Today, we look at how one of the most important characters in Iron Man’s life hasn’t appeared in over thirty years!
This is “You Act Like We Never Have Met,” which is a feature about one-time cast members of popular comic book series that have fallen by the wayside in the years since. Some of these are characters who would appear in comics routinely read by hundreds of thousands of people but are now effectively mysteries.
Iron Man #128 (by Bob Layton, David Michelinie and John Romita Jr.) famously saw Tony Stark deal with his drinking problem…
However, the issue basically just has Tony quit cold turkey…
and then everything was okay….
Layton and Michelinie were obviously limited by the era, but there were some, including Denny O’Neil, who believed that they had Tony get sober way too quickly.
So when O’Neil took over writing the book, he quickly had Tony relapse into drinking, as seen in Iron Man #169 (art by Luke McDonnell and Steve MitcheLL)…
Tony is such a mess that James Rhodes has to take over as Iron Man…
Things came to a head for Tony in Iron Man #182, with its wonderfully ominous cover…
Tony, by now, is mostly living on the streets as a hobo. A woman he met while on the streets dies giving birth and Tony has to protect her newborn child from the elements…
Tony is admitted to the hospital and presumably went through his detox while possibly unconscious…
By the end of the issue, Tony has been discharged and has stopped drinking. His need to protect Gretl’s baby was enough to keep him alive through that night and to ultimately get him past his addiction.
Tony then moves to California with Rhodey and a pair of sibling scientists to start a new company…
However, just when Tony got his life in order, Stane attacked again in Iron Man #199 (by O’Neil, Herb Trimpe, Ian Akin and Brian Garvey), kidnapping Tony’s friends and former co-workers, and he even kidnaps the baby…
Oddly enough, once Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts and Mrs. Arbogast were kidnapped, Tony instantly thought of Gretl’s baby, which is a weird leap, right? But it was a correct one…
However, when returning to Circuits Maximus later on, Tony sees the headquarters explode…
One of Tony’s closest friends died in the explosion, is it his best friend, James Rhodes, is it his possible love interest if she ever took those glasses off, Clytemnestra Erwin, or is it her dorky brother, Morley Erwin, who no one would ever miss if he blew up? WHO COULD IT BE?!?!
Shockingly, as we learned in Iron man #200 (by O’Neil, Mark Bright, Akin and Garvey) it was Morley…
James was badly injured in the explosion, though, badly enough that there is no way that he can become Iron Man…
So Tony has to get through his nonsense and become Iron Man again…
Tony, now back as Iron Man, fought Obadiah Stane as Iron Monger, who held the baby hostage…
But while Stane’s armor was advanced, he didn’t know hoe to use it the way that Tony knew how to use his armor, so Tony was able to defeat him and rescue the baby…
Stane then decided to kill himself in front of Tony and the baby…
So the baby was a HUGE part of Tony Stark’s life at this point, as it was the reason that Tony got sober and it was one of the people that Stane kidnapped to get at Tony and was even the FINAL hostage and yet once it was rescued…that was it! The baby was never seen again! This baby played such a major role in Tony Stark’s life and yet no writer has ever bothered to even check in on the kid!
How weird is that? How has no writer even given us a, “Hey, how’s that baby doing?” They don’t even have to age the kid up to make it a supporting cast member (like TV shows do all of the time, which I just recently wrote about), just have Tony CHECK IN on such an important figure in his history. It’s so strange that it has never happened.
Okay, that’s it for this installment of You Act Like We Never Have Met! Thanks to my pal Martin Gray for the suggestion! Everyone else, feel free to write in to brianc@cbr.com if you have suggestions for future installments!
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