Norman Osborne and Gwen Stacy in the maternity ward

Peter Parker, MJ and Mephisto hammering out their deal

Batman shooting Darkseid to death

Earth 2 Superman Zombie eating brains

Powerman and Alias... Nah.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought it was said that the whole Alcoholism arc was meant to be a done-in-one kind of story, not meant to define the character or be revisited. It was Denny O'Neil that gave Stark another bender that lead to Rhodey taking over for a while.

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Here's a link to a Bob Layton interview on Iron Man and his career, and an answer to the question about "Demon in a Bottle":

http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=124

Tony Stark's alcoholism story (focused heavily in Vol. 1, #128) is a classic, referenced today as one of the best and most poignant. Today the subject matter seems tame (compared to the amount of sex, violence and drugs prevalent in comics today), but they still read as very relevant. How hard was it to get this story past Marvel and the CCA? Did you and Michelinie know how "timeless" this story would become? 20-some odd years later, how does that story stand up for you?

We had NO idea how strongly the comics biz would react at the time. To be quite honest, I don't remember giving it much thought. We were simply telling another Iron Man story. The only difference was that the villain in that one was Tony Stark himself.

Man, Red Arrow can NOT catch a break, can he?

So far, the only rotten, horrifying fate that he seems to have escaped was becoming Liefeld's Shaft in the original Youngblood/ Titans proposal.

Emery, congratulations on an excellently observed series of comics' most egregious and nauseating "Jump the Shark" moments.

For me, I'd need a couple of statues portraying the Golden Age "So much for Fair Play, huh, Terry?" Mister Terrific and a Justice Society Flash, Green Lantern, and Starman kill the Rag Doll statue. (I picture it just as a little house with a burst of green energy at one end, yellow energy at the other, and some speed lines wrapped around it... An ugly statue for an ugly moment...)

Seriously, from a marketing point of view, "Comic's Ugliest Moments" would be a nigh-neverending well of creative material. Dr. Light's rape of Sue Dibny, Stealth's rape of Vril Dox, Karen Page in a South American motel room, offering a folded piece of paper in exchange for heroin, Spider-Man's having his eyeball eaten...

Hey, if Marvel Zombies statues can sell, so can these!

Dr.Light's rape of Sue Dibny

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Great move to make him more evil, and put another nail in the comics coffin.

I actually thought he came across quite evil enough when he snapped in Suicide Squad # 27 and killed the young child hero Sparkler.

Robert: I did sort of "reMarvelize" the character. A handsome, billionaire playboy without a flaw sort of goes against the Marvel method, at least superficially.

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Hm.

Here's a question: Was the character really broken before he was turned into an alcoholic? Did Tony need to be "reMarvelized"? Did the character need to be "fixed"?

I really enjoyed IRON MAN comics before Tony was given* a drinking problem. I didn't feel he needed to be "fixed"... and now he's forever "fixed"!


*I use "given" because I don't feel the problem grew naturally out of the character.

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As Bob Layton's quote I posted above goes, it seems that this was meant to be an issue neatly and nicely wrapped up in issue 128. This isn't the case when someone is an alcoholic. To be fair, no one had to acknowledge this element again unless they wanted to.

Amyas, I have experienced alcohoism in my family, and I agree it is an illness. A person can never stop being an alcoholic, they just have to resist the return to alcohol use.

I think in the case of IM it was one that they thought could be trotted out for a storyline and then put back in the box.

Unfortunately, this was not the case.