Jack’s Covers
Tales of Suspense (1959) #45
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COMIC DETAILS
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Comic Description:
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Tales of Suspense 45 Universal
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Grade:
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9.6
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Page Quality:
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OFF-WHITE TO WHITE
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Certification #:
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1968796002
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Owner:
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Mississippi Mudcats
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SET DETAILS
Owner's Description
Iron Man battles Jack Frost, Gregor Shapanka, in this seventh installment of Iron Man in TOS. Gregor Shapanka is a Hungarian scientist obsessed with immortality, and decides that the study of cryonics is the first step towards his goal. Shapanka takes a job at Stark Industries to fund his research and attempts to steal directly from Tony Stark. After being caught and fired by Tony Stark for trying to steal from Tony Stark's secret vault, Gregor creates a suit containing cold-generating devices and is dubbed by the newspapers as "Jack Frost." He attempts to raid Stark Industries where he captures Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan, but is defeated by Iron Man. Shapanka later escapes from prison and reappears as Blizzard.
Stan Lee earlier created another Jack Frost who was a hero in the Golden Age. His powers are not dissimilar to another later Stan Lee creation, Iceman of the X-Men. In fact, TOS #45 actually hit the newstands the same month as X-Men #1. And then there are DC’s characters Captain Cold who fought the Flash and Mister Freeze who battled Batman. Both of those villains made their first appearances in the 50s in Showcases #8 and Batman #121, respectively. I am not sure in this case you could say who copied who, since while the DC SA characters preceded Jack Frost and Iceman, but Stan Lee had been there before in the GA.
Perhaps the most notable thing about this issue is the first appearance of Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan, two stalwarts of the Iron Man and Avengers movies, played cinematically by Gwyneth Paltrow and Jon Favreau.
We long struggled to find a high grade example of this comic. We were finally able to acquire this book in the 2/21/2019 Heritage auction. It is the sole 9.6 in the census as of 5/2020, bested only by the PC 9.8, which was sold in the Doug Schmell Collection.
2023 Update: Bad news again, there are now two 9.6s of this issue in the census.
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