Iron Man #55 (October 1972)

The 1970s were a time of change in Marvel. Stan Lee stepped down as editor-in-chief, and Roy Thomas had stepped into that chair. Thanks to a revision of the Comics Code, the Marvel Universe didn't just start embracing fads like blaxploitation and the kung-fu craze. It was also a time when the Marvel Universe was becoming more cosmic. And much of it was thanks to one man: Jim Starlin.

First working for Marvel in 1972, Starlin was both a writer and an artist. His first job for them was providing finished art for The Amazing Spider-Man. But he would later get involved with another book, one that starred a certain Armored Avenger. He provided art duties on a couple issues of Iron Man's book, which Starlin used to build a mythos within the Marvel Universe, a mythos that would go on to span numerous titles. But every epic saga has to start somewhere. The comic we're looking at this week was the start of Starlin's Thanos saga. This is Iron Man #55!

The cover is a Jim Starlin, Joe Sinnott, Gaspar Saladino, and Morrie Kuramoto piece. It's pretty neat. It depicts Drax the Destroyer bursting through a wall like he was Superman as Iron Man is being besieged by a pair of identical monsters. He proclaims that the Blood Brothers can't stop him even if they crush Iron Man. What I find interesting about this cover is that instead of his traditional purple, Drax is shown wearing blue. My guess is this was maybe because green and purple are seen as (outside of the Hulk) a color combination associated with villains (Green Goblin, Ringmaster, etc), and they wanted to show that Drax was more of a "heroic" character. 

"Beware the... Blood Brothers!"
Writers: Jim Starlin (Plot, character conception), Mike Friedrich (script)
Penciler: Jim Starlin
Inker: Mike Esposito
Letterer: John Costanza
Colorist: Unknown
Editor: Roy Thomas
Editor-in-Chief: Roy Thomas

The story begins with Drax the Destroyer, bombastically warning our modern-day knight about the menace of the twin alien terrors known as the Blood Brothers. However, his warning has come a bit late as our man is currently getting his tin-plated tail handed to him by said Blood Brothers.

"Where's our money, Stark?!"

The twin aliens take the knocked-out Iron Man onto a spaceship. Said spaceship flies off and heads to another world, one used to house a particular prisoner.

"We are going to binge-watch all of Real Housewives of Chandilar, Drax!"

His jailer, a certain Mad Titanian known as Thanos, knew that Drax was trying to telepathically call for help, but chose to let him do it because, well...Thanos thinks he's no threat to anyone. Drax vows to escape and complete his one life's mission, kill Thanos. Kill him until he is dead. 

It's here we get a flashback as to how Drax managed to reach Iron Man, contacting the mind of Tony Stark...while he was in the middle of a business meeting. 

This gets Stark to don his Iron Man togs, as the Blood Brothers snuck into Stark's company's headquarters. Meanwhile, Drax was able to telepathically inform Stark about the people of Titan, and the origins of Thanos.

Iron Man's response to getting a mind download? Hit 'em with the Fascinating Eyebrow.

A little bit of Early Installment Weirdness here. You see the three in the lower left corner of the panel? The other two guys are A'lars, aka Mentor, and Eros, aka the future Avenger Starfox. Yeah, they debuted here, too. Thanos is in shadow next to them. He's already got his iconic look in: the purple skin, and the blue and gold outfit. But A'lars and Eros don't look quite recognizable. They have purple skin as well. Mentor's outfit is red instead of the green and yellow costumes he'd be most seen in. And Eros? His costume is blue, red, and purple instead of red and white. And he's a blond instead of a redhead. Yeah, you can tell they hadn't quite finished "cooking" yet. 

Anyway, after his exile, Thanos returned with an army and took over Titan. In desperation, Mentor, the ruler of Titan (and father of Thanos), turned to a cosmic being for some aid.

"Keep it down, you noisy creep! You're ruining my beauty sleep!"

Meet Kronos. He was once an Eternal scientist, until an experiment he was working on with cosmic energies went wrong. It caused an explosion that wrecked his home and destroyed his body. However, his mind survived and literally became one with the cosmos. So, yeah. He's literally one with the universe, man.

