Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin #6: Review

Apr 2008

Joe Casey, Eric Canete

Story Name:

(no title given)

Review & Comments

Rating:

Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin #6 Review by Rob Johnson (April 17, 2013)

This issue corresponds to Tales of Suspense #55, but the details are completely different. There was no orbital platform, and hence no menace to Beijing. Instead Mandarin has been making Stark missiles go off course and disappear. Iron Man tricks Mandarin into leading him to a control room where Mandarin has been using an interceptor ray to capture the missiles. IM destroys the ray, has a long fight with Mandarin, and then takes the captured missiles back home with him. There was no SHIELD involvement in ToS#55, because Marvel hadn't invented SHIELD yet. As I mentioned in #1 Rick Stoner was the 1st SHIELD Director. Nick Fury of course became his successor in Strange Tales #135. The tale of the early days of SHIELD was told in the 1994 Fury 1-shot, but with a vital difference - Stoner died part way through. In fact the Marvel Chronology Project has Stoner dying before ToS#45, ie long before this series even started! I attempt to make some sense of this in my Comments on Fury #1.

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin #6 Synopsis by Rob Johnson

Iron Man's fight with Mandarin last issue ended with Shellhead wrapped in metal tape attached to the stone columns from which it's strands issued. Mandarin thinks he's won.

But Iron Man fires his boot jets and flies up into the air, pulling the columns apart below him. As he smashes through the roof of Mandarin's throne room the shards of tape fall from him. And he turns back and hurls himself into his foe.

Mandarin temporarily stuns the Golden Avenger with a force blast, and runs away to his control room. Angered and shamed he orders his servant Po to divert the captured orbital platform from the initial plan (which we never find out about). Instead he uses a tractor beam to send the satellite plummeting towards Beijing, to start his war against humanity with a spectacle.

Iron Man trashes the control room and then jets off to stop the satellite. He manages to push it back into space, and then destroys it. The blast now sends him crashing towards Beijing. But he pulls out of the dive and heads back to Mandarin's fortress. Which he finds deserted.

Later SHIELD Agents Burroughs and Sands come to complain to Tony Stark that IM let Mandarin get away. Tony reminds them that he saved Beijing and retrieved the armaments Mandarin stole (in #4). He also reminds them that he helped create SHIELD. And he's considering recommending Nick Fury to replace Rick Stoner as Director.