So, a by-product of my looooong flight back from Bali to Germany via Singapore was that I came into possession of "Demon in a Bottle", the trade volume collecting those issues containing what was arguably the most famous storyline involving Tony Stark pre-Civil War. Indeed, if there was one thing vaguely comic-knowledgable people who weren't actually reading his stories were aware of about Iron Man/Tony Stark before Civil War (and of course before the more recent movie), it probably was that he's an alcoholic. Me, I was familiar with flashbacks in later stories, and excerpts via pic spams, but I hadn't read the complete storyarc, written by David Michelinie and Bob Layton. I must say, bad late 70s hair and purple prose ("Namor shrugs - a motion made sensuously graceful by its quietly controlled power") not withstanding, it still holds up very well and accomplishes the very tricky feat of telling a credible story about a well-established character descending into an addiction in a genre that demands regular action scenes while doing so in an emotionally credible way. (I'm looking at you, Willow Rosenberg.) (Or rather, at you, Mutant Enemy team in s6.)

( How did they pull this off? )