Kronos creates something to help the Titanians take back their home from Thanos: Drax the Destroyer. And destroy he did. He utterly wrecked Thanos's forces and took the fight to The Mad Titan himself. However, Thanos was no slouch against the powerhouse and gave as good as he took. 

The fight got so intense that it blew a chunk out of Titan. Yeah, Titan as in the Saturnian moon. The battle left Drax weakened, allowing Thanos to capture him and take him to Earth as a prisoner. And now we're here. When the Blood Brothers arrive on Titan, Iron Man is able to use his repulsors to blast the twin aliens away...where he finds Drax.

Yeah, Drax earlier claimed Thanos took him to Earth. I think that's an editorial miss there. Anyway, Iron Man tries to rescue Drax but gets blasted by Thanos for his trouble. And to add insult to injury, Thanos stomps on Stark's right hand, wrecking his repulsor.

Yeah, good thing that unlike a lot of people, Tony can afford hospital bills. The Blood Brothers take our man away. Drax gets a telepathic call from ISAAC, the supercomputer that helped run Titan. Evidently it survived the planet getting wrecked. And so did Mentor. This allowed him to determine Drax's location. With that, he fires a beam at Earth. The beam hits Iron Man's unibeam in his chestplate. It destroys Drax's bonds, freeing the Destroyer. 

Drax and the Armored Avenger are able to give the Blood Brothers a beatdown. While they fight, Drax explains that the beam was in Drax's own words "a power beam transmitted to your armor", and the armor focused the beam to free Drax. Why he couldn't just directly blast Drax free, I have no idea. I'm presuming that Mentor didn't want to risk the beam harming Drax, so he used Iron Man's armor essentially as a lens to make sure that didn't happen. There was no guarantee that it wouldn't have fried Tony, but hey, comic book science.

Thanos threatens to destroy the complex, but the two heroes stop him. In the process, they make another discovery:

"AGH, MY BEAUTIFUL ROBOTIC SKULL!"

Yeah, Thanos was not Thanos. He was some robot. Must have been inspired by Dr. Doom, ha ha! They realize this is a trap.

Thanos planned to use the robot to occupy the heroes until the complex explodes. He hoped it would blow them up real good. 

However, Drax and Tony escape.

Drax thanks Tony, asking how he can be repaid. The Armored Avenger is just glad that Thanos was stopped and nobody is dead. Well, presumably except the Blood Brothers, but no one cares about the Blood Brothers. And they'll appear in future stories anyway. The story ends with the two parting ways with a handshake. 

It's a fun story, but not the best Iron Man tales I've ever read. However, I do think it's a very interesting story. What is the most interesting thing about this issue is how...different Drax and Thanos are portrayed compared to nowadays. Drax has his characteristic obsession with destroying Thanos here right from the start, but he's portrayed as more erudite and presumably smarter than he would be later on in the comics and MCU. I liked the ending where he and Iron Man parted ways with a handshake, showing a mutual respect between them, and possibly a growing friendship in the future. 

Thanos is portrayed here as a straight-up one-note villainous conqueror than the more complex characterization that he'd get under Starlin's writing pen over time. Which makes sense, it's their first appearance, and presumably there's still some things to hash out. 

This comic is pretty much early Starlin. He conceived the characters and the story, while Friedrich provided the script. And as for his art, we can see some of the developing hallmarks of Starlin's drawing: the usage of lots of panels, and heavy amounts of detail, especially in the faces. It's very unique for the time.

Again, it's not the best Iron Man story I've ever read, but I still recommend it, if only for the purpose of seeing how certain aspects of the cosmic side of the Marvel Universe have grown. If you want to read this for yourself, I recommend tracking down the 2013 trade paperback The Avengers vs. Thanos. It can also be found in the 2022 trade paperback Iron Man Epic Collection Vol. 5: Battle Royal. Thanks for reading this blog entry! If you liked it, show it off! Take care of yourselves and each other! If you like what I write and want to give this blog some additional support, please make a donation to my Ko-fi! See you next time!