Gene Colan continues to knock it out of the park in the best uncredited work of his (or anyone’s?) career in comics.
He turns the Iron Man story into a horror book as Happy Hogan wanders the countryside after being transformed into a Frankenstein-like monster. Very, very cool.
Colan is also able to give expression and depth to the armored hero through body movements and subtle facial “expressions.”
The Iron Man stories end with Mandarin unleashing Ultimo. That will be next issue’s story.
Meanwhile, in the other half of the book…It’s the debut of Batroc the Leaper!
He’s French and flamboyant.
It’s a two-parter full of gymnastic-style fighting. The two end up having to team-up for a bit.
And we see Cap doesn’t like the French. This will also be shown in the Ultimates series, many years later.
See?
Also, Steve Rogers sees a girl on the street who looks an awful lot like Peggy Carter.
He’s a little smitten—but she wants nothing to do with him.
We’ll find out, later, it’s her daughter, Sharon, aka Agent 13. (I’ve heard of mother/daughter things, but not half a century apart.)
Cap waxes nostalgic.
This is also the first appearance of THEM, the criminal organization that will eventually become A.I.M.
I liked this sequence:
I especially like it because the other half of this comic is Iron Man stories, and scenes of Tony Stark putting on his armor are common and often can take up an entire page. Nice to see Cap getting his clothes on for once!
Stan Lee, Jack Kirby, Dick Ayers (#75), John Romita Sr. (#76) (Cap story); Lee, Adam Austin (Iron Man story)
First appearance: Sharon Carter, although we don’t know it yet.
An all-around B. The Iron Man story is more of a “C” but Gene Colan’s art raises it, and the Cap story is kind of a C but introducing Batroc bumps it up.