Iron Man Annual #7
When Giants Walk the Earth!
After joining the Avengers new West Coast branch, Iron Man helps the team set up the equipment in their new headquarters.[1] However, when Hawkeye can’t make up his mind on where to put the global radar module, Iron Man gets fed up and heads back to home base at his new tech start-up, Circuits Maximus.
There, Tony Stark is hard at work when he catches a news report about the formation of the new Avengers team. He is annoyed that Jim didn’t mention he joined since Stark helped found the Avengers. When Jim returns to the company, Tony reminds him that he needs to focus more time on the company they are all building together. This annoys Jim who tells Tony to lay off and flies off to blow off some steam.
Jim doesn’t know why he and Tony are constantly fighting with one another.[2] However, his personal life takes a back seat when he picks up a radio report about a fire at a local oil rig. With the rig about to tip over, Iron Man holds up the damaged support beam so rescue crews can evacuate the workers. Jim basks in the cheers he receives and heads back into the city in a better mood.
In the city, Erik Josten is crossing the street when he is hit by a car. When the driver comes to see if he is ok, Josten lifts the man off the ground with his enhanced strength and warns him to keep quiet about seeing him. This is because Erik was the wanted criminal once known as Powerman. He is heading to the secret laboratory of Doctor Karl Malus in order to restore his fading powers. Eager to experiment on a new subject, Malus asks Erik to explain his origins.
Josten explains that he once worked for the original Baron Zemo. When Zemo was defeated by the Avengers, Erik hid out in the jungle outside the Nazi scientist’s South American hideout. Coming out when the coast is clear, Erik ran into the Asgardian sorceress known as the Enchantress. She offered him power and used the device Zemo once used to give Wonder Man his powers to transform Erik into Powerman. However, when Power Man was defeated by the Avengers, the Enchantress abandoned him. Seeking to make a name for himself, Powerman suffered a series of defeats working with Swordsman for the Red Skull, the Mandarin, and joining the Grim Reaper’s Lethal Legion. The defeats kept coming when the hero for hire, Luke Cage, took on the name Powerman. When the two fought over the right to use the name, Cage defeated him hands down.
With his powers fading, Josten entered the employ of Count Nefaria who appeared to boost his powers. However, this was only so Nefaria could siphon these powers to enhance his own strength. The process left Josten weaker than ever. Reinventing himself as the Smuggler, Erik was later defeated by Spider-Man.[3] While serving his sentence at Ryker’s Island, Erik read about Malus and how he experimented on superhumans and arranged to meet with him.
Hearing all of this, Malus agrees to try and recreate Josten’s powers. Malus is able to recreate the process and succeeds in restoring Powerman’s former strength, but with an added twist. Malus explains that he learned the secret to Pym Particles while curing the deformed freak named Daddy Long-Legs and added size-changing powers on top of restoring Erik’s lost strength.[4] Trying out his powers, Josten is amazed when he is able to increase his size to further enhance his powers. Impressed, Josten decides to call himself Goliath, stealing a name once used as a hero much as his original name was stolen from him.[5] However, rather than work for Malus, the new Goliath decides to stiff him and then goes on a rampage through the city. This draws Iron Man who tries to take down the villain on his own. Unfortunately, Jim’s increasingly erratic thoughts Goliath easily trounces the hero and departs after defeating him. Adding insult to injury, when Iron Man is blamed for causing more damage.
The next morning, Iron Man returns to Avengers Compound to read up the records on Erik Josten. Hawkeye and Wonder Man try to cheer Iron Man up, believing that he only had a bad day. Both men are eager to stop Goliath as well due to their own connections to the villain.[6] That’s when Wonder Man recalls how they discovered that the process that gave him his powers transformed him into a being of ionic energy.[7] They then contact the Vision, leader of the east coast Avengers team, to have him ferry an ionic energy detector to help them find Goliath by tracking his energy signature. When they find Goliath, the three Avengers forget to work as a team and get trounced in five minutes.
