Iron Man (1968) 24

Iron Man (1968) 24
Apr 1970

My Son… the Minotaur!
by Archie Goodwin, Johnny Craig, and George Tuska

Madame Masque (aka Whitney Frost) washes up on an island in the Agean Sea and is captured by a scientist, Dr. Vryolak, and his son, Miklos, the Minotaur. The scientist saved his son’s life years before but in the process Miklos became something other than fully human. Although his father searches for a cure for his son he ultimately decides to try a different solution, with their captive, Madame Masque.

Dr. Vryolak sells Whitney Frost’s gold mask. Her face is covered in bandages for most of the story. Eventually the mask winds up in the hands of SHIELD and Jasper Sitwell. SHIELD scientists are able to lift two sets of fingerprints off the mask, Whitney’s and Tony’s. Stark tells Sitwell about his fling with Whitney while they were working for Midas (Iron Man 17-19). The two men agree to work together to find Whitney.

This story feels very familiar. It reminds me of the Batman: The Animated Series episode where Catwoman gets changed into a humanoid catlike beast. This comic book precedes that cartoon by about 20-25 years but I’m pretty sure that cartoon wasn’t based on this comic book. If anything the comic book owes a debt to The Island of Dr. Moreau and possibly to an earlier version of this story in another comic, maybe a Batman comic book.

Other stuff:

• Early in the story there is a nine panel grid page which shows Madame Masque dreaming about Tony Stark and Jasper Sitwell
• The art duties are flipped with Craig (the regular inker) doing the pencils and Tuska (the regular penciler) doing the inks. Craig lays out the story very differently than Tuska
• Janice Cord is dead; she was killed during a battle between Iron Man and Titanium Man in Iron Man 22

In the end Madame Masque gets her gold mask back. Jasper Sitwell is unconscious. She shares a moment with Iron Man before walking off into the proverbial sunset. She tells him about what Jasper and Tony mean to her and did for her not realizing that she’s talking to Tony Stark.