Iron Manic Monday Bonus--In Defense of Gerald Ford!

In Iron Man: The Legend #1 (1996), Peter Sanderson gives a list of "Iron Man's Lamest Foes."

And he declares this guy "Undeniably the lamest Iron Man villain of all time":

Oh no you didn't!

Look, I'm sorry, but that is just nonsense.

I've written tangentially about the Black Lama before, but allow me to recap.

Black Lama was, indeed an alternate universe version of Gerald Ford (from Earth-7511...dammit, I love Marvel). Interdimensional travel drove him mad, and he took on the Black Lama identity, and started the War Of The Super-Villains. This would have become Marvel's first actual line-wide crossover, 10 years before Secret Wars, except the contemporary Marvel management found it too complex to co-ordinate something like that, especially as writer Mike Friedrich was in California and the rest of the Bullpen was in New York (actually answer from Iron Man's letter column in issue #71!).

So, really, Black Lama wasn't lame, he was just ahead of his time! He was the Beyonder a decade early!! That's not lame, that's hyper-impressive!!

(Plus. yesterday was Gerald Ford's 100th birthday, so show some respect!)

Meanwhile, Sanderson put this guy on the list of Iron Man's "Greatest Foes":

The Unicorn? Really? "Greatest" foes? With judgement like that, you don't get to call Black Lama lame...