Invincible Iron Man #46: Review

May 1972

Gary Friedrich, George Tuska

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Story Name:

Menace At Large

Review & Comments

Rating:

Invincible Iron Man #46 Review by T Vernon (July 9, 2013)

Review: And so it goes. They kill off Kevin O’Brien by having him turn evil out of the blue and fight his best friend. Ho hum. Odd that they decided they didn’t want Iron Man to have a friend fighting alongside him in a similar metal suit; they would change their minds eventually. Anyway, the story is too heavily 1968 to take seriously and the opening doesn’t follow from the last issue. Check it out, the final panel of #45 had Iron Man in the middle of a riot, being conked with a brick; here suddenly he’s chillin’ at home with his gal. Did he just walk away from the demonstrators and leave the cracked Kevin to deal with it? And the big mystery; check out the excellent splash panel, designed to look like the front page of the Daily Bugle. The photographer credit is “P. Parker.” So Spider-Man was on the scene—and didn’t get involved. Doesn’t seem likely but maybe he had a big date with Gwen (which actually never stopped him before). For all the goofy stuff, it’s still an entertaining issue. By they way, check out the cover: I don’t know who Ralph Reese is but that cover is one of my favorites. (I googled Reese—he was an assistant to Wally Wood and he did a lot of horror comics for DC in the early 70s so I must have seen his work, just didn’t recognize his name.)

Comments: Final appearance of Kevin O’Brien, introduced in #31. No explanation as to where Guardsman found a barrel of napalm just outside the front door of Stark Industries.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Invincible Iron Man #46 Synopsis by T Vernon

Things are going badly for Simon Gilbert in his bid to take over Stark Industries since his new corporate superhero the Guardian seriously injured four protesters. Now even the Daily Bugle is denouncing the company. Gilbert plans to spin this against Tony Stark to force his resignation….
Tony meanwhile, is relaxing at home with Marianne Rodgers, worried about how Kevin O’Brien has become unhinged since he became the Guardsman. He receives a call that the demonstrators are rioting down at the plant so he and Marianne head there. In the boardroom, Gilbert demands that Kevin clear out the protestors; instead Kevin, sickened by his violent reaction the day before, refuses to do Gilbert’s dirty work and begins to trash the room (and some board members) to underline his point. Tony and Marianne arrive at this point, jerking Kevin’s mind back to the delusion that Tony had stolen Marianne from him so he reverses himself and heads out to deal with the demonstrators—to Gilbert’s amusement. Tony punches Gilbert in the face and rushes to don his Iron Man armor to try to prevent the disaster which Marianne is sensing. Outside, the Guardsman arrives on the scene to be greeted with a hail of garbage and bottles; he strikes back with his fists—then Iron Man appears, trying to talk sense into the rioters. It does no good since they are convinced violence is the only answer. Seeing Marianne watching from the office window, Kevin tries to impress her by attacking the Armored Avenger and the battle is on. The protestors find the sight of two heroes fighting to be very comical, unaware it’s their lives at stake. The fight is brutal, especially when Guardsman hurls a barrel of napalm at his foe and sets it aflame. While Iron Man is dousing the flames with his built-in extinguisher, Kevin heads to the garage where the latest Stark weapon, the Aero-Tank, is housed. The renegade hero returns in the vehicle, deadly cannon blazing. Iron Man fires back, intending to disable the steering mechanism but ends up igniting the fuel tank. The tank explodes and the mortally wounded Kevin asks Tony to tell Marianne he loved her. Tony is shattered—and Simon Gilbert sees victory, since Iron Man has just committed murder….

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