“Yesterday’s” Comic> Marvel Action Hour: Iron Man #1

“Um, Tony, what are we shooting at?”

Marvel Action Hour: Iron Man #1

Marvel (November, 1994)

After the Mandarin’s forces are repelled by Force Works, the rest of his plan continues. Hypnotia has planted a device in a sub that turns the crew into zombies, which the Mandarin plans to release at the opening of Justin Hammer’s new tunnel in England. Sent to investigate the sub, Iron Man is hurt when he’s attacked by Grey Gargoyle and Fing Fang Foom, but comes to in time to stop Mandarin’s plans. Century returns the zombies to normal and sends them home to their families.

Let’s talk about the show for a moment. Season 1 was horrible. The writing was terrible, the animation subpar, and the voice acting mixed. There were some really good actor and some that either weren’t good or weren’t able to rise above the writing. The episode adapted here was no different. However, the adaptation improved a few things. For example, Tony’s recurring therapist isn’t hurt in the original attack. Mandarin was planning to steal the armor for his zombies while in the episode he only wanted a chip so he could “activate them”…one year later. They fixed that, too. And no talk about Fing Fang Foom’s flame causing Tony’s armor to feedback into his brain or anything more convoluted than simply being overwhelmed by Mandarin’s forces. Also, Mandarin doesn’t torture Blizzard for accidentally freezing his begonias.

That’s not to say that the writer didn’t screw up. The team was never referred to as Force Works (the comic that influenced this season) until the much superior season two, where the team actually breaks up over Tony screwing up. Also, US Agent shows up in the comic but was never in the show. The team in the show consisted of Iron Man, War Machine, Spider-Woman, Scarlet Witch, Century, and Hawkeye. The Mandarin’s “Legion Of Doom” style team consisted of Blizzard, Whiplash, Whirlwind, Dreadknight, MODOK, and Hypnotia (an original character because there aren’t a lot of female villains in Iron Man’s roster I guess…except for Madame Masque, who plays a part in the second season), with Justin Hammer allied with him. Any other faults come from the show itself…and boy are there a lot of those.

This is usually the part when I encourage you to seek out the show instead, but in this case stick with the comics. If you try to get the DVDs, do so for season two, a great piece of storytelling that should have been the format of the show all along. Ignore season one unless you want a good laugh at how bad it is.