Cry Marauder!

The Masked Marauder and his gang have broken into a Stark Aerospace facility to steal a new prototype space shuttle. With his minions Steele and Hacker, they are able to break into the facility using devices created by the Marauder himself. They manage to steal the shuttle with little opposition.[1]

Meanwhile, in Chicago, Iron Man has rushed Roxanne Gilbert to a nearby hospital after she was burned by her brother, the criminal known as Firebrand. There Iron Man is hassled by a nurse who wants to know who will pay for Roxanne’s medical needs. Iron Man tells her to send the bill to his “employer”, Tony Stark. After Roxanne gets out of surgery, Iron Man pays her a visit. While she should be grateful for the hero saving her life, she can only think that the beating he gave Firebrand will only strengthen his hatred. Leaving the hospital, Iron Man changes out his armor and returns with flowers as Tony Stark. However, the nurse at the front desk informs him that Roxanne has requested they bar Stark from seeing her as she has been critical of Stark Industries sell weapons in the past. The fact that Tony has since moved his company away from munitions in recent months has done little to make up for the decades of blood that has been shed by Stark weapons.[2] This rejection upsets Tony because he is trying his best to make his company more ethical and he wishes he could express this to Roxanne.

Not far away, Pepper Potts is in a heated phone argument with her husband, Happy Hogan. Happy is displeased that Pepper is on a business trip with Tony Stark because he believes her place should be at home. Pepper, who has found the life of a house wife stifling refuses to come home when Happy asks her to do so. Angrily hanging up on her, Happy storms outside and kicks over a trash can in a fit of rage before collecting himself and picking up the garbage he knocked over. Happy’s reaction causes Pepper to cry and wishes that Happy could see things her way. When Tony comes knocking at her hotel room and she agrees to accompany him to dinner. However, she is still deeply upset by her argument with Happy. Tony can’t understand what is going on with the couple as he thought they always had a picturesque marriage. While back in New York, Happy begins to miss his bachelor life and wonders if he should just give up on his marriage, thinking his wife prefers the jet-set life that Tony Stark can provide her.[3]

The dinner with Pepper comes to an abrupt end when Tony gets a call about the attack on his aerospace plant. Rushing off to change into Iron Man, Tony flies off and tracks down the stolen space shuttle. This leads to a battle with the Masked Marauder and his goons, who use their bosses high tech weapons against the hero. Steele even tries to best Iron Man using his own suit of strength-enhancing armor. Although Iron Man’s suit is severely damaged in battle, he manages to defeat the Masked Marauder’s goons. This does leave him in bad shape when he tries to defeat the Marauder himself, who comes at the hero with more powerful weapons. Ultimately, Iron Man falls when the Marauder uses his blinding opti-blast to blind the Avenger. this temporarily blinds Iron Man long enough for the Masked Marauder to knock him out. With his foe defeated, the Marauder carries him away as he can use Iron Man for his latest scheme.

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Masked Marauder, Pepper Potts, Happy Hogan, Roxanne Gilbert

Continuity Notes

1. Steele mentions the Marauder’s constant clashes with Daredevil. At the time of this story, the Marauder clashed with Man Without Fear on multiple occasions as seen in Daredevil #16-19, 22-23, and 26-27. This story also touches on the fact that the Marauder was seemingly disintegrated at the end of his last battle with Daredevil. Here it’s revealed that the “disintegrator” was actually teleportation device that covered the Marauder’s escape.

2. Tony Stark had decided to shift Stark Industries focus away from munitions to other scientific endeavors in Iron Man #48. See below for more on this.

3. Pepper just recently started working for Stark again. Pepper previously worked for Stark from Tales of Suspense #45 to 89 when she married Happy Hogan and quit. Tony hired her in issue #57. Happy has been upset that Pepper is working and trying to pressure her into quitting since issue #59.

Topical References

• The Masked Marauder refers to Stark’s experimental space craft as the first such craft capable of flying both in space and like a conventional aircraft. At the time this story was written in 1973, space crafts were all rocket powered and could not fly like ordinary aircraft. They were built specifically to have enough thrust to achieve escape velocity and safely descend back to Earth. This all changed with the creation of the first space shuttle in 1981. Reference to Stark’s being the first to be able to do this should be considered topical.

• Any reference to the Vietnam War in the present tense (as though it took place during the Modern Age of the Marvel Universe) should be considered topical. See below for more details.

• Likewise, statements by Tony that this story takes place in the 1970s should be considered topical.

• A gawker compares Tony Stark to businessman Howard Hughes in this story. This should be considered a topical reference, particularly since Hughes died in 1976.

Stark Industries Weapons Manufacturing History

This story presents the idea that Stark Industries was selling weapons to the United States military for use in the Vietnam War. The way this story frame it is that this was over the last decade and that it was during Tony Stark’s run of the company. More over, the “ten years” in question is referring to the decade of Iron Man stories published between 1963-1969. The implication here is that Iron Man has been active for almost a decade and that Tony Stark had been selling munitions to be used in the Vietnam War that entire time.

This story was written well before the advent of the Sliding Timescale and writers would regularly refer to past stories and character histories as though they were happening in real time.

Simply put, all references to the Vietnam War in a context that suggests that it happened either during or relatively recently to the Modern Age of the Marvel Universe should be considered a topical reference. Per History of the Marvel Universe #2, all such references have since been delegated to the Sin-Cong Conflict, a fictional war that was created by writers to explain these dated Vietnam War references in stories that take place in the Modern Age.

Furthermore, per the Sliding Timescale, Tony Stark has only been Iron Man for about three years at the time of this story, not ten. Still, Tony became the head of Stark Industries at a very young age since his adopted parents (Howard and Maria Stark) have been dead for years at this point. Per International Iron Man #7, Tony was born approximately 23 years prior to the start of the Modern Age, making him 26 here at the time of this story. Unless you want to believe that Tony was put in charge of the company at 16, it seems unlikely that he was the head of the company at that time.

That said, since stories show Tony’s adopted father Howard as being active in the 40s and 50s, (notably in the S.H.I.E.L.D. and Operation S.I.N. limited series) it stands to reason that Stark Industries was around and sold munitions to the military during the Vietnam War. So such an assertion can still be considered true. With that in mind, only assertions of a connection to the Vietnam War in a present-tense context in Modern Age stories should be considered topical.