Tales of Suspense #91 – The Uncanny Challenge of the Crusher!

What had been missing these past issues was a touch of then ‘current events’ while Communism was still growing as a world movement thanks as much to a small nation off the Florida coast as any superpower.

Just when you thought you could forget the Cold War, Stan Lee and Gene Colan deliver full color rockin’ revolución from our commie neighbors to the south in this issue of Tales and all their nasty urges to bully their way into power.

Following the aforegoing convention of suggesting a real nation and its leaders without actually naming names while providing plenty of verisimilitude the ‘lush, tropical isle’ never says Cuba or even posits that el Presidente is Castro but the beard and the military garb of the state apparatus suggest just about all that to be the case in this story.

This issue turns in a fairly complicated story that begins and ends in its allotted 12 pages for the Iron Man portion. The issue begins with some masterful technical drawings of Tony Stark using himself as test driver of a centrifugal machine that one might have seen in early NASA footage or photos of the time or Popular Mechanics before we are taken off to that ‘lush, tropical isle’ where a scientist labors under strict scrutiny of his political masters and yet arrogantly claims to have made the greatest weapon in the world and see el Presidente.

Adept in as such societies are in betrayal the scientist is forced to test his formula on himself rather than on Presidente which was his intent all along to transform himself into an invulnerable giant able to defy his ruler and take power for himself. The only thing that seems standing in the way of taking control of the nation is a curious need to prove himself to the political class that he can contend with the U.S. and in particular one of its heroes – Iron Man.

Iron Man for his part contents himself with continuing with his lab experiments despite hearing the radio reports of the Crusher’s swath through New Jersey. He believes that the police, for some reason, are perfectly fine and will deal with the menace, that is of course until the Crusher bursts through one of the walls at Stark Industries. As had also been well established in Iron Man, villain can always find Iron Man by going to his employer Stark Industries to settle old scores or earn a new reputation. Also as matter of great convenience Stark had has been wearing his armor since he had begun hearing the radio reports.

The fight that ensues between the Crusher and Iron Man becomes a sort of stalemate though done with great flash by Colan’s art and wraps up in a tidy if unconvincing manner as the new centrifugal force ray is used by Iron Man to increase the gravity so intensely on the Crusher that the ground can no longer bear his mass. The whole thing ends with Stark not Iron Man still in his labs and Happy and Pepper arriving with news for him.  It turns out that the two have eloped and now are man and wife.  With a quick flourish Stan Lee sidelined the romantic triangle that he had invested Iron Man’s cast with and would step for a time out of the melodrama that made the book so emotional.   Perhaps this was because he would be taking the character onto a broader canvas of world politics and relations.   Next up – back to Viet Nam.