Tales Of Suspense #47

TALES OF SUSPENSE #47 (1963)
by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko*
cover by Jack Kirby

The villain origins retrospective is going mostly in chronological order, and the next 1964 entry was supposed to be the Masters of Evil… but since I didn’t cover the last two remaining villains of its original roster, I decided to go back to cover them.
Starting with one of the least interesting Iron Man villains: The Melter.
Who is such an oldie that Iron Man is still wearing his second armor!!!

*I had no recollection of Ditko drawing Iron Man and assumed this was a Don Heck story.
Who is the inker of the story but gets credit as “refining” Ditko’s pencils… your mileage may vary on the results!!!

We begin with Tony Stark being called to personally investigate the failure of one of the weapons he sold to the Army… only to be knocked out by The Melter.

You can see now why people bought the idea that Stark needed a superhero to be his bodyguard.

We immediately discover The Melter’s origin story: he was a weapons manufacturer who kept losing contracts to Stark…

…who ACCIDENTALLY discovered a ray that melts iron without using any heat.

Now… a device like that is worth BILLIONS. Not just as a weapon, but just think for a second how useful would that be in a manufacturing process!!!
But like most supervillain inventors, The Melter is a complete idiot who decides to wear one of the ugliest costumes I’ve ever seen.

He is an idiot on many different fronts, though.

This is still the period when Stark had to wear his armor plate in order to keep his heart working. The fact that he used to be able to recharge it by plugging it into a normal socket will never not be funny.

Seriously: BILLIONS. He wouldn’t even need to do anything illegal: just sell THIS weapon to the Army!!!

As stupid as The Melter and the story are, I have to admit it’s a very interesting power.
Also you just know that if there was a woman under that armor this would be used for fanservice.

Iron Man does, however, have a secret weapon to deal with The Melter… MAGNETS!

Don’t worry, though, the generator that was melted into slag can be fixed. SOMEHOW.

In fact, a few pages later:

Uhm, Tony, I think the main concern is less having your identity exposed and more STAYING ALIVE without the armor!!!

Stark gets called into a secret meeting in Washington, and he decides to drive his armor there.

But he can’t afford to be seen to reach the meeting that way, both to safeguard his identity and because he looks ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS, so he just picks up one of his sports cars.

This moment is a sign of the times. Today it would be utterly ridiculous to think Stark has to PROVE that he was attacked by The Melter: you would at the bare minimum have to say he had some kind of tech taking care of the security cameras.
But in 1963, what security cameras?

The second encounter with The Melter goes… a little different.

Yeah once his one and only trump card is taken away… The Melter is kind of lame.

He even escapes through the sewers, adding insult to injury.

And we end with the final twist on how Iron Man was able to defeat The Melter: his new armor is made of aluminum.

Yeah I guess “Aluminum Man” doesn’t have the same ring as “Iron Man”.
Plus he would need to introduce himself as “Aluminium Man” in Canada and the UK.

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Historical significance: 4/10
Melter is not exactly THAT important, but he sticks around for a while. This is also the very first time Stark creates a specialized suit!

Silver Age-ness: 6/10
On the Marvel scale, delightfully so.

Does it stand the test of time? 3/10
Oof. This one really shows its age. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, but it’s so bland and predictable! Melter is boring, the action is unremarkable, and even Ditko is almost unrecognizable.

How close is this to the modern character? What modern character?
Poor Melter never really got a chance. His power DID eventually increase, creating a new ray that could melt ANYTHING, not just iron… but I guess the reputation of being a one-trick villain stuck.
The fact that he basically had no personality certainly didn’t help.
His new costume was an improvement over the original. It wasn’t GOOD by any stretch, though.

He also switched his melting ray from a chest emitter to a gun.

For whatever reason, and despite the potential boost from the Masters of Evil, Melter never really managed to make a name for himself. He was unceremoniously murdered by the Scourge in 1985.

MOST of the Scourge victims were eventually resurrected, but Melter has stayed dead.
There’s a new Melter around, who hasn’t received a civilian name yet but is using the least awful design costume from the original.

There’s also a COMPLETELY different Melter: a mutant kid who was recruited into a junior version of the Masters of Evil to fight the Young Avengers. Which sounds dumb, but it was actually well-written.
He’s hanging around the X-Men and he’s basically a good guy now.

With the mutant kid around, I guess two things will eventually happen: the mutant will change his codename to something else, or they will just stop using the supervillain copycat.

For the most part, the original Melter’s legacy is showing up in stories set in the past to sell that they are set in the past.

There is, however, a really deep cut!

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History of Marvels Comics #1 (2000)
by Tom Brevoort

Okay, this requires a bit of an explanation.
You might remember that, all the way back from Fantastic Four #10, Marvel Comics as a publishing company exists WITHIN the comics, right?
I know, it’s weird.

This book is 16 pages IN PROSE with a few illustrations, and it gives an account on how Marvel Comics functions within its universe… how it deals with secret identities and stuff like that.
It’s good stuff! Most of it references actual stories where Marvel Comics were shown in the comics themselves.

But there is one reference that I believe might have been made up for this book alone: the original Melter sued Marvel Comics!!!!

And now I understand why he wasn’t resurrected like the other Scourge victims: he sued Marvel!!!