Sold for: $375,000.00CGC: 9.6 It's rather impressive that, in a film adaptation that came out over forty years after the fact, Iron Man's origin story and first suit managed to stay pretty much the same. Originally a sci-fi anthology, Tales of Suspense later took another tack with the changing comic book market and focussed on superheroes instead. Tony Stark was introduced with issue 39, building an impenetrable robotic suit of armour to both fight his way out of a Vietnamese prison and to slow down the piece of shrapnel from a land mine that was edging ever-closer to his heart. Another comic that somehow remained in damn good quality decades later, this copy sold in 2012 and was undoubtedly helped by the success of the Robert Downey Jr-starring movies in reaching that record-breaking price. Not quite the annual earnings of Stark Industries but then, what is? Those helicarriers don't come cheap.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/