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the legend of IRON
MAN
Along with Captain America and the mighty Thor: one of the only three truly "indispensable" Avengers.
The character got his start in the best of Marvel Comics' three "split books" of the 1960's: the classic series TALES OF SUSPENSE (a title which he later "shared," by the way, with fellow Avenger Captain America).
In the earliest days of the Iron Man chronicles, "the Armored Avenger" looked... welllllll... kinda goofy, in all honesty [see cover, accompanying]. The trademark battle suit looked like nothing so much as an Amana refrigerator, with stovepipe- style arms and legs clumsily spot-welded thereon.
Lumbering unsteadily (or so it seemed, at any rate) towards his chosen foeman
of the month, in that clunky get-up... he inspired about as much outright
terror as a VW minivan. 
Things changed for the better, however, soon thereafter. The battle armor was streamlined, and made duo-chromatic(red and gold); the helmet and face mask were redesigned to look a little bit less like an upturned wastebasket with eyeholes and a mouth- slit. And -- slowly but surely -- the stories, too (which had been rather lackluster affairs, to that point) began a gradual but pronounced upswing, as well.
Several interesting nemeses were introduced into Iron Man's "rogue's gallery," at this point. The luscious- yet-lethal "Black Widow" [see cover, above] was the Soviet Union's premiere espionage agent and seductress of stray super-heroes; her frequent felonious forays in the IRON MAN series were, by and large, the most interesting of those early tales.
The very best of these, however -- and a cornerstone comic within the Marvel canon, as a whole -- was TALES OF SUSPENSE #57 [see cover, below].
This issue introduced the classic "Hawkeye, the Marksman" character into the (by now) rapidly frothing Marvel universe -- a member in good standing of "Cap's Kooky Quartet" (the vastly de-powered AVENGERS line-up, which formulated in the wake of simultaneous resignations by Thor; Giant-Man; the Wasp; and... ummmmm... Iron Man), and one of the few "linchpin" characters of the Avengers canon (the Vision and the Scarlet Witch being the other two) never to headline his own ongoing monthly series.
Seduced by the aforementioned Black Widow, Hawkeye -- a former carnival sideshow marksman -- abandoned all prior plans, re: embarking upon a fledgling super-hero career, and became (at the lady's breathy behest) an ongoing thorn in Iron Man's armored breastplate. Not until the legendary Captain America broadcast an "open-to-all-comers" call for new Avengers did Marvel's "marksman supreme" finally tear himself away from the Widow's (emotionally) poisonous embrace... and -- in so doing -- become one of the signal Marvel characters of the Silver Age.
Yet another character pre-destined for Greater Things (albeit in the form of an immediate descendant, rather than in his own right) was the villainous "Black Knight" [see cover, accompanying].
After sustaining a mortal injury in the course of one of his perennial battles against Iron Man, the blackguard staggered off to his castle hideaway and summoned his favorite nephew -- one "Dane Whitman," by name -- to fulfill a dying request: to take the technologically-enhanced weaponry of the Black Knight, and utilize it in the service of Good, rather than Evil. This, the faithful lad did... and became yet another storied (and invaluable) stalwart within the august ranks of the mighty Avengers.
Eventually -- as the character's popularity continued to skyrocket, under the careful craftsmanship of veteran artistic great Gene Colan and credited author Stan Lee -- Iron Man graduated from having to share a title with other heroes, and was awarded his own ongoing monthly [see cover, below].
It was at this point, of course, that things really began to get interesting.
OTHER SIGNIFICANT MARVEL TITLES of the Silver Age
PAGE
SIX: Iron Man (Part Two)
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