This is "Look Back," a brand-new feature that I plan to do for at least all of 2019 and possibly beyond that (and possibly forget about in a week, who knows?). The concept is that every week (I'll probably be skipping the four fifth weeks in the year, but maybe not) of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue in terms of a larger scale (like the series overall, etc.). Each week will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first week of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second week looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third week looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth week looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago.

Today, we look at the introduction of adamantium into the Marvel Universe.

One of the fascinating things about comic books is how there are certain ideas that just consistently pop up no matter what. For instance, you're always going to end up with an archer character eventually if you have a shared comic book universe. You're always going to have a speedster, you're always going to have an underwater character, they're just consistent characters that will always show up. Along those same lines is the introduction of "Super metals." Going back to the 1940s, pretty much every major comic book superhero eventually introduced some sort of unbreakable metal into their universe, like Supermanium, Marvelium and Amazonium. Those are seriously things that appeared in actual comics.

Over at Marvel, Stan Lee introduced the idea of Vibranium in the pages of Daredevil and then the metal was developed even further when Black Panther was introduced in the Fantastic Four. So the Marvel Universe was already fairly set for special metal, but they didn't realize that there was another one coming!

In Avengers #66 (released in April 1969), Roy Thomas, Barry Windsor-Smith (in one of his earliest works for Marvel) and Syd Shores revealed adamantium to the world!

The history of unbreakable metals having "Adamant" in their name is a very long one. Thousands of years old, in fact. One notable example was Hercules, who the myths described as wielding an adamantine club. It was with this in mind that Thomas came up with the newest unbreakable metal in comics, adamantium (with the creator of the metal specifically citing Hercules as an influence). The issue opens with a stunning shot of Thor trying to break it...

This was Smith in his early, heavily Kirby-inspired time period and it really works very well. Smith, of course, would evolve his art style, but even these early pages were great.

Thomas, meanwhile, hits upon a clever aspect of the introduction of adamantium....

Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='The arms race is on!']

The coolest thing about this issue is how Roy Thomas ratchets up the doom and gloom over this new metal, as everyone gets "Damn, if this is used as a weapon against us, we're screwed"...

After Iron Man and Goliath fail to make a dent in it, we see the fascinating figure of Dr. Myron MacLain, the dude who invented this metal and yet he can't seem to even enjoy his own invention as he knows the stakes as well as anyone...

Things take a scary turn when the Vision is forced to work against his teammates and steal the adamantium (which can only be altered using a molecular rearranger - handy tool, that). Check out this stunning Smith page...

The story takes another dramatic turn when we realize that the Vision was forced to steal the adamantium so that Ultron could make a body out of it!!

Such clever writing, as you spend the whole issue introducing the concept of how unbeatable this metal is and then you give it to one of the Avengers' greatest enemies.

Of course, things work out the next issue. The concept of adamantium might have fallen by the wayside over the years (sort of like Promethium in the DC Universe) had it not been for Len Wein giving a certain Canadian mutant claws made out of adamantium...

If you have any suggestions for May (or any other later months) 2009, 1994, 1969 and 1944 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. For the 75 and 50 year old comics, the cover date is three months ahead of the actual release date (so August for a book that came out in May) while the 25 and 10 year old comics have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so July for a book that came out in May). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.