Kill Me or Cure Me

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I'm feeling so much better. And I can make you strong.
Kill Me or Cure Me
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Published in	The Transformers issue 10 issue 11
First published	26th January, 1985 (part 1) 9th February, 1985 (part 2)
Writer	Tom DeFalco
Artist	Steve Ditko
Colours	Doc Martin
Letters	Parker
Editor	Dennis O'Neil
Editor-in-chief	Jim Shooter

A conventionally attractive physicist accidentally turns herself into a gruesome gaseous being and decides to make it everyone else's problem.

Synopsis

Part 1

Monday morning, and Aaron Stack and Peter Spaulding are getting ready to head out for work. Despite Peter finding Aaron's mechanical side a bit much first thing in the day, they elect to share a cab downtown after Aaron puts on his face.

At Delmar Insurance, Eddie Harris gossips with Maggie Jones as Aaron walks through, saying the company's top investigator is highly impersonal and working at a rate that makes them look bad. The two jokers are chided by Pamela Quinn that they should spend less time at the water cooler themselves, and is quick to dismiss Eddie's assertion that she has a crush on Aaron.

Across town, at the Alternative Resources Centre, the rueful Dr. Voletta Todd is also facing gossip, as a pair of sexist lab technicians struggle to reconcile her accomplishments in hydrogen fusion with her good looks. In her private lab, Dr Todd considers her year-long failure to produce an unlimited, clean energy source from ionised gas. In her overtired state, she makes a mistake that causes a power overload, and as the other scientists scramble to evacuate, she is hit by a barrage of electro-magnetic energies.

Shortly, at Delmar, bossman Byron J. Benjamin invites Aaron into his office (via messenger Pamela). Benjamin informs Aaron of the explosion at the Alternative Resources Centre, one of their biggest clients, and encourages him to go and help. Arriving at the scene, Aaron quizzes a firefighter for a situation report, and learns that the blaze has written off the building and that people are still inside. Aaron ducks into an alley and returns as Machine Man!

He enters the burning building thanks to his flame-resistant body and gravity negation and finds two technicians trapped under a heavy beam. Machine Man detaches one leg to serve as a fulcrum, allowing him to rescue the technicians – though they are less than grateful at the attempt, causing Machine Man to briefly reflect on the xenophobia of humans before returning to the lab.

Machine Man uses the monitors on his finger sensors to search the many rooms of the complex. He detects a scrambled reading from a laboratory, but has no chance to analyse it, with time being of the essence – and finds himself face to face with Dr Todd, now transformed into a hideous, gaseous creature contained in an electromagnetic field! Considering herself to be a monster, she now struggles to maintain a corporeal form, and with her humanity fading, she begs Machine Man for death!

Machine Man insists that the process could be reversible but, sensing he is not human himself, Dr Todd goes berserk, randomly blasting bolts of electro-magnetic energy around the room. Dodging the blasts, Machine Man attempts to contain her under a sheet of computer insulation, but as a gas, she seeps out form underneath it. One last blast causes the floor to cave in, trapping Machine Man, and the Dr Todd creature escapes, trying to find somewhere to gather her scattered thoughts.

Meanwhile, Machine Man reviews the damage to his legs and the blown circuits in his right arm, and he feels the building's foundations start to give way. Straining his circuity, he negates his gravity and escapes the collapsing facility, but his dead limbs disrupt his momentum – and, after hitting an updraught and getting a spasm in his leg, he begins to plummet to the busy streets below!

Part 2

Machine Man careens through the sky, his internal fail-safes deactivating all non-essential power – such as his gravity negation! Twisting and turning, he shifts his trajectory from populated streets to an auto yard where he lands less than gracefully. The proprietor, mechanic Oswald F. Garvin, alias "Gears", is confused by his new visitor. Despite Machine Man's protestations, Gears reckons he can repair him with tools he has on hand – and he proves it by fixing up his arm like new, impressing Machine Man! Gears doesn't have the necessary parts to fix his legs, but he has the next best thing, turning Machine Man into a highly-manoeuvrable unicycle!

In the meantime, Dr