He lives! He walks! He conquers!

[ariad]

That, my friends, is the first appearance of Iron Man, in Tales of Suspense #39, March 1963.

Raise your hand if fat tears are rolling off your face the way they are rolling off mine.

I began reading classic Marvel a few weeks ago, after yuji gave me The Invincible Iron Man for Christmas. That book is a recent release, but it is preceded by the crossover arc Civil War. I started to read the first part of Civil War, The Amazing Spider-Man #529, but I became confused two pages into the issue about the relationships between the characters and decided to dive all the way back to 1963 instead.

I'm skipping most of the stand-alone issues and not following all of the heroes. So far, I've made it to around The Amazing Spider-Man #30, Journey into Mystery #90 (second appearance of Thor), and The Incredible Hulk #5, and I had just started Tales of Suspense #39 when I saw that abomination up top and had to share it.

Stan Lee has a sort of sarcastic sense of humor that I really like, and he seems aware that his own sensational style is ridiculous. My favorite epithet that he has used for Spidey so far is "the most dramatic superhero!" Until recently, Hulk was my favorite classic superhero for the hilarious way that he abuses Rick Jones, but then I got to page 7 of TOS#39 and Tony Stark became so unbelievably sexy that I had to change my mind.



I'm eager to see how the characters change as the decades pass, but for now, I'm enjoying the strange humor and overdramatic style of the early comics.