Two Envelopes And A Phone’s Reviews > Iron Man Epic Collection: Ten Rings To Rule The World > Status Update

Lots of fun. Not the greatest era for Iron Man - but this is about where I came in, back in the late 1970s, as a ten-year-old. Spider-Man, Nova, and Moon Knight were more popular with me - Tony Stark seemed at heart to be kind of a stiff, dull rich-man personality - but the stakes of these particular story arcs were high, and Iron Man was always very heroic against powerful villains.

I’ve got issue #s 108-114 left, plus the Jack of Hearts story originally in an issue of Marvel Premiere. 108-112 make, if I recall, a great otherworldly adventure, perhaps the highlight of this Collection. These were the first Iron Man comics I ever collected and read. Many of the covers of the individual issues are terrific. And I still can’t explain my Madame Masque crush…

A bit of a nostalgia pick - this is where I came in, when it comes to the Iron man series. Scattered issues, like 111, 103, 96…then when I was old enough to go downtown to the comic-book specialty shops, I would fill in the gaps, get story arcs completed. Mantlo was nurturing characters I liked - Guardsman, Wraith, Jack of Hearts - but they never totally took off. These comics take me back to my childhood.