From the Mouths of the Marvels:

"The bungling democracies cannot even make chutes that work correctly!"

- - Red Chinese commie, watching Iron Man plummet to earth, page 5

Iron Man carves up a bunch of Commies!

Iron Man from Tales of Suspense #50
February 1964 • 13 pages

Publication Date: November 12, 1963

Letters Page: No letters page was published in this issue

I: Feature Story: "The Hands of the Mandarin!"

Pages: 13

Script: Stan Lee
Pencils: Don Heck
Inks: Don Heck
Letters: Ray Holloway

First Appearance: The Mandarin, Bill, General Ho Lee

Villain: The Mandarin, General Ho Lee

Guest Appearance: Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts, Bill

Gadgets & Technology: Mandarin rings, paralysis ray

Setting: China

Synopsis: The hugely egotistical and secretive Mandarin is at his mountain lair in deepest Red China when his servant informs him that four members of the Red Chinese Army have come to discuss something with him. He allows them to enter his incredibly reinforced castle walls and asks their reason for coming. They request that the Mandarin join forces with the Red Chinese government so they can share nuclear technology and menace the world together. They also request that the Mandarin share the secrets of his power rings. The Mandarin refuses them and sends them on their way.

In America, Iron Man is requested by the Pentagon to do a reconnaissance mission into Red China to find out anything he can about the secretive Mandarin. Iron Man agrees and heads back to his office to prepare for his trip. He has to cancel an evening dinner with Stark employees in order to go on this mission, and when he tells Bill, the person heading up the employee's dinner gala, that he cannot be the guest-of-honor due to unforeseen business, Bill wonders aloud if it's because Stark is too busy to hang around with "the little people". Happy takes offense to this and knocks Bill across his jaw. Tony stops Happy and warns him not to do such things ever again, and that Stark employees are free to say whatever they want to him as their boss. Meanwhile, Pepper heckles them for not noticing her sexy new makeover.

Later, Iron Man is dropped over Red China by a CIA jet to go on his mission, deep behind enemy lines. He is spotted by communist soldiers plummeting towards the ground, and they dismiss him as a western agent whose parachute hasn't opened properly! Iron Man wanders up the hill to the Mandarin's castle, and has to fight his way through one of the madman's security forces before he can fly upward into the castle. He runs into a couple booby traps he has to elude, each one triggered by the Mandarin who has seen Iron Man trying to gain the castle walls. The Mandarin tries to knock him out with a paralysis ray, but is knocked back by Iron Man's chest-plate beam.

The Mandarin then unleashes some of his wondrous ring powers, which he wears on each of his ten fingers. The first he employs is a high-frequency wave ring that amplifies sound waves to deafening levels. Then he follows up with a paralyzer ray, which does what his paralysis ray could not: it freezes Iron Man rock solid.

Back in the US, Pepper decides she desperately needs a date to the employee's dinner, so she reluctantly calls Happy, who assumes that this is a sign that Pepper really likes him.

Meanwhile, Iron Man shakes off the effects of the paralysis ray, but the Mandarin electrifies the walls of the chamber they are fighting in and then tries out some karate moves on him. The armored hero devises a plan that involves some quick calculations of physics on the built in slide-rule on his wrist, and takes the appropriate angle to make sure that when the Mandarin lays his lethal karate blow on him, it would be at a painfully wrong angle for the bad guy. Sure enough, the Mandarin karate chops Iron Man in the arm and falls to the floor, writhing in agony. Iron Man takes the opportunity to escape to the CIA jet that is picking him up thousands of feet above the Mandarin's castle, and he takes his newfound intelligence about the Mandarin back to the Pentagon.

Later, Stark makes it back to America in time for the dinner party, and he joins up with the knockout Pepper and Happy, who seems to think Pepper is falling for him over Tony.

--synopsis by Gormuu

Issues Reprinted
Iron Man from
Tales of Suspense #39-50

Click on cover image to learn more about each issue.

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