The Menace of... Arsenal!
THE INVINCIBLE IRON MAN - Issue No. 114, June 1978
Book: The Invincible Iron Man
Issue No.: 114
Published: June 27, 1978
Title: “The Menace of... Arsenal!”
Cover Price: 35¢
Format: Digital scan
I generally think of these Bronze Age Marvel superhero comics as kids’ books. They are approved by the Comics Code Authority, after all. But occasionally the writer will sneak in a “hell” or a “damn.” And in this issue, the writer (Bill Mantlo) threw in a “somnambulist,” a word I am pretty sure seven-year-old me would not have understood. Adult me had to look it up to confirm my guess that it’s a fancy word for sleepwalker. I just hope the kids reading this book in 1978 had a good dictionary handy.
The story here goes from zero to all-out action in a hurry. Iron Man has taken the Unicorn, the bad guy he defeated in the previous issue, to the Avengers’ mansion, where Yellowjacket is trying to help Iron Man revive him. Iron Man knows the Unicorn was being controlled by someone else, and Iron Man wants to find out who this puppet master is. Yellowjacket’s attempt to revive the Unicorn is all too successful, and the Unicorn starts wildly attacking Iron Man, Yellowjacket, and several other Avengers, destroying big chunks of the Avengers’ mansion in the process.
The Unicorn ends up in the mansion’s sub-basement where he somehow activates this big robot called Arsenal that apparently had been hiding down there for some time. Arsenal knocks out the Unicorn and then begins wildly attacking Iron Man and the rest of the Avengers. Arsenal is quite formidable, so the good guys are out of the proverbial frying pan and into the proverbial fire.
After much fighting and mayhem, Iron Man finally manages to defeat Arsenal, who disappears in a flash of light. So now Iron Man has two enemies, the Unicorn and Arsenal, who are doing the bidding of mysterious third parties. (Unless the Unicorn and Arsenal are both working for the same party? The implication is they are serving different masters, but I’m not sure about that.) At this point, the questions for Iron Man are coming faster than the answers.
Next time — The spectacular Spider-Man meets Moon Knight!