The Invincible Iron Man #4 – Unconquered is the Unicorn!

The new team of writer Archie Goodwin and pencilist Johnny Craig continued to revisit the collection of Iron Man villainy via plots and characters with this issue. Last seen in the pages of Iron Man in Tales of Suspense #56, the Soviet agent known as the Unicorn had been up to all kinds of trouble at the wedding of Reed Richards and Susan Storm in the Fantastic Four as well as in the pages of the X-men before returning to Iron Man. It’s not as if I am assigning blame to Goodwin here for a creative lacking, he was already a proven and prolific writer at Warren Comics and worked with many now legendary artists before coming to Marvel, it is just that these early works show that the experience wasn’t in the genre much less with Iron Man.  Craig himself was just one of that EC/Warren horror and war lineage that Goodwin had written and been editor over.  Some of that storycraft would inflect itself with this issue as the Unicorn gained some depth as person.

Goodwin re-introduces us to the Unicorn with an filmic editing technique of like action to like action as Tony cures Happy Hogan again of his Freak-ish condition with the Enervation Intensifier, while Pepper waits behind a protective wall. Meanwhile the Unicorn is getting dosed by a machine called the Hyper-Activator who has been conditioned by the Soviet Union’s best brainwashers is overseen as well by scientists seeking to enhance human agents with super strengths.  Like Happy, the Unicorn is “cured” of his condition by the treatment much to the horror of his Soviet masters after he regains the redesigned technology of the Unicorn suit and tells them that he is his own man again.

The Unicorn is now motivated by the goal, unlike with many power-drunk villains, of undoing his cure because of its known side effect of foreshortening the lives of the subjects to the rays by its Hyper effects.  As an unstoppable being to his communist creators he sets out to find cure for his new condition in the free world.

The shift back to Tony Stark in the story marks yet another touch that Goodwin brought to Iron Man in that he didn’t just let stand thematic notes about a character like being  tragic, brilliant, or even rich.  Here we see that the isolation that Tony feels over the return of his friend to married life away from Stark Industries begs for a reaction or at least a practical substitute.  As a scientist/inventor Stark considers that part of himself which he has neglected and needs to reawaken.  It in his state of mind therefore which seeks to do so in the company of his fellow scientists.  Thus he sets off to a scientific conference.

Another writer might just as well have rendered this plot turn as just doing what Tony Stark what Tony Stark does when he is not being Iron Man but Goodwin fills in the person behind the personage to get his pieces in place.  It is at this conference that Unicorn and Stark collide as the Unicorn seeks his cure through violent means while Tony is in among the attendees.   The rest of the story follows the fight between the two super-beings as they seek an upper hand over the other leading to a literal cliffhanging conclusion as in the last minute Iron Man is able to crush the Unicorn’s devices and hurl him away over a cliff.   The final fate of the Unicorn is undetermined as Iron Man takes flight to save the plummeting villain but can’t find the figure in the mountain mists that obscure sight of him.

Goodwin’s writing serves up a interesting case of novelist-like aspirations in the medium being undercut by the cycle of deliverables and brevity that the format encouraged. By deliverables I mean the fight between a good guy and bad guy with action in each and every issue and the repetition of certain thematic notes about a character like being under-appreciated, tragic, bearing a lonely secret…as elements to denote the main character and identify with him.  For Goodwin the pace of a single issue is too much to bear out the elements I have noted as his touches of character examination into a full readerly pause and consideration of them as anything more than dressing on the action waiting to unfold rather than reverse actions originating out of characters and fate.