mARVEL sUPER hEROES #15 at Couture's

(as seen in the pages of Advanced Iron #54)

Special contribution from Hugo V. Negron!!

MARVEL SUPER-HEROES #15

"The Heart of Power" - Fall 1993

Story : Len Kaminski
Art : Keith Pollard

Do you recall Iron Man Annual #10, "Atlantis Attacks"?

In this annual, there was a small back-up story entitled, "Can You Top This?" in which several of IM's old baddies were at a bar sharing stories of their defeats at the hands of our armored hero. This was more of an art-pin up series of drawings than an actual story. Well, there was one drawing of a guy decked out in a purplish costume torturing some old man who was chained up while Iron Man is shown swooping in from the back.

I didn't recall this scene OR the villain from any of my IM issues, so I actually found this scene - in Marvel Super Heroes #15! When Stark puts the ixnay on a satellite program because of costly power supply problems, the scientist in charge of the cancelled program tries to find a viable power supply. He ends up coming across "Inoshiro Kondo of Ranma, Inc", a baddie who, with the use of the mysterious element Z, can transform from "flesh to smoke and from smoke to crude oil". Oh, on top of that his hands can turn into razor sharp diamond claws. A rather corny enemy, but hey, in the end you find out Kondo was being protected and empowered by Mi Yu of the Shinma (remember the Face Thief?? I'm just a big fan of continuity).

Not a bad story at all (despite the corny villain and his corny powers/costume), and we get to see Tony "whoop it up" at various exotic locales with various exotic females until the ending battle scenes.

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