In the Days of King Arthur

Last week, we looked at Iron Man #149, which ended with the title character and Doctor Doom getting thrown back in time.


Iron Man #150 (September 1981) shows us where (and when) they ended up. As with the previous issue, this one was co-plotted by David Michelinie and Bob Layton, with Michelinie writing the final script. John Romita, Jr. did the breakdowns and Layton finished the art.

The two find themselves standing outside King Arthur's castle at Camelot. It's actually a foreshadowing to Doom's later actions that he immediately recognizes the place. As we'll soon discover, he'd been planning on visiting this time and place anyways.

Two guys in powered armor are attention-getters, so they're soon confronted by a squad of knights. Doom briefly tussles with them until Tony points out that they are currently stranded here, so it might be a good idea to calm down until they figure out what's going on.

 There's a well-written scene in which the two are brought before King Arthur, where they use Standard Time Traveler Ploy #32, claiming to be from faraway lands and using their technology to build up credibility as magicians. Within that context, characterizations remain consistent. Tony acts respectfully towards Arthur, where Doom arrogantly announces himself as co-royalty.

The Arthurian characters all speak an ornate style of English, by the way--a language that didn't even exist at that time. But, as is the case with so many stories about time travel or alien contact, ignoring language issues keeps the story from being bogged down in details. Besides, it's entirely possible that both Tony and Doom have translation devices built into their respective suits of armor.

The two are given rooms for the night while Arthur tries to figure out what to do about them. Tony spends his time sweet talking a pretty maiden. Doom, on the other hand, hypnotises a pretty maiden to find out where evil sorceress Morgana Le Fey hangs out, then busts out of Camelot to pay her a visit.

Doom has to figure out how to bypass a couple of magical booby traps, but is soon cutting a deal with Morgana (who dresses in the sexy-evil style that seems to be required of all evil sorceresses). Doom has been time traveling to learn from powerful magicians of the past to figure out how to rescue his mother's soul from hell. Morgana promises to teach him how to do this if he leads an army of zombies against Camelot--she's magically imprisoned in her castle at the moment, so can't lead the undead soldiers herself.

Doom's all on-board with this plan, while Tony volunteers to fight for Arthur. During the ensuing battle, though, Tony realizes that it must be Morgana--not Doom--who raised up the undead.

So he flies off to her castle, using technology to figure out how to punch past various magical threats, all the while complaining that he really hates magic.

When Morgana realizes the jig is up, she teleports away. This is a bit of a plot hole, since she's supposed to be magically tied to her castle. But perhaps she's moving through time rather than space.

In any case, once she's gone, the zombies simply collapse. Doom realizes what happened and is quite ticked off.

But he also realizes that he and Iron Man must work together to cannibalize parts of their armor and make a time machine to get them home. So a truce is called and they are soon able to zap themselves back to the 20th Century.

Like the previous issue, this is a solidly written adventure story, with a strong plot and great action. Michelinie keeps his characterizations of Tony and Doom consistant, once again counterpointing their attitudes towards life and other human beings to effectively  highlight their respective natures. I mentioned last week that this was published at the tale-end of the time when Marvel superhero comics were consistantly fun for me to read, but this two-issue story arc hit all the right notes to produce a really fun yarn.

Next week, we'll move on from two Marvel Universe geniuses to visit with a Duck Universe genius.