TOS #60 (Iron Man):

My kids and I haven't been seeing a lot of Heck's work lately (or, actually, any Silver Age comics--we've been preoccupied by those Scholastic full-color Bone TPBs. Looks like Jeff Smith has temporarily kicked Marvel to the curb. ). So I was really looking forward to reading this issue again (and last issue, just to catch up). Boy, I missed Don's work. As VisualFiction points out, this issue has maybe his best-ever splash page (and he's been getting steadily better at those as it is). I have to say that the Chic Stone inks in last issue were a bit better than Ayers' work here. Stone seemed to have a better handle on Heck's Cannif tendencies in terms of use of the brush for shading creases in clothes:

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Or could Don have supplied some of these inks himself here and there? The creases in Happy's suit and the rendering of some of the faces look like pure Heck to me. I know the Omnibus frontmatter credits that issue to Stone, but his name doesn't appear on the splash page itself. Makes you wonder…. Anyway, back in the current issue, Ayers just doesn't seem to be channeling his inner Don this month. Much as I've been enjoying the Heck/Ayers combo on Avengers, this issue of TOS seemed a bit too scratchy.

In his review of this issue, VisualFiction made a nice observation that this story was a "Tale of Two Halves": "The first six pages amount to one of the most entertaining IM stories yet . . . The last seven pages are just a rehash of Widow/Hawkeye, and not all that entertaining." I totally agree. In fact, the last issue was the same way. Tony's sudden collapse and the reactions of Happy and Pepper were so much more exciting than the eventual duel with the Black Knight. It's almost like a mirror image of the story flow in the FF: there you get a bit of friendly banter in the Baxter Building every issue before the villain shows up and the excitement begins. In these Iron Man stories, the most exciting parts all seems to be taking place Tony's office and are over by page five or so! I don't really care that much about the fight scenes in the second half--I want more soap opera. Maybe Stan and Don sense this, too--they've been actively working Happy and Pepper in to the action sequences wherever possible. Last time, Happy was taken hostage by the Black Knight, and this time, Hawkeye corners Pepper in the office.

Ultimately, I think my preference for the soapy elements in this series is mostly the result of Don being so damn good at the nuts and bolts of romance comics. That man drew the most exciting office conversations ever. (Even, as Comicsdad notes, when one of the participants is wearing an iron mask the whole time!). He had such nice control over body language, posture, and framing--check out the positioning of the figures and the use of bird's-eye point-of-view in this panel:

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Further unnecessary evidence that Heck was just perfect for this series.

In terms of the storyline, I was struck by how much this series, maybe more than any other, already has that classic Marvel Age "feel" of being part of an ongoing, never-ending storyline. Yet another cliffhanger ending here in the ongoing subplot (main plot?) about Tony being trapped in his own armor. Issue after issue, this plotline is keeping my kids hooked and crying for more (in the case of my younger son, literally!)

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