Iron Man (1968) #120

I needed a friggin' break from the Fantastic Four and the Invaders (Captain America in particular) so right on cue, Comixology tosses out an Iron Man sale. I knew our hero had made a couple of appearances in that series, did a little scouting, and settled on the issue below.

This takes place during Iron Man's drunk phase which, at the time, was pretty ballsy for squeaky clean Marvel. To my mind, this publisher made its name on "flawed" heroes such as cash-strapped Peter Parker, blind Matt Murdock and cane-wielding Donald Blake. Tony Stark had a heart problem, which is a "flaw" in and of itself, but tackling alcoholism is a whole other matter. I didn't read the whole saga at the time but I do recall being impressed that they would go there at all.

David Michelinie does the writing honours here while John Romita Jr and Bob Layton remind me of what a great art team they made.

So what's going on? Well, Stark is on a flight, sipping his 4th martini and flirting with a stewardess when a flying tank takes a wing off his plane and causes it to crash into the ocean. Hey, it happens!

After he saves the people aboard, he has a chat with the military personnel which suspiciously just happened to be nearby. They explain that they'd been dumping radioactive waste on a nearby island when some codger resident started taking exception and tried to fight them off. Mysteriously, the geezer had royal support.

Namor tossed one of their tanks into the stratosphere. Hey, do you suppose that's the one that just happened to break the wing on Stark's plane? Of course it is!

Iron Man and Namor scrap for a while, the latter hinting that there is more at play than shellhead realizes. The battle is fairly even until the old dude distracts Iron Man long enough for Namor to take the matter to his home turf.

Iron Man combines his boot jets and repulsor rays to get the avenging son off him...

But a sub-plot rears its ugly head! Someone has control of the armour and in a rather chilling development, they open the mouth and eye slots and allow water to pour in.

That would suck.

And so we have ourselves a cliffhanger. Namor really only shows up to fight; his role in the story is not clearly defined at this point, but it's a good fight and the stage is set for a good ol' team up in #121! Imperius Rex!