Every week, I will spotlight strange but ultimately endearing comic stories (basically, we're talking lots and lots of Silver Age comic books). Here is the archive of all the installments of this feature.

Today, with Avengers versus X-Men raging on, we take a look at the earliest confrontation between an Avenger and an X-Men, the time that Angel of the X-Men was driven insane from an atomic bomb and then beat up Iron Man.

It is late 1963, the Avengers and the X-Men are so new that the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants has not shown up yet and the Hulk has quit the Avengers so recently that it is not even addressed in Tales of Suspense #49, when Iron Man meets Angel of the X-Men.

And what a meeting!

First, I love the cute opening page of the story...



Wow, thanks editors of X-Men and Avengers!!

Okay, so here is how the story gets going...





You have to love them standing so close to an atomic explosion. Plus, Angel realizing that he is turning evil. Better yet, IRON MAN realizes that is turning evil and yet after one attempt to catch him (which fails), Iron Man just gives up and goes about his day to day life. "Eh, oh well, so he's evil now."

Remember, this is pre-Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, so Angel only PRESUMES that there are a bunch of evil mutants out there SOMEwhere...



When his fellow X-Men try to stop him, he handles them easily, even though some of his methods are a bit odd...



I don't think that would work the way he says it works. But hey, it worked for him, so who am I to judge?

Professor X calls the X-Men for help, but all of them are ignoring their radios. The amusing thing is that all of them have their radios on them in their secret identities, leading to weird things like, you know, Tony Stark getting a distress signal in front of other people...



Ah...the Silver Age. When "What? You didn't hear anything!" would actually work as an excuse. I guess Happy knew he was so drunk at the time that maybe he WAS hearing things.

Next, we see Iron Man's delayed sense of justice...



"Now that Professor X has reminded me, I guess I DID sort of cause this."

Meanwhile, check out Angel's brilliant plan for getting into contact with other evil mutants...



Maybe they're on a cruise?! For serious? Did the radiation affect his intelligence, too?

Iron Man is given ten minutes to reason with Angel or else the police will open fire on the winged mutant. Angel then handles Iron Man easily...



They then fight in a warehouse, where Angel locks Iron Man up. Iron Man escapes to find Angel still waiting for evil mutants...



Perhaps this is Stan Lee's version of "Waiting for Godot?"

Iron Man has a new plan. This time, LET Angel kick his ass....







You gotta love how blase Iron Man is about dying.

And then finally....



Good stuff.

By the way, the X-Men were watching the whole thing...



"Why didn't you try to rescue me?" "We were wondering what would happen."

Well done, Silver Age Marvel (the Ditko art was awesome)! If Avengers versus X-Men ends without at least one member of the X-Men (or the Avengers, even) turning evil because of radiation, then I will be sorely disappointed.