When Jack Kirby returned to Marvel in the mid-70s, I'm curious if anyone knows if he was ever considered for the Iron Man mag? With his SF bent of the time, which he explored in BLACK PANTHER, CAP AND THE FALCON, 2001, MACHINE MAN, and THE ETERNALS, Kirby looked tailor-made for Iron Man.

I posted a bunch of his 1970s Iron Man covers in the "favorite covers" thread. Iron Man is the one major character at Marvel at that time that really could have fit well with what Kirby was doing. Not that the guys doing Iron Man at the time were stiffs, but if you imagine the Kirby technology inhabiting his version of Stark Industries, or the battle scenes (a rematch with Namor! Kirby Hulk! Machine Man comes onboard as a supporting character instead of Jack of Hearts!), and this is almost criminal that it didn't happen.

Kirby had an affinity for the Golden Avenger, and maybe JB or someone has inside information. I'm now officially tortured by what might have happened. On top of it, Kirby's writing style, his fevered SF ideas, would have found a more than suitable home with a character like Iron Man, a man, a scientist and explorer and adventurer, using his brain and a protective armor to defeat Kirby-style Cosmic threats.

Yeah, I agree that '70s Kirby on Iron Man would've been really cool.

As a long-time Captain America fan, I thought the heavy sci fi themes and gadgets didn't fit on that title. But the same elements would've worked great in Iron Man.

My favorite Kirby IRON MAN cover is this one:

I'm a "binger" as well. There's nothing like settling down with a nice, long, uninterrupted run of 1970s Iron Man or Hulk, bought on the cheap. Lots of good excellent stories were told and forgotten.

I keep trying to imagine what Kirby might have done with Iron Man. Maybe a universe-spanning tale where Galactus uses Shellhead as his herald (complete with a "2001" transformation of Iron Man into a "ROM" type space-spanner, which Kirby was so into) and Iron Man's eventual rebellion and return to Earth. Guest-starring Nova, X-51, and the Super Skrull! How much would you have paid to see that? Follow that up with a Nick Fury and Shield assault on Stark Industries (a misunderstanding of course), with Shellhead standing between them and the Cosmic Cube. Only the Cosmic Cube is already in the possession of an infiltrator, and assassin: Whiplash! But who's he working for this time?

The only thing about this line of thought is how Kirby really felt about superhero comics. Maybe he was sick of them. But then I read how much he enjoyed working on the covers of some of these mags, getting to draw the Avengers again, stuff like that (according to the Jack Kirby weblog, so who knows?).

It seems he worked hard not to incorporate a lot of Marvel characters "outside" his focus, Cap and Panther as far as name characters go...

Stark just seems like the kind of archetype Kirby excelled with (Cap as well, but he would have been so much better on Shellhead). Panther was fun, but I never got the sense of T'Challa as "royalty"...not like the John Buscema Avengers where he's my favorite of that time period due to his arrogant, yet fearless, determination. T'Challa under Kirby seems a little too wide-eyed and awestruck, somehow.

In Tony Stark, Kirby could have focused on a "thinking" character, much like Jason Blood, impassioned yet intellectual, Stark as the working man with limitless resources, kind of like Kirby himself, if you parallel Kirby's imagination with Stark Industries.