I’m going back to the workshop for another
entry
in the occasional series of posts detailing the various armours of Tony
Stark, focusing on those that appear in the MC2. Today’s entry is Iron
Man’s Armory in the MC2: Model 3.
For consistency, I’ll be using the designations for
the various Iron Man armours provided by to the Official Handbook of
the Marvel Universe team’s most recent version of the All-New Iron
Manual, updated and corrected as part of the Iron Manual trade paperback.
There is some debate as to when exactly Iron Man’s Model
3 armour debuted, with some tweaks to the Model
2 helmet seeing a rivet design and a smoother face plate starting in Tales
of Suspense #54.
In the pages of Tales of Suspense #56, Iron Man
first gains his hip-mounted pods which would soon become standard. Finally, in Tales
of Suspense #66 the rivets disappeared from the face plate. Whichever issue
you’d prefer to attribute this armour incarnation to, the Iron Manual TPB
states Tales of Suspense #56 was the first appearance of the Model 3.
Perhaps we can assume some of these modifications weren’t enough to constitute
a whole new ‘model’ to Tony, being instead, for example, ‘Model 2
Mark II’ etc as some have proposed.
In the MC2, we get a very brief glimpse of the Model
3 during a flashback in the pages of Fantastic Five (vol. 1) #1 to
the wedding of Reed Richards and Susan Storm from Fantastic
Four Annual #3.
It’s possible we also see a photograph of the Model 3
armour in the pages of American Dream #2 but it’s difficult to tell from
just a headshot. This nebulous identification of Iron Man Armor Models
will be a continuing issue as we’ll see next time, too.
Anyway, that’s all for today folks! The next instalment in
this series will prove more substantial.
Until I can positively identify every nut, bolt and
transistor to determine which Model armour Iron Man is wearing in any given
comic panel, I remain
frogoat
