Booze, Boobs and Robot Boots No. 9: Tales of Suspense 47

What's happening? The Melter attacks! He goes around screwing with Tony's livelihood to exact revenge on the guy. Melter gets inside Stark Industries and begins randomly ... what? What the hell do you think a guy named Melter does? He goes about doing that. Iron Man, of course, shows up, but Melter hands him a beating until Iron Man escapes. The government calls Tony to D.C. to answer for the decrease in his company's productivity. Explanations about The Melter fall on deaf ears (after all, it's not like Tony's shit gets sabotaged every other issue or anything).

Tony heads home to start putting the pieces of his (once again, disarrayed) company back together. He dons the Iron Man armor to help remove the melted equipment when the Melter arrives again. This time he goes right after Iron Man, but his ray doesn't work this time since Tony redesigned his armor. Melter escapes after Iron Man has to save Happy and Pepper from a falling chunk of melted iron.

ETC: Despite the name, The Melter doesn't so much melt stuff. No, his ray only works on iron. Something he accidentally discovered and put to work destroying Tony, since Tony outed him for using crappy parts to make.... military things. Tony's savvy like that.

Tony's redesign of the Iron Man armor is to make it out of tough, extruded aluminum. Guess that makes the Melter the least terrifying villain of the bunch in a relatively short time period.

MVP: Chuck. Chuck is the red-hat-wearing, green-shirt adorned foreman. This guy was put to work to clean up the mess the Melter made. He started removing that old melted iron in a hurry, all the while his internal monologue made sure we knew he thought Iron Man's ass was done for because the Melter was so awesome. Also, he alerts Iron Man when ol' Melty shows up the second time. He was pretty clutch.

MIA: The use for Happy. I mean, Pepper is pretty damn useless, but at least she answers the phone and is eye candy. Happy is a chauffeur that doesn't drive. He even makes note of it when he offers to drive Tony to D.C. and Tony basically tells him to fuck off. This is the third issue for Happy and other than pulling Tony out of that wreck, Chuck was more useful in three panels.

WTF: Melter. Holy shit, buddy. First, you stumble upon a ray that only melts iron. While your ability to become a supervillain is pretty tenuous, it's the 60s, so I'll give you a pass. But why in the hell would you make it into a chest piece and not say... an awesome looking gun. And then you add a mask, which I get, even Tony Stark needs a secret identity, but what's with the cape? And the blue, pinstriped pants? And you do realize your usefulness is pretty much in a niche market, right?