Synopsis
Iron Man (1968 series) #188 synopsis by
T Vernon
Rating:
Tony Stark is hired by a small electronics firm to do repair work, and asks to be paid in spare parts. Elsewhere, brothers Percy and Barton Grimes have discovered the Brothers Grimm costumes in the attic—and discover they can do a strange kind of magic tricks with them. Barton sees criminal possibilities here, and persuades the reluctant Percy to take revenge against a restaurateur who outbid them for a property....
Back at their company HQ, Tony adjusts the Iron Man helmet to Rhodey's specs; Rhodey goes out for a test run (insulting Tony on the way) but finds the headaches are worse than ever; he decides not to tell anyone lest they try to talk him into giving up the Iron Man identity. That day, they also receive their first commission: creating a circuit design for a video-game company—which Tony constructs in five minutes. Tony, Rhodey, and the Erwins decide on a name for their company: Circuits Maximus. To celebrate they go out to dinner at a restaurant...and yes, it's the same one the Brothers Grimm are about to attack....
The baddies show up in the middle of dinner, turning the soup to acid. Rhodey dashes off and dons the armor, returning to push them away from the building. They respond by throwing pies full of blackbirds at him, and once Shellhead has cleared away the birds he dives on the villains—only to go through their empty suits and crash into a tree. The Grimms get away....
Rhodey, humiliated by that defeat, stands guard at the restaurant, waiting for the Grimms to return. They do, first tossing acid-filled eggs at the hero and, when they don't work, causing a beanstalk to rise into the air and entangle the hero. Iron Man frees himself by burning through the beanstalk but he also sets the restaurant on fire....
Meanwhile, Tony has gone to the county seat and discovered that Percy and Barton Grimes had reason to want to destroy that restaurant, reports his suspicions to the police and the Grimes brothers are arrested. Angry at his failure, Rhodey takes off, hating Tony Stark more than ever....