Spores!

Tony Stark is in his private lab running tests on his Iron Man armor when his computer systems begin to overload from an electrical surge. Cutting off the power before it can fry his armor, Tony changes into Iron Man and follows the overload to its source.

Why this happened has its origins in deep space as a sextet of energy spores approach the Earth and spot an alien vessel in orbit. The spores penetrate the ship’s hull and begin attacking the computer system inside. At first, it fends the spores off, knocking them outside and into Earth’s atmosphere. Three of the spores burn up on re-entry, but the remaining three manage to pull out and resume their attack on the alien ship. This time, they manage to cripple the defense computer before it can destroy them.

Back on Earth, Iron Man traces the energy surge to a lab where Sylvia Karnowsky is working on a device that can convert electricity into gasoline. She is about to go on her break and make a sandwich. As she is explaining all of this, Iron Man is teleported away while she is not looking.

He is brought aboard the alien ship and its internal computers begin communicating with him telepathically, asking for help fighting off the three remaining spores. Iron Man agrees to help but finds this task easier said than done when the spores manage to take control of his armor and make it run wild. Iron Man tries a bunch of his on-board gadgets to try and expel the spores but it is not until the ship increases its gravitational field to immobilize him that the spores finally leave. However, they then merge into a massive creature with great strength, durability, and an acidic touch. After trying various weapons against the monster, Iron Man discovers it has a weakness to electricity and rips a live wire from the wall and uses it to zap the monster.

In response, the creature turns into an acidic gas which threatens to melt Iron Man’s armor. In this form, Iron Man lures the creatures into a freezer where the gas is frozen into a solid block of ice. The computer then instructs him to bring the creatures to the main control room, as it has finished making repairs to the damage done by the spores. When the creatures break out of their icy prison, the computer blasts them with energy that renders the spores harmless. The ship explains that it comes from a world of peaceful and sentient machines that soon found themselves caught in a war with the spores, which consumed electrical energy. Driving off the invaders, the machines realized that other worlds were at risk and send out ships to track down and neutralize the spores before they can harm anyone else, thus why the alien ship came to Earth in the first place.

The neutralization process transforms the spores so that they can consume solar energy and they are set loose. Thanking Iron Man for his help and returns him to Earth. As he heads down he realizes he’s hungry and hopes that Sylvie hasn’t eaten all of her sandwich.

Recurring Characters

Iron Man

Topical References

• In this story, Sylvia’s invention is stated as turning electricity into unleaded gasoline. The distinction here being the fact that in 1981 a lot of gasoline was sold with lead in it. This dates back to a discovery in the 1920s when General Motors discovered that adding led to gas would improve engine efficiency. However, this increased the level of pollution and had an adverse affect on people’s health. Lead exposure was associated with increased aggression in humans. The United States decided to phase out the use of lead in gasoline in 1973 but this was fought and delayed tooth-and-nail by lobbyists for the oil industry (because of course they did) and a full on ban didn’t come into full effect until 1996. While unleaded gasoline was more common in the 1980s, people still made a distinction between the two because you could still find gasoline with lead in it.

Supplementary Material

This story also includes a pin-up penciled by Jack Abel and inked by Bob Layton. Judging from the “A Marvel Masterwork Pin-Up” tagging, this was probably an unused pin-up that was drawn back in the 1960s that wasn’t used and that Layton inked it many decades after it was first drawn by Able. The pin-up promises a new Iron Man story penciled by Abel. However, this issue never materializes. My assumption is that it was an old inventory story that was drawn up and went unused for whatever reasons. I’m a little surprised that it’s not one of the stories that was dredged up when Marvel put out their From the Marvel Vault one-shots (which printed previously unpublished stories from various decades that were in various stages of completion).

If I were to hazard a guess and my presumptions are correct, perhaps it didn’t get published because it was already dated and it wouldn’t really fit with the then current Iron Man stories being published because it was a story that was already 20 years old. Since then, it’s probably been forgotten or lost somewhere, hence why it never saw print.