TITANIUM MAN
Back
in November, I received this letter from Dustin
McGinnis concerning the consummate Iron Man
villain-- Titanium Man. It got me thinking
about a redesign on the original armor and I
came up with this month's concept as a result.
Let
me know what you think, Dustin.
Mr.
Layton,
Always a pleasure to visit your site and all
things truly Iron Man, not that shame Marvel is
trudging along.
I
have a request which has been on my mind for
years. I don't know if it was you or someone
else but someone in the 1980's during your reign
of Iron designed a new Titanium Man armor that
was featured in the 200's or so during Armor
Wars. Actually as I am typing, if memory serves
me correctly the suit was first introduced in
Avengers vs. X-Men the four part mini-series.
It's the suit with Gremlin in it. I guess the
best image of the suit back then was on one of
the covers from Armor Wars when Iron Man dawned
his stealth suit for a soviet infiltration
mission against Titanium Man and the Crimson
Dynamo (yeah the cool one you designed)...
So
here's the story, no where has there been a full
on image of this Titanium Man armor. There is no
full pager or even a full length body shot in a
frame in any Iron Man comic or other appearance
elsewhere. The Official Handbook to the Marvel
Universe featured T.M. in it's original and
Deluxe editions from the 1980's but they
featured the old gigantic suit (the one with the
skirt).
I
don't know about anyone else but this suit, I
thought kicked much ass. It was good and modern,
particularly at the time and I think whoever
designed it, whether it be you or someone else
(?) did well and made a rather unique villain
armor to say the least. I don't like the fact
that it's never had its day in the sun. The
animated Iron man series featured a gross
interpretation of the suit as did Toybiz with
their figure from the show. Someone made a nice
custom figure of it once, I saw on E-bay (see
photos attached). I guess the best image, I've
ever had that could be considered a full frontal
pose would be in of all things a coloring book
which was also released along side the animated
series...
SO,
MR. "MY FAVORITE COMIC ARTIST AND WRITER OF ALL
TIME". Get off your butt and let the 80's
Titanium Man rise outta the... snow/ice. Show me
Titanium Man.
By
the way, loved the full body shot of your
Crimson Dynamo suit you had up last year or so,
thanks, fortunately the official handbook did
feature the Dynamo a few times properly.
ABOUT
THE TITANIUM MAN:
Boris
Bullski was born in Makeyevka, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet
Union. According to the Black Widow, he was a
KGB-member when he was a young man, and she was his
combat instructor for a time. An ambitious official
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Boris
Bullski was demoted after displeasing his superiors.
While working as an administrator of a Siberian
labor camp, he commissioned the imprisoned
scientists at the camp to build a suit of armor
using the lab of Anton Vanko, the creator of the
original Crimson Dynamo armor. Seeking to win back
the Party's favor, Bullski conceived the idea of
winning a propaganda victory against the West by
defeating the American superhero Iron Man. He
assigned the scientists to create a powerful suit of
titanium armor based on the Iron Man technology,
though the inferior resources available to the
scientists meant that the armor was twice the size
of Iron Man's. Bullski received permission to issue
his challenge and Iron Man accepted, defeating
Titanium Man in a battle before a worldwide
television audience.
Undaunted, Bullski prepared for a rematch by having
the suit redesigned and undergoing medical
treatments that increased both his size and
strength. Traveling to the United States, Bullski
fought Iron Man in the skies above Washington, D.C.
but was defeated once more. Withdrawing for
retrieval by a Soviet submarine, he discovered that
he had been abandoned on orders from Moscow. After
working for the Vietnamese Communist scientist
Half-Face (Who increased his power yet again) for a
while, he returned to the service of the Government
of the Soviet Union and joined the third Crimson
Dynamo in yet another unsuccessful battle against
Iron Man.
After the defeat, the two disgraced Soviet agents
fled to Communist-controlled Vietnam, where they
joined with Radioactive Man to form the Titanic
Three. Though Bullski enjoyed working as a
sanctioned agent once again, he longed to return to
the Soviet Union, and devised a new plan to win his
superiors' favor. Adopting the alias of "The Other,"
he dispatched another former Soviet agent, the
Unicorn, to destroy Iron Man. When the Unicorn
failed, the Titanium Man went to destroy Iron Man
himself, only to fail once more.
Despite his failures, Bullski was in favor with the
Soviet government once more, and returned to the
United States on a mission for the KGB. By
threatening the parents of a Soviet defector named
Sergei, he forced the man to design technologically
advanced armored suits that could be transformed
into small card-like objects. Posing as "the
Commander," Bullski used the suits to equip members
of the Green Liberation Front (G.L.F.), an
organization of disaffected Vietnam War veterans who
felt ignored by their country. With the suits, the
G.L.F. robbed a New York City bank and the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York; though the members
believed that they were simply acting as thieves,
Bullski used the robberies as a cover for implanting
a computer virus that would destroy American
financial records, causing chaos in the economy of
the United States. Beta Ray Bill and Sif opposed the
G.L.F. and the Commander, but when Sergei discovered
that his parents were dead he exposed Bullski's true
identity and the angry members of the G.L.F. turned
on the Titanium Man. Teleporting away, he
rematerialized in card form, which Sergei then
simply tore and threw away.
Some time later, the new Crimson Dynamo was sent to
the United States by the Soviet government to
retrieve the remnants for reintegration. The G.L.F.
discovered the Crimson Dynamo's mission and attacked
him, forcing him to seek assistance by reactivating
the Titanium Man, who due to the incomplete nature
of his reassembly was still missing body parts.
Enraged, Bullski slaughtered the members of the
G.L.F., and was only stopped when the Dynamo lured
him over the Atlantic Ocean and returned him to card
form. Bullski was later restored and continued to
serve as Titanium Man, but during a subsequent
attack on a Stark Enterprises factory in Russia he
was believed killed while battling Tony Stark, who
was wearing Crimson Dynamo armor that was being
controlled by Colonel General Valentin Shatalov, an
enemy of Bullski's.
Excerpt from www.wikipedia.org
