In Tales of Suspense 49 (Jan. 1964), Iron Man uses his new armor to withstand a nuclear detonation and rescue a member of the X-Men, the new team fighting the Blob in their third issue that same month.
“Oh, it makes perfect sense that Stan (Lee) would want to showcase his new title in another book and market them a bit more,” comics historian Don Alsafi noted. “But … the Angel? I know the X-Men has only been around for a couple of issues so far and hasn’t had much of a chance to develop the characters — and yet, the Angel isn’t the team member I would have thought to be most appealing or interesting. Really, in a setting as weird and wondrous as the Marvel world has rapidly become, the ability to fly is as unremarkable of power as … well, the ability to shrink. (Note that characters such as the Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, and Iron Man all possess the power of flight, and in ways that are completely secondary to their main abilities.)”
Deranged by the all-purpose plot device of radiation, the Angel embarks on a rampage that Iron Man halts with a particularly heroic strategy. Deliberately letting his boot jets flame out, Iron Man plunges into a fatal dive, reasoning that his plight may snap the Angel back to his normally heroic personality.
When Daredevil fought the Sub-Mariner, this was another innovative example of a Marvel hero achieving a victory by “losing.”
The Angel was exposed by flying above a nuclear experiment at Tony Stark’s weapons plant, so Iron Man undoubtedly felt personal responsibility for his plight. Nevertheless, Stark risked his life for a stranger in a gamble that paid off.
I’m not sure 21st-century audiences, long since jaded by the Lord of the Flies ethics of “reality TV,” would buy a superhero that altruistic. But it impressed the hell out of me when I was 9.
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