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A SALUTE TO IRON MAN
Given the release of the world's first Iron Man movie, we figured we'd treat you to some of the world's earliest Iron Man comic book covers. Nuff said.
Iron Man (Anthony Edward "Tony" Stark) is a fictional character, a comic book superhero appearing in publications from Marvel Comics. Created by writer-editor Stan Lee, scripter Larry Lieber, and artists Don Heck and Jack Kirby, Iron Man first appeared in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963). Tony Stark, after being gravely injured and forced to build a devastating weapon, instead created a suit of power armor to save his life and help protect the world as Iron Man. He is a wealthy industrialist and genius inventor whose metal suit is laden with technological devices that enable him to fight crime.
Throughout most of his career, Iron Man has been a member of the superhero team the Avengers and has been featured in several incarnations of his own various comic book series. He has been adapted into several animated TV shows, as well as the 2008 film Iron Man starring Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. Forbes has ranked Iron Man among the wealthiest fictional characters on their annual ranking.[1] BusinessWeek has also ranked Iron Man as one of the top ten most intelligent fictional characters in American comics.[2]
Iron Man's premiere was a collaboration among editor and story-plotter Stan Lee, scripter Larry Lieber, story-artist Don Heck, and Jack Kirby. In 1963, Lee had been toying with the idea of a businessman superhero.[3] He set out to make the new character a rich, glamorous ladies' man, but one with a secret that would plague and torment him as well.[4] Lee based this playboy's personality on Howard Hughes,[5] explaining, "Howard Hughes was one of the most colorful men of our time. He was an inventor, an adventurer, a multi-billionaire, a ladies' man and finally a nutcase";[6] While Lee intended to write the story himself, he eventually handed the premier issue over to Lieber, who fleshed out the story.[4] The art, meanwhile, was split between Kirby and Heck. "He designed the costume", Heck said of Kirby, "because he was doing the cover. The covers were always done first. But I created the look of the characters, like Tony Stark and his secretary Pepper Potts".[5] [7]
Iron Man first appeared in 13- to 18-page stories in Tales of Suspense, which featured anthology science fiction and supernatural stories. The character's original costume was a bulky grey armor, which later turned golden in his second story (issue #40, April 1963), and then redesigned again as a sleeker red-and-golden armor starting in issue #48 (Dec. 1963), drawn by Steve Ditko. In his premiere, Iron Man was an anti-communist hero, defeating various Vietnamese agents; Lee later regretted this early focus.[3][8] Throughout the character’s comic book series, technological advancement and national defense were constant themes for Iron Man, but later issues developed Stark into a more complex and vulnerable character as they depicted his battle with alcoholism and other personal difficulties.
MORE covers: http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/iron-man
More info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Man
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