COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Tales of Suspense 40 Universal
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Grade:
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9.6
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Page Quality:
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WHITE
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Pedigree:
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Western Penn
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Certification #:
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0096243002
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Owner:
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Mississippi Mudcats
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
Issue #40 features the second appearance of Iron Man, the first in his short-lived all gold armour. Our WP 9.6 comes from heralded Western Penn Collection. Surfacing in the '90s, much of this collection's history is shrouded in mystery. We know that both a father and his son accumulated the collection from the '60s to '80s, and there was allegedly a cache of Golden Age comics as well that may have been sold earlier (to date only a handful of Tarzans prior to 1961 have been CGC graded). Stuart Friedlander brought the collection to market, and several Silver Age publishers were represented, although Marvel was the predominant company. Known for very high grades and exceptional page quality starting in 1961, the Western Penn copies have been well documented, but do not exhibit any identifying marks.
Our book is also part of the Doug Schmell Collection, which was auctioned off by Heritage in July 2012. We acquired it off the CL Exchange in a package deal with the TOS #41 9.8 on 2/25/2015. It was at the time and still is one of three highest graded in the census.
One note about the story itself, why did Tony change his armor? Well, naturally, it was to impress a girl: Don’t we guys do everything for that reason? While taking his then girlfriend, Marion, on a date to the circus, several big cats break loose and start terrorizing the crowd. Tony steals away into a private corner and changes into his Iron Man armor. Iron Man’s hulking, gray, armored figure saunters into the big top arena, corrals the cats into a group and shocks them into submission. Iron Man then quickly changes back into Tony Stark and returns to Marion, who tells him that Iron Man would be much less terrifying looking if he didn’t wear such dull, gray armor. She suggests he would look more like a "knight in shining armor" if he wore gold armor, which inspired Tony to change the color of Iron Man's armor from gray to shiny gold.
And the secrets of Gargantus? Surprise, Surprise, he was a robot. DC used robots as villains repeatedly during the 50s and Marvel proved once again that there was nothing one publisher couldn’t use that the other couldn’t copy LOL. Reminds me of the lyric from that old show song from Annie Get Your Gun: “Anything you can do I can do better”.
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