Phrasing!

I mentioned the other day I was at a local Wal-Mart, and someone had stolen a Marvel Legends Living Laser from the packaging! Left the Thanos piece and everything. I'll probably get him eventually, probably after he's been marked down; but I wonder if I would've preferred his look from this issue: from 1981, Iron Man #153, "Light Makes Might!" Written and plotted by David Michelinie, pencils by John Romita Jr., plot and finishes by Bob Layton.

Ah, this issue features communist bad guys! That takes me back. Co-incidentally, I don't watch it often, but last night's Final Jeopardy was, "The Cold War became entrenched in the mid-1950's after the formation of these 2 rival military alliances." I got it, but I think only one contestant got it right, "What is, NATO and the Warsaw Pact?" Which means I'm older than Jeopardy contestants; that's not a good sign...Anyway, the Living Laser is working with the East Germans, and while he does feel a little bad about some light treason, he's doing it to save his life. With his metabolism altered after his run-in with Count Nefaria, LL was constantly absorbing energy from light and would probably eventually explode. The East Germans had a plan to drain energy off of him to power their orbiting weapons satellites, but the ensuing fight blows up most of their secret mountain science base. (It's not drawn very East Germany, it looks like a southwestern mesa!)

The Laser overloads, and Iron Man tosses him into the sky to explode away from a nearby reactor: necessary, but you can see how feelings might be hurt. Meanwhile, Bethany Cabe was ending her tenure as Tony's girlfriend, since her husband--drug addicted and believed to have been dead--had been found. Beth and Tony are both pretty broken up, but this feels like a way to get her out of the book without wrecking the character. She'd be back.