Denny O’Neil’s run on Iron Man keeps on trucking, and the stakes keep rising for Tony and the mysterious chessmaster. Luckily, fans are going to finally find out who has been behind the troubles for both Tony Stark and ol’ Shellhead with this very issue.

It’s in the early AM for Stark Industries, and Tony’s secretary Ms. Arbogast is having to deal with someone who insists on having an appointment with Tony Stark. It’s not a grumpy investor or lawyer, though. Instead, it’s one of Tony’s older foes: The Melter!

Alias Brunk Horgan, he first showed up in Tales of Suspense issue 47 in November of 1963 as a Stan Lee and Steve Ditko creation. A defense contractor himself, his company went bankrupt when a standard review proved he was using inferior materials and his products would threaten the lives of the troops. I mean, it’s not like the US Government would ever send their soldiers into battle with deficient supplies.

Never.

With Horgan’s company out of business, nearly all of his contracts were awarded to Tony Stark. So out of a twisted desire for revenge, he swore he would dismantle Stark Industries. While his company was being boxed up and dismantled, a broken radar system would be found that… somehow melted metal with radar waves. Donning a sensible costume...

...for 1963 anyhow, he took action as The Melter and began to destroy Tony Stark’s empire. He even would be able to melt down Tony’s golden incarnation of the early Iron Man armor. Which was made of Iron. However, Tony would pull out a new suit made of aluminum that was unaffected by the Melting Ray and allowed Horgan to flee the scene. Bruno would later join up with early Avengers anti-team The Masters of Evil, as well as once forcing Tony to make him a better melting weapon that would also affect non-metals like flesh and bone.

And yet, he’s never really been a major threat. This would go completely unchanged here, to be honest.

Cutting back to the small Scottish village that Tony has been hanging out in since the last issue, Tony has been spending millions of dollars to ensure that Jim Rhodes has the best medical care money can buy. In fact, he’s even had new medical machines shipped in for the village. However, it’s a slow process, and Tony is stewing in his own frustration. Not even the recent love interest of Indries Moomji can calm him.

Indries suggest the two get something to drink, and head into the local pub for a bite to eat as well. Tony gets a club soda, while Indries…

The art here is genuinely amazing. It’s a simple shot for a movie, but the distortion of Tony in the booze and the dark pits for eyes on Tony’s face do wonders for storytelling here. Tony needs a drink, or something in him claims it does. But can he resist?

He does, leaving the pub, and trying to schedule a flight home. However, his pilot’s license has expired, pissing him off more. Tony and Indries are left to fly home on public transportation, and it looks like the worst possible outcome has happened.

A four hour flight delay, no food for an intercontinental flight, everyone’s baggage is going to the Middle East, and it looks like Stark is being forced to fly something less than business class. To make matters worse, the stewardess then dumps an entire tray of martinis into his lap, leaving an alcoholic with the worst temptation across his lap for hours.

And the worst part is, I can say with hindsight that this was not part of the chessmaster’s plans.

Another day, and the Melter is back, demanding a meeting with Stark. Tony is in his office, but isn’t about to actually have a meeting with a potentially homicidal man. Donning an armor he claims is five years old and an abandoned design line, Tony readies himself for battle. It’s a nice touch that Stark hasn’t been able to replace the melted armor from last issue, and the idea that all he has left is an “ancient” armor is an interesting one. As this is before the 90s and the constant re-designs of armor whenever an artist seemingly felt like it, it just looks like the late one, though.

Diving in through the window, Tony blasts at the Melter’s armor, and makes him blast the floor. This has the small problem of also sending his secretary falling through the floor as well. There’s a lovely two-panel spread of this that shows Tony rescuing her.

I also love the guy on the floor below deciding he’s had enough of the constant supervillains. In this run alone, we’ve had airplanes trying to kill the employees, supervillains showing up on a daily basis, and brainwashing headphones being given out for free. I don’t blame him.

However, Tony accidentally cops a feel on his secretary, and just laughs it off. No. Seriously.

That is not ok, Tony. HR needs to talk with Iron Man.

The Melter smacks Iron Man hard with a special wavelength he figures will melt away his armor. It does nothing, as Tony’s older armor somehow is immune to this, but the entire surroundings of the building are being destroyed as he tries fleeing. Tony clocks him across the jaw, and the threat of the Melter has been closed.

See what I mean about not being a threat?

Tony sulks off to his lab and tries working on a new suit for his alter-ego. However, Stark’s security chief has finally figured out exactly who is behind the recent troubles Tony’s been having:

Obadiah Stane.

For people reading comics in 1983, no one knew who this was. Unlike all the predictions in the letter pages, Stane is a new creation put to paper by O’Neil in order to truly throw off all the fans. Stane would become a high watermark for Iron Man villains for reasons we’ll eventually see, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe would make great use of him in the first movie as the villain. Played by Jeff Bridges, Stane in that movie would be a corrupt mentor figure rather than a shadowy villain. Like Tony himself, Stane also runs a munitions outfit. This one in Utah, and Tony is going to go confront the man in person.

Tony’s coincidental troubles continue, with a private plane that gets stuck in bad weather, no umbrella for when they land, and a rental car being lost in the computer system. Oh, and a tornado warning prevents him from calling Indries across the country for a calming chat.

I’ll be honest, I wanted to call crap on this. However, research does show that Utah receives a handful of tornadoes each year. With about 1,200 storms in the state each year, the National Weather Service lists that two to three of those spawn tornadoes, usually far away from civilization.

Tony says “nuts” to that and dons his armor to go charging out into the storm. The Iron Man armor is picked up easily by Obadiah Stane’s radar equipment, and Stane figures that Stark has sent out his bodyguard. While it may be the poorest-kept secret in all of Stark Industries, it seems that industrial spies still have yet to figure out that secret.

