Return of Cold Gold
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Return of Cold Gold
or: What The (Dashin’ Donnie) Heck
Not sure what happened but, last Sunday’s post has dissappeared from the site... D’oh!
Let’s try it again. While we’re at it, let’s throw up some sketches in the shop. More to come later but, for now, I’m getting double listings, dissappearing listings... gotta talk to Captain Webmaster
Cold Gold
or: Happy Pepper Hogan Potts
This weeks grab bag reveals Tales of Suspense #45. I need to handle this one carefully. Poor book’s so beat up it’s falling apart.
Jack Frost, our cold hearted villain, isn’t much to write home about but, this issue introduces Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan whose incarnations are drastically different that what they later became. Pepper is a mousey little thing, Happy is a giant, hulking, pug.
The real draw (no pun intended) is the brilliant work of Dashin’ Donnie Heck. While Stan wanted the bullpen to look at Kirby’s work, he never wanted anyone to imitate him. Somehow, Don got the message wrong or felt a need to compete which is a cryin’ shame. Don came from the Sickles/Caniff/Toth newspaper strip school and here he’s at his best. Jack’s early Iron Man was a rather silly looking thing. Don’s was ragged, rugged and down right scary.
I don’t know if the color change from gray to gold was truly a creative decision or simply monetary (yellow is one color; gray takes all three: yellow, cyan and magenta) Color me old school but, that gray armor was just so much stronger.
FWIW, the cave sequence in the Iron Man movie is about the only thing I’ve seen on the screen that I recognize as the Marvel Comics I grew up on. The scene where Tony can’t get the head off the missile so he just bashes it off with his elbow had me in stitches. Now that’s an engineer! I can’t remember how many times I saw my brother Willi pull off a similar stunt. My buddies and I would be stuck getting something apart, Willi would look at it this way and that and BAM!!! Off it came. We’d be looking on in abject horror and Willi would just smile. His attitude was anything he could touch, he could fix. He didn’t have to know what it was or what it did. If he could lays hands on it, it was his. Downey’s casual attitude at that moment nailed it for me... then he left the cave and the everything went to hell... oh well, at least we got 30 minutes.
For Dashin Donnie, Robert Downey, and my brother Willi, a little old school iron.
Happy Trails
Smitty