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Hi, Crivs - hope you're all keeping well during these trying times. I've been reading my EPIC COLLECTION of The INVINCIBLE IRON MAN recently and I've made an interesting discovery. Namely, I'm getting cleverer the older I get. Don't scoff, it's true. Loopy lapses in logic jump out of the pages at me these days, whereas I never seemed to notice them before. Want some examples? Well, take the Iron Man story in TALES OF SUSPENSE #43 - KALA, QUEEN Of The NETHERWORLD, wherein TONY STARK, along with one of his technicians and a security guard, are captured and taken to the centre of the Earth.
Eventually, Tony (as Iron Man) triumphs and takes Kala up to the surface world, where she finds that the atmosphere causes her to age into a hideous old hag. That's because the atmosphere in the Netherworld is different to that on the surface, but in that case, why aren't Tony and his fellow surface-men affected in some way in the bowels of the earth? (And why are fellow centre-of-the-Earth dwellers TYRANNUS and The MOLE MAN [who don't appear in this tale] not similarly affected when they come topside?) Yeah, sure, if you apply your mind to it, you could probably dream up some reason to explain it away, but the fact remains that such dichotomies were missed or ignored by the writer when the story was produced.
Also, consider the patent absurdity of Tony Stark creating a duplicate of his Iron Man armour (aside from his chest plate obviously, which he wears constantly) overnight in one of Kala's laboratories. Not just the armour, but a whole horde of built-in devices, like an electronic reverse-energy beam, pellets of chemical crystals, tiny transistor-powered magnets, multiple image-creating mirrors, and transistor-powered clippers for cutting through the layers of earth between the Netherworld and the surface world. Stretching the readers' credulity just a bit, no?
However, there's an innocence to these tales, and despite their flaws I still love 'em. I first read these stories back in the '60s in the b&w pages of FANTASTIC (and again [in colour] very soon after in MARVEL COLLECTORS' ITEM CLASSICS) and I can't look at them now without being returned to that earlier time, when the neighbourhood I then stayed was still as I knew it and the playing-field across the road from my house was yet a field, not the site of a big ugly three-storey building that blots out the horizon.
Any memories of these tales, fellow Crivvies? Then you know where the comments section is. (Incidentally, I've taken the accompanying images from MCIC #6, 'cos my Epic volume is too tightly bound to scan without leaving a shadow and out-of-focus 'bar' down the side of the spine.)
I was a huge Iron Man fan as a youth, but I had only read the Michelinie/Layton stuff and a reprint of Tales of Suspense #39. Imagine my surprise when I got to read some of those early ToS stories later- super-weird stuff that I just found too odd to enjoy.
ReplyDeleteNow though, I like the wackiness of some of those early Iron Man tales. It's obvious that Stan was still figuring out what to do with the character, and much as they're nowhere near my favourite Silver Age comics, I'm glad they exist and are out there for anyone to discover!
Although Stan was credited with the plots, it was usually R. Berns (Robert Bernstein) who scripted them, DS. I suspect that had Stan scripted this tale, he'd have made Kala's ageing only an electronically-induced illusion to dissuade her from invading the surface world. These stories were for kids of course, so it's maybe not fair for me to over-scrutinise them in the way I do. It's either that though, or not have much to blog about.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read the tale in a long time, but isn't Kala a native of Subterranea? Tyrannus and Moley are originally from the surface, so that might make some difference.
ReplyDeleteActually, now that I think of it, Berns/Bernstein probably recycled the conclusion of this 1963 story from a 1961 story he did for Archie Comics, which I discussed here:
ReplyDeletehttp://arche-arc.blogspot.com/2010/03/unpopular-yet-exemplary-myth.html
Yeah, but Kala is a descendant of surface-dwellers from Atlantis (not Namor's) before it sank, so had the atmosphere been different down below, surely it would have affected the original Atlanteans in some way? But if so, Tyrannus (whose been down their for centuries (I think)should likewise have been affected, as should Moley. They weren't, so Kala being a true human, she shouldn't have been affected by our atmosphere, in the same way that Tyrannus, Moley, Stark, Evens (technician) and the security guard weren't affected by Atlantis's atmosphere.
ReplyDeleteNow I suppose that's all arguable, but my main point is that Kala seems to be the only person in the history of the Marvel Universe who has ever been affected by moving from one atmosphere to the other. That's why I suspect that the effect on her was either just a lazy and expedient way of wrapping up the tale, or Stark was tricking her in some way so that she'd give up her dreams of conquest.
Right, off to look at that link.