Origins in War continued: the Fantastic Four and Iron Man

Fantastic Four

Carrying the same elements in their origin as the Hulk, Stan Lee’s origin of the Fantastic Four’s also ties into the same Cold War attitudes and atomic age stigma.  The foursome of Reed Richards, Ben Grimm, Susan and Johnny Storm gain their powers after they hurtle themselves haphazardly into outer space to investigate the mysterious cosmic radiation and unlock their scientific secrets in Fantastic Four #1 (1962).  Before launching, pilot Ben Grimm expressed concern over flying into the unknown in an untested spaceship to which Sue Storm responds with her own determination by exclaiming, “We’ve got to take that chance... unless you want the commies to beat us to it”.  This statement stems straight from the Space Race attitudes of the 1960’s when the USA was determined to have the foothold in space before the Soviet Union did.

The Cold War language in the Fantastic Fou

The stigma of the atomic age returns in this origin as well with radiation and the mysterious “cosmic rays”. Ben Grimm’s original warnings about the radiation go unheeded by the rest of the team  Eventually, soon after Sue Storm remarks how perfect the space flight was proceeding, Grimm sees that the cosmic radiation laid ahead and  “no one knows what they’ll do”. This is an allusion to the unknown powers of the nuclear age.  Though the radiation bestows amazing powers upon the four, Grimm is transformed, like the Hulk, into an enormous monster.  The dangers of radiation in that atomic age are reinforced by Lee here as Grimm forever is cursed and disfigured by the unknown powers encountered in the then-new scientific age.

The "Cosmic Radiation" Strikes

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Tales of Suspense (1963)

Iron Man

For Iron Man, Lee turned directly towards the military industrial complex and the Cold War. Premiering in Tales of Suspense #39, Tony Stark, while on a survey trip to war-torn Vietnam, finds himself injured by a bomb and then captured by a North Vietnamese Communist leader, who then orders him to design weapons. To escape and keep his wounded heart beating, he secretly constructs a “suit of transistor powered armor that gives him great strength and destructive power”. Another prisoner, Ho Yinsen, a physicist known by Stark, constructs a magnetic chest plate to keep the shrapnel from reaching Stark’s heart, keeping him alive. Once stateside again, Stark discovers that the shrapnel fragment lodged in his chest cannot be removed without killing him, and he is forced to wear the armor’s chestplate beneath his clothes to act as a regulator for his heart. He must recharge the chestplate every day or else risk the shrapnel killing him. A hero with an innate weakness, Iron Man comes straight from the Vietnam conflict.

Tony Stark's North Vietnamese captors.  Note the use of yellow ink
for the North Vietnamese characters.

Born directly out of war, Lee’s Iron Man is a character who “lives and breathes the military industrial complex”.  His enemies then in turn were stereotypes characterized as usually Communist in nature like his arch-nemesis the Mandarin, a Chinese warlord. Lee wanted hero literally from the front-lines of the war to take on the Communist threat like the the Soviet Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man. Iron Man may not have been linked to the super science of radiation and atomic energy like the Hulk in his origin, but he was most definitely a superhero born of war itself.

The Incredible Hulk is born from the ashes of World War II

The Incredible Hulk #1 (1962)

Stan Lee created the Incredible Hulk with the most obvious use of the message of war in his origin. First appearing in The Incredible Hulk #1 (1962), the Hulk begins his tale as Dr. Bruce Banner, scientist, on the day of a test detonation of the country’s newest weapon, the “Gamma” bomb. A meek atomic scientist named Dr. Bruce Banner has constructed a powerful new “gamma” bomb to be tested at the US Army base in New Mexico. The cigar chomping General “Thunderbolt” Ross barks at him to hurry up with the preparations. but Banner warns that they are tampering with “powerful forces.” With only moments till detonation, Banner see a reckless teenager that has wandered onto the desert test site. He runs out to the site himself and leads the youth to safety but before Banner can protect himself, the bomb explodes and bathes him in mysterious gamma radiation. Later that same night, Banner finds himself transformed into a hulk, a giant monster with only destruction left in his path. Banner’s fate is to forever be chained to this monster, just as society entered the era of possible nuclear armageddon

Banner's first transformation into the Hulk

In the beginning, Banner would undergo his startling transformation in the Hulk every night. In the excerpt below, the Hulk, with geiger counter clicking, even represented the famous Doomsday Clock of that era with it ever “clicking” toward midnight representing how close the planet may be veering towards disaster. His initial transformations were also accompanied by a clicking geiger counter, which also reinforces the idea of a ticking bomb about to be unleashed. Within a few issues though, Lee changed the transformation to be one activated by anger, a change making the unpredictable nature of the Hulk even that much more dangerous.

A modern Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the Hulk truly represents much more a casual dual personality. The Hulk encapsulates some of the worst fears of mankind. He erupts literally from the ashes of nuclear weapons and he exists only to destroy. With his anger and power, the Hulk embodies nuclear war totally out of control. This imagery is an idea easily on the minds of many readers of the era of the 1960’s.

Lee’s central use of the word “radiation” centrally in the Hulk’s origin has huge overtones during the age of nuclear war.  Thermal and ionizing radiation is a major byproduct of a nuclear detonation which in turn caused massive destruction and deaths in Hiroshima and Nagasaki even after the initial nuclear blast wave.  The key word of “radiation” identifies and labels the Hulk as a product of the atomic age. Stan Lee said he thought up the name gamma for the bomb because he had “heard it before and it sounded kinda scientific.” So he used it! In truth, gamma rays are part of the ionizing radiation in a nuclear burst, so it is relevant. Still though, the image of the bomb site recalls immediately upon the test detonation of the atomic bomb at the culmination of the Manhattan Project in World War II.

Even though the image of the atomic bomb ties heavily into the origin of the creature, Lee goes beyond that to add a cold war element of a Communist spy hiding at the Gamma Bomb test site, trying to steal America’s “scientific secrets.” This spy’s presence along with all the nuclear imagery verifies the Hulk as a product of both the atomic age and the Cold War.

The Gamma Bomb explodes and exposes Banner to the mysterious radiation