When Iron Man debuted in Tales of Suspense #39, like the Incredible Hulk he was gray. The gray color was logical and reinforced the "Iron" part of his name, but pretty quickly it was deemed necessary to give the hero a bit more of a dashing appearance and in his second appearance he quickly updates his look.
And so is born "The Golden Avenger". Iron Man has been called that ever since, but truth told he was "golden" a relatively short time. In fact here are most of the comic covers (both those for Tales of Suspense and The Avengers) on which he is shown in that vintage armor which earned him the nickname.
In Tales of Suspense #48 Iron Man gets a makeover and he adds red to his golden look as well adopting a sleeker armor design. The armor will be adapted and revised again and again over the years and ever after he will be called "The Golden Avenger", even though truth be told, he's only a little bit golden.
But that original golden look doesn't disappear completely as a few later issues of Iron Man's lengthy original run shows.
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Great stuff, Rip.
ReplyDeleteRe: ToS #42 I see some slight compositional similarity with Avengers #13... villain in foreground at a control panel, allowing the hero(es) to face the reader. As Stan understand, Kirby knew how to frame a cover to make a reader need to buy it! (Hence, Kirby's redraw of Ditko's original Amazing Fantasy #15 cover).
Yeah. That's probably my favorite of this batch, it really works.
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Iron Man debuted in TOS #39, not 40, Rip, as I'm sure you knew. You've mistyped because you were looking at #40's cover at the time. I liked the original costume. Don Heck amended Kirby's pencils to give the helmet a chin, because JK drew it like it clamped straight onto the top of the torso, but the original armour looked more like - well, armour.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the correction, I've already adjusted the post. One thing I really liked about George Tuska some years later was his ability to make it look hard and metallic and not a costume which other artists (John Buscema I'm looking at you) had a difficult time with.
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And it was Steve Ditko who redesigned Iron Man's costume and to this day it is same style.
ReplyDeleteHere is a blog entry on my thoughts about Ironman's goofy early days. http://chimeradave.blogspot.com/search/label/Iron%20Man
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