Angered by this attack, Golaith decides to head up to the Hollywood Hills and trash the massive Hollywood sign. Realizing their mistake, Iron Man and his allies follow after their foe. As Hawkeye and Wonder Man keep him distracted, Iron Man begins bombarding Goliath with a powerful sonic blast.[8] Beginning to panic and wanting to show everyone who ever used him, Goliath tries increasing his height even more. However, he cannot handle the strain and passes out from the agony and collapses. As the police and the media arrive on the scene, Karl Malus watches from the sidelines and considers Goliath wasted his potential but considers it a small loss since he has other plans for tomorrow.
Recurring Characters
Iron Man, Goliath, Karl Malus, West Coast Avengers (Hawkeye, Mockinbird, Wonder Man, Tigra), Tony Stark, Morley Erwin, Vision
Continuity Notes
None of the Avengers present know that the Iron Man on their team isn’t the original, but his replacement. The details:
The original Iron Man was Tony Stark, who was a founding member of the team back in Avengers #1.
More recently, Tony spiraled into alcoholism leading to him passing on the mantle of Iron Man to Jim Rhodes in Iron Man #169-170. Although Tony decided to go sober in issue #182, he had no interest in becoming Iron Man again. However, he will be forced to go back into the saddle in issue #199.
Not long before this story, the Vision decided that the Avengers should expand and set up a second team on the west coast. See Avengers #243. The new team would first form in West Coast Avengers #1.
Jim’s short temper is because his mind was damaged by the cybernetic uplink in the Iron Man armor as it was not properly calibrated for his mind. This was revealed and fixed in Iron Man #187-188. However, the problems will persist until Jim is cured in issue #195.
Erik Josten goes into painstaking details of his origins. The facts:
The original Baron Zemo died fighting Captain America in Avengers #15.
Josten came out of hiding, transformation into Powerman by the Enchantress, and first defeat at the hands of the Avengers happened in Avengers #21-22.
Another flashback show his second battle with the Avengers. This happened in Avengers #29-30.
The time he worked with the Swordsman for the Red Skull happened in Tales of Suspense #88.
He worked for the Mandarin in Avengers Annual #1.
Powerman joined up with the Grim Reaper’s Lethal Legion in Avengers #78-79.
Erik lost his fight against Luke Cage in Powerman #21.
He was later manipulated by Count Nefaria in Avengers #164-166.
As the Looter he was defeated by Spider-Man in Spectacular Spider-Man #49-50 and then had be saved by the wall-crawler in issue #54 of that series.
Daddy Longlegs was the little person who tried to use Pym Particles to achieve a “normal” size. Instead, it stretched out his body giving him long gangly limbs, hence the name. See Spider-Woman #47.
Josten decides to take on the name of Goliath after Hank Pym. Pym operated under the Goliath identity from Avengers #28 through 59.
Hawkeye and Wonder Man have a stake in defeating Goliath due to some association with him in one way or the other:
Hawkeye briefly took on the Goliath identity from Avengers #63 to 98.
Meanwhile, the same process that gave Josten his powers was the same one that turned Simon Williams into Wonder Man in Avengers #9.
Wonder Man mentions his brief brush with death and how they examine him to determine how he returned to life, leading to the discovery that he has been transformed into a being of ionic energy. The facts:
The process that gave Williams his powers was believed to be slowly killing him, leading him to appear to die shortly after getting them, as seen in Avengers #9.
However, Williams returned to life in Avengers #150, although nobody knew how at the time.
An examination of Simon’s body in Avengers #164 led to the discovery that he is a being made of ionic energy.
Here, Hawkeye makes an off hand thought about how he is already hard of hearing. At the time of this story, Hawkeye had just recently damaged his hearing in a battle with crossfire, as seen in Hawkeye #1-4. This conflicts with later stories that state that Clint Barton always been hearing impaired. Click here for more on these conflicting accounts.
Topical References
Here, Karl Malus refers to Daddy Longlegs as a “midget” prior to getting his powers. This should be considered a topical reference as this is no longer the appropriate term and many consider it to be discriminatory. The correct term now is little person.
