Sorry you have a hard time believing that being the case JB, but it was.  I will say that I can't clearly recall if my first exposure to Iron Man was a comic or the Mego action figure.  I do recall that I must have seen images similar to the "suit up" sequences in this thread at some point, because I remember pushing up the sleeves of the figure's costume to simulate those sequences.  Maybe that's where part of the disconnect came from...seeing the armor represented (by necessity, of course) in fabric, and seeing it "move" like fabric in the comics.  I also thought that (most, anyway) super-heroes' boots were more like socks, as the soles appeared to be "soft" like socks and the boots were as skin-tight, form-fitting as the rest of the costumes.

Who can fathom kid logic, mine in particular?  My same kid logic had me refusing to see Star Wars when it was first released, because I'd just become aware of Star Trek, and to my 7-year-old mind, the former must certainly be a ripoff of the latter:  they were both science fiction whose names were both two 4-letter words, the first word being the same for both.  (Now, that particular bit of kid logic I do clearly remember.)

"Who can fathom kid logic, mine in particular?  My same kid logic had me refusing to see Star Wars when it was first released, because I'd just become aware of Star Trek, and to my 7-year-old mind, the former must certainly be a ripoff of the latter:  they were both science fiction whose names were both two 4-letter words, the first word being the same for both. "

Ha! I remember using the same logic...and thinking Star TREK was the rip off! I had seen Star Wars and had my action figures. And then when I started watching the Star Trek syndicated reruns on the local tv affiliate, I thought they were trying to rip off Star Wars (being so little, I had no clue that every color tv show wasn't necessarily a brand new show! I thought that only black and white tv shows weren't modern.)

When, as a young kid, I first saw Iron Man, I didn't understand how a skintight, flexible-as-fabric metal armor could be, even suspending disbelief (although, again...obviously, at that age, I had no conscious idea of the concept of "willing suspension of disbelief").

I had a much easier time with this than the Flash's costume/ring. I think I was eight. But the stories were so fun, didn't really care.

When I was five I remember getting the Star Trek rerun mixed up with the fig newton commerical that ran during the commercial break.

I never really thought about Iron Man's armor being 'made of anything' with particular consistent material characteristics at that age either. He was just the yellow and red guy.

Clearly the center design became Stane's Iron Monger. I always loved the right most. I wondered at the time if the caption had the names of the contributors out of order.

For JOHN BYRNE: Do you have any comments/behind the scenes recollections to share about these?

Edited by Ed Deans on 16 January 2010 at 11:46pm