Most of the early Marvel super heroes gained their strange and awesome powers in freak accidents, often involving radiation. Iron Man, however, was a different story. A tribute to the genius of invention, the Armored Avenger was the only true "self-made" hero of the Marvel Age of comics.

Born of necessity, Iron Man wasn't just millionaire inventor Tony Stark's alter ego, he was his means of staying alive. After having been captured by North Vietnamese soldiers and held in a prison camp, the mortally wounded constructed a special armored chest plate which kept the shrapnel in his body from entering his heart. Under the guise of building weaponry for the North Vietnamese, Stark and an imprisoned dissident scientist build a suit of armor which Stark uses to escape his captors and return to the Western world as Iron Man! Collected in this volume are the earliest, seldom seen Iron Man adventures. Marvel legend Stan Lee weaves classic '60s tales of Communist saboteurs and bigger than life super-villains. Classic characters such as the Asian despot, the Mandarin, and the Russian armored soldier the Crimson Dynamo make their first appearances here, as do villains that would later become popular Marvel super heroes, like the beautiful Black Widow and Hawkeye the archer. Collected in a mammoth, 528-page black and white volume, this affordable omnibus is too good to pass up!