’s sales have skyrocketed the last year, and also chat about the recent Marvel Christmas Party. Meanwhile, there was also a recent New York Times interview with Shooter and executive Jim Gation about the company’s recent success. Seeing how America was still just barely recovering from a bad economic slump. Nothing compared to the recent hellscape in the modern day, but high gas prices and a lower dollar value made things hard for almost everyone.
In a remarkably forward-thinking piece, Shooter explains that the secret isn’t diversity, but in branching out and trying new things. Not every superhero comic is the same, but that’s what becomes part of the comic’s appeal. He also mentions the toys set up for US-1 and Crystar, which we talked about last time, but also goes on to explain that Marvel works with product tie-ins without actually thinking about the product they’re tying in with. This way, comics can come out great, no matter what.
It doesn’t always work out, but it’s not a bad idea at least.
As for the big comics coming out this week, we’ve got quite a few.
Both Ghost Rider and Spider-Woman hit their final issues this week. At 81 and 50 issues respectively, the runs were quite good for the day (and even better for a modern-day spinoff). Spider-Woman, aka Jessica Drew, would fall into obscurity after her comic got cancelled, popping up here and there in books like John Byrne’s Spider-Woman from the turn of the century before being revived in Bendis’ New Avengers book. Ghost Rider also allegedly ended the run of Johnny Blaze as the spirit of vengeance, and Blaze would remain a normal human for decades of real-world time. The mantle would be passed on to Danny Ketch for a 1990 revival, and would eventually expand into a massive family of riders.
Marvel Two-In-One, the monthly team-up comic featuring Ben Grimm, would also end this week. It would be a second team-up between Ben Grimm the Thing and Ben Grimm the Human, following up on issue 50’s Thing vs Thing throwdown. Having ended the last adventure by traveling back in time to cure his Fantastic Four issue 1 self, Ben now has to confront the horrible reality he’s accidentally created. It’s a nice little follow-up and conclusion to the book, likely cancelled due to lower sales at the time.
What was Tony’s crime? What does Captain America think? Find out next issue: Firebrand’s Revenge.