So Stane sends out the robot tanks.

This is one of the ten or so issues I got from this run as a kid, and man. You could not have sold me harder on the coming fight than just saying “launch the robot tanks.” They all launch missiles, and Tony is able to evade them despite being homing missiles. Wanting to not risk it again, Tony takes to the ground, and to his rollerskates!

Tony ducks and weaves through the ranks of tanks, watching them take one another out. Stane waits until Iron Man gets closer, using a tank-mounted laser gun to fuse the wheels on one skate. Unlike me at age 7, Tony does not go spiraling head-over-heel into a faceplant on cold concrete. Instead, he ditches the skates and coats his armor in ice to defend against more laser strikes. Taking to the air once more, Tony figures he can jam the radio settings of these tanks, only for life to strike him down.

Literally.

Luckily, Tony has heavy armor and being run over by a tank is admittedly small beans. Controlling the tank directly, Tony has the tank’s canon bust roll right through the wall of Stane’s hideout. Breaking in, Tony finally comes face to face with his tormentor, Obadiah Stane.

Reading from a 2021 perspective, I genuinely wonder why they went with “guy in a suit” for Stane’s MCU appearance. I mean, Jeff Bridges could have pulled that off.

Other than that, this is a lovely and trippy as hell two-page spread. I love the chess motif, playing into Stane’s role as the proverbial King of the game. He’s ornate as hell in a comic book way, with glam and some kind of fur-lined sleeveless coat. He doesn’t look anything like an actual corporate raider, but he looks perfect for “Iron Man’s foe.” The sheer balls on this man to also admit he’s behind the recent troubles of Tony, and to further say he can’t prove it? I genuinely love this introduction of a foe.

However, Stane is right so far. Tony has no proof that Stane has done any of it, so no prison would hold him. And taking justice into his own hands would just drive him to being a criminal. Tony sulks off back home, the art doing heavy lifting to show how crap Tony feels on top of O’Neil’s solid expositional narration.

But it gets worse. Rhodey is gone, without a trace. He vanished from his bed in the small Scottish town, and no one knows where he is. Tony asks to be left alone, and he stares out the window. He needs a drink, O’Neil has him moan mentally. He adds that he knows it would wreck him and all he’s done, but that drink would feel so good.

And then the proverbial car bomb that Obadiah Stane snuck to Stark hits the viewer in the face.

Is this it? Is this what it takes to break what’s left of Tony Stark? Kid me didn’t have the next issue, so I had to guess that… well… maybe he gave up. You won’t have to wait over a decade to find out, dear reader, and we’ll see what he does next time!

But first, we’re gonna look at the Bullpen Bullitins for January of 1983. Last time, we had Shooter and Stan reveal the inner workings of some truly abysmal cartoons. This time?

Jim does take the time to apologize for messing up the last Bulletin, and blames the fact that he was at San Diego Comic Con, as well as the Chicago Con of that month too. There were a ton of creators there, and many issues went out without a Bulletin that month. Because of that lapse, however, Shooter also vows that he will have other creators and staff step in with columns if he’s too busy. This should be fun.

Jim again tries to sell the reader on the Marvel Comics Guide to Comics Collecting. This genuinely feels weird and a little wrong, seeing how most people collecting comics at this stage were just fans. People loved the idea, or so Jim claims, so I’m sure this wouldn’t eventually result in bankruptcy for Marvel in some form.

Other than that, Shooter’s apology and explanation wound up eating away at the space needed to advertise that week’s comics! Don’t worry, I was able to do my research. There’s a couple of incredible books that came out this month, almost 40 years ago. 

My personal pick for enjoyment is Marvel’s official No-Prize Book. Made up like a magazine, the entire point of the book is to poke fun at Marvel themselves and point out where they screwed up. A lot. My personal favorite is the time Stan named Spidey “Peter Palmer.”

On a more serious side of things, the fifth Marvel Graphic Novel was released. This was the almost-perfect comic God Loves: Man Kills starring the X-Men. This one is a classic, and features the X-Men taking on religious bigotry.

The X-Men would find themselves trying to defend themselves against religious zealot and bigot Reverend Stryker, who looks a lot like former Vice President Mike Pence.

The story would be adapted… roughly… for the 2003 Fox movie X2: X-Men United. And by “roughly,” we mean “the religious aspects were stripped and Wolverine’s importance was given steroids.” Still, it made for a fun movie.

And who could forget the adventures of the best food mascot ever: The Kool-Aid Man?

But enough clowning around on Marvel’s bizarre decisions. Let’s also look and see what the readers thought of The Invincible Iron Man issue 166. Coming from the distant future of issue 170, I had to censor the letters to avoid spoilers once more.

Joe Zadareky is glad that Iron Man is on the upswing as a book, even remembering Denny’s time on DC’s Green Lantern book. He does note that Indries has basically been vaguely sexual wallpaper, which is a valid point for the character right now.    

I also love that the lengthily-named Stephen Scott Beau Smith has nailed that, yes, Tony is going to have another round with the bottle. Mark Gruenwald answers cagily, refusing to admit that, yes, they are going to break Tony like a Kit-Kat bar.

Delmo Walters Junior takes particular offense to the cliffhanger, and man. I know it’s likely in jest, but maybe fans have always sent death threats to their beloved creators?

The last one I’ll touch upon comes from GBT, who leaves a touching letter about his own battle with alcoholism. It’s a really touching letter, though the timing of it is hilariously tone-deaf. Regardless, I hope that GBT has continued to live a long and awesome life. According to his letter, he would be about 72 today. May his time clean be 39 years and counting as of this printing.

Next time, we’ll see what happens between Tony and the bottle of scotch, with The Empty Shell.