Where Monsters Dwell #26, which had a publication date of January 1974, reprints Tales of Suspense #16 from April 1961. It is a Lee-Kirby story, one that has the feel of being dashed off quickly. But like so many of the Lee-Kirby Silver Age monster tales, it is illuminating to read as a precursor of a Marvel superhero; in this case Iron Man, who debuts two years later in Tales of Suspense #39.
"The Thing Called Metallo!" tells the tale of a hardened convict who escapes from the penitentiary and makes his way to the metropolis hoping to blend in and disappear. Fretful that he will be discovered because of the thickness of police on the streets, he decides to volunteer to be an experimental subject. The military is researching a nuclear-blast-resistant, fully-automated lead suit. The escaped convict learns of the military's test by seeing the front page of a newspaper that a newsboy is hawking on the street.
(The use of a newspaper headline to point the narrative action is a device frequently employed by Stan Lee. Now that no one reads newspapers anymore in public, Lee would have to have his criminal or space alien sneak a peek at someone's tablet or smart phone. Not quite the same, is it?)
The military accepts the escaped convict who assumes the alias George Brown and run him through a series of tests. First, he is placed on a tiny atoll in the middle of the ocean and a nuclear bomb is detonated. The island is completely submerged but the suit is watertight and apparently has its own oxygen supply. The escaped convict is able to fight off a giant octopus. Super-strength is included as well in the suit's features.
After the test on the atoll the military hangs the suited-up Mr. Brown from a helicopter and fires a nuclear missile at him. This is where the storytelling gets sloppy. Even a sheltered, jejune schoolboy in Jack Kennedy's America would question -- I hope -- how the helicopter, which enjoyed none of the high-tech lead shielding that swaddled the escaped convict, could withstand the blast of a nuclear missile. But it does and so does the escaped convict.
It is after the mid-air test that the escaped convict reveals his true identity to the military, adopts the name Metallo! and takes off for San Francisco by stowing away in a tractor trailer that is conveniently passing by on a New Mexico highway.
Metallo breaks into a bank vault in San Francisco by burrowing underground. He then gets the idea to put together an army of convicts by swimming out to Alcatraz and liberating the incarcerated. Once there he falls ill. It is at this point that I am thinking that Lee is going to spring lead poisoning on his readers, that the escaped convict spent too much time in the experimental lead suit and he was getting sick from exposure. But I guess lead poisoning was not as widely acknowledged in 1961 as it is today. Metallo is diagnosed as suffering from a "malignant disease" based on a verbal examination given by the medical staff at Alcatraz (see the last scan). The cure is radiation treatment. But in order to be treated the escaped convict would have to exit his suit, which would mean finishing life in prison.
Unable to decide what to do -- die in his suit or behind bars -- Metallo in the last panel of the comic book wanders off into the coastal mountains of California. An impenetrable suit of armor comes with a high price. One is never truly invulnerable.
Below are scans of the cover, the two splash pages, a couple interior pages along with individual panels that I enjoyed:
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