Issue(s): Tales Of Suspense #65 (Iron Man story only)
Cover Date: May 65
Title: "When titans clash!"
Credits:
Stan Lee - Writer
Don Heck - Penciler
Mike Esposito - Inker

Review/plot:
This issue has an ordinary thief named Weasel Willis sneaking into Tony Stark's factory grounds and stumbling upon the Iron Man armor.

Stark is forced to dust off his older bulky golden suit to defeat him.

What's interesting is the fact that wearing the armor gives Weasel a case of megalomania and general insanity that eventually ruins his mind.

Similar symptoms affect the Guardsman and James Rhodes so it's interesting to see support for that so early on. Of course it's really just a device to ensure that Weasel doesn't remember Stark's secret ID.

One thing i'm a little confused about: in issue #63 we saw Iron Man fix the damage from the Black Knight's attack that was preventing him from removing his armor. But i assumed he still had to wear the chestplate to keep the shrapnel in his heart from killing him. Because i thought that doesn't get resolved until much later. But in this issue, Weasel manages to steal the entire suit, which means Stark wasn't wearing the chestplate.

Quality Rating: D+

Historical Significance Rating: 2 - establishing that when other people where the Iron Armor, it affects their mind.

Chronological Placement Considerations: The MCP has Iron Man appearing here after the first four pages of Avengers #16, but the issue seems context free. There's a mess of continuity inserts around Avenger #16 (Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes #6-8 and Marvel Heroes & Legends '97) that may have influenced placement. Stark does mention that the "other Avengers are scattered around the country at present" but i don't think that has to be interpreted as Iron Man being an active member of the team. In any event, i've placed this issue near Avengers #16.

References: N/A

Crossover: N/A

Continuity Insert? N

My Reprint: Marvel Masterworks: The Invincible Iron Man vol. 2

I wonder if the armor has some kind of cybernetic command system that interfaces with the mind of the wearer. If it is particularly "attuned" to Stark's mind, it might not work well for others wearing the armor.

Or has the technical reason for the breakdowns of other wearers been established?

Chris, almost exactly that was suggested in Iron Man #188, where Stark "adjusted the cybernetic controls to conform to Rhodey's brain waves instead of mine" but it doesn't fully fix the problem.

FNORD - when you wrote - "But in this issue, Weasel manages to steal the entire suit, which means Stark wasn't wearing the chestplate."

Was it shown that he wasn't wearing any chestplate, even a spare from an old Iron Man costume?

It wasn't shown or mentioned. But at this point Stark didn't have a hall of armor or anything. He had his current suit, and the plot of this story caused him to dust off his old suit. There's no mention of any spare parts that he might have already been wearing. While he's wearing the old armor, he gets some heart pain because "this was the reason I designed the other armor... because this one is too heavy! The strain is too great!".

At one point I think still in the future, Stark had a lightweight chestplate which was not part of any armor, that he could wear under his shirt. It must have been the case, that he had developed it earlier than shown, in that later story, and was using it Behind The Scenes, in this story. Do I get a No-Prize?(:

This month the role of Happy Hogan is played by Robert Vaughn (check page two, panel three).
As an aside, when this story was reprinted in the British weeklies in the mid-70s, there was a tendency to overcompensate for them being in black and white with a heavy use of tones. This meant for Iron Man they would use a dark tone for the red parts of his armour. For this story they even used the dark tone on the original suit for the body, boots and gloves !

They did the same thing once or twice in the 60s, when the old comic book art was reused for the US "Marvel Super-Heroes on TV" animated cartoon show. Truth is, we didn't even know if the show was in color or black and white, because we only had access to black and white TVs. This Wikipedia article says that it was in color though.

All the animated art was 'clipped' right out of old 60s Marvel comics. My friends and I laughed ourselves silly when we saw one or two episodes where they 're-painted' the old armor to use it for the show-- just like a kid might do by coloring over the art in an old comic book.:) They took a lot of liberties with all that old art.