Have you checked out this classic double sized issue of Iron Man? Greg Turner revisits the tale of Iron Man vs. Doctor Doom in Camelot from Iron Man #150 in this video retro review!
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Welcome to the video version of Retro Review. I’m Greg Turner with Back to the Past Pop Culture TV and today I’d like to take a look at Marvel Comics’ Iron Man # 150, cover dated September 1981. It features a really nice Iron Man versus Doctor Doom cover drawn by John Romita, Jr. and Bob Layton. They also provide the interior art for David Michelinie’s story entitled; “Knightmare”.
The story picks up right where issue # 149 left off, with Doctor Doom’s Time Machine exploding and hurtling the dueling armored foes into the past. They think that it was just an explosion, and believe they have just been expelled into Doom’s courtyard. But after looking around Iron Man realizes they’ve come a lot farther than that!
Doctor Doom quickly deduces what has happened. His exploded time machine had been set to come to Camelot, for Doom to consult with the sorceress Morgana Le Fey. Thanks to the turn of events, they both have arrived, only in a much more permanent state than he’d planned! They haven’t been there for very long before they are approached and assaulted by armored knights who attempt to take them prisoner.
Iron Man is quick to make peace with King Arthur and demonstrates some of his armor’s abilities. Doom is not so forthcoming, and states that in his homeland he is a king, and won’t lower himself to perform “parlour tricks”. They are offered a place in Camelot, as permanent guests by Arthur. Shortly thereafter, Doom is able to obtain information on Morgana Le Fey’s whereabouts. He immediately leaves Camelot, and locates Morgana’s Castle and offers his services to the Dark Sorceress.
Doom explains to the Sorceress how he has been visiting history’s great magicians, using his time machine, with one purpose: to free his mother from the prisons of hell. Morgana Le Fey listens and strikes a bargain with Doom; she will help him if he will lead her undead soldiers in the final battle with King Arthur. Doom readily agrees. And so the battle is begun, King Arthur’s knights, led by the Golden Avenger, Iron Man, and Morgana Le Fey’s undead army led by Doctor Doom!
The battle rages, until Tony Stark puts two and two together, Le Fey’s Soldiers are undead, so the only way to truly stop them is to stop them at the source, Morgana Le Fey herself! While the battle continues, he leaves and makes his way to Morgana’s castle, where he starts another battle, this one of science versus magic! In the end, Morgana is defeated, and she is forced to leave the land.
Meanwhile, back at the battlefield, once the undead soldiers collapse around him, Doom knows that Le Fey has gone, and his chance of rescuing his tormented mother has once again slipped from his grasp! In a rage, he smashes in on a startled Iron Man. He threatens to kill Iron Man, and then shocks the Avenger by adding…”someday”. The battle is over, so even Doom has conceded that the time is right for his return to his own time and comes up with a plan which he reveals to Iron Man:
It is possible that they can return to the present, but only with their combined geniuses working together and by cannibalizing both of their armored suits and using the intricate circuitry to create a device that might warp time around them and return them to the present day. They realize the only way they will get back home is to work together! So putting their differences aside, the two work together all through the night, and by dawn have come up with an elaborate construction wired into both armored suits for power. They make a truce that if the device should happen to work, they will allow each other to go their own way.
When the final connection is made, the fabric of time rips around them, and the two find themselves back in the present time, their collaborative construct has been reduced to molten slag and Doom leaves with a remark: “We will meet again”, to which a weary Iron Man simply states, ”I’ll be waiting.”
A very tight, well written, as well as drawn issue, which I give four (4) out of five (5) Legion Flight Rings! Plus it’s a special double sized, 52 page issue, so you can’t go wrong! Hope you’ve enjoyed this video review and thanks for watching!