George Tuska - The Invincible Iron Man #97, Page 7, “Showdown with the Guardsman!” (1977)

Artist: George Tuska

Title: The Invincible Iron Man #97, Story Page 7, “Showdown with the Guardsman!”

Year: 1977

Publisher: Marvel Comics

Published: April 1977

Medium: Ink on comic art board

Framed Size: 52 × 37 cm (20.5 × 14.6 inches)

Presentation: Framed and glazed, with a laminated copy of the published comic page mounted to the reverse

Original published comic artwork by George Tuska for page 7 of “Showdown with the Guardsman!”, from The Invincible Iron Man #97, published by Marvel Comics in April 1977.

The page comes from Tuska's extensive and highly regarded run on Iron Man, the character with whom he became most closely associated during his long career at Marvel. Tuska helped define the visual appearance of Tony Stark and Iron Man throughout much of the 1970s, drawing a substantial run of the title and contributing some of the era's most recognizable interpretations of the armored Avenger.

Issue #97, written by Gerry Conway, features the Guardsman, the armored identity originally developed from technology created by Tony Stark. The story forms part of the long-running conflict surrounding Stark Industries and the consequences of Stark's increasingly powerful armored technology.

George Tuska (American, 1916-2009) enjoyed a comic-book career spanning more than five decades. Beginning during the Golden Age, he worked on crime, adventure, superhero and newspaper comics before becoming a prominent Marvel artist during the Silver and Bronze Ages. His credits include Captain America, Luke Cage, Black Goliath, The Avengers, X-Men and numerous other Marvel characters.

It was his work on Iron Man, however, that became the defining association of his Marvel career. Tuska drew the series extensively from the late 1960s through the 1970s, developing a powerful, clean and immediately recognizable interpretation of the character that became familiar to a generation of readers.