Iron Man Battles the Melter!

Something is causing the iron used the latest Stark Industries built weapons to fail. Checking on this personally, Tony Stark can’t understand what is causing the iron to start melting. That’s when he is ambushed by a saboteur calling himself the Melter. The Melter has made it his purpose to ruin Stark Industries by sabotaging their government contracts. The villain is disappointed that Stark has been knocked out as he’d be surprised to know that the Melter is none other than Stark’s one-time business rival, Bruno Horgan. He recalls how Tony Stark exposed Bruno’s company for using substandard materials, making him lose his government contacts. Horgan vowed revenge and soon invented a ray that could weaken iron to the point it starts to melt. Deciding to use this as his instrument of revenge, Bruno created the costumed identity of the Melter.

After the Melter has left, Tony is found by Happy Hogan who has been sent by Pepper Potts to find their boss. Tony assures them that he’s fine and locks himself in his office in time to recharge his armor. That’s when an alarm goes off warning Tony that the Melter has broken into another part of the lab. Changing into Iron Man, Tony confronts the Melter and tries to stop him from wrecking any more equipment. Iron Man quickly discovers that his own armor is vulnerable to the Melter’s weapon after the villain uses his beam to melt the armor off of one of Tony’s arms. In order to protect his chest plate from being damaged, Tony uses magnetic devices to shatters some steam pipes, forcing the Melter to flee before he is burned by the steam.

After assessing the damage done by the Melter, Tony Stark cancels all of his upcoming appointments so he can lock himself away and come up with a solution to defeating the Melter. Unfortunately, Stark cannot ignore a call from Washington over the slowdown in production. Meeting with officials at the Capitol Building, Tony assures the Senators that he will step up production. Returning to Stark Industries, Tony discovers that the Melter has caused more sabotage in his absence and changes into Iron Man in order to deal with the melted slag. He is attacked once again by the Melter who tries to melt all of Iron Man’s armor this time.

This time, however, the melting ray doesn’t work against Iron Man because he replaced his usual suit of armor for another constructed entirely out of aluminium. In order to cover his escape, the Melter uses the device to cause a chunk of debris to fall toward Pepper and Happy. Luckily, Iron Man is able to save them. When he catches up to the villain, the Melter punches a hole in the ground and escapes through the sewers. With the Melter gone, Iron Man quickly changes out of his armor, and as Tony Stark tells his staff that they have a lot of work ahead of them.

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Melter, Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts, Harrington Byrd

Topical References

• One of Tony Stark’s custom-made vehicles is estimated of costing about $10,000. A custom made vehicle would be much more expensive now. Adjusting for inflation a $10,000 car would be worth $84,578.76 in 2020. This sounds a lot closer to the reality today, based on this article, which states that a custom made vehicle can cost between $100,000 and $300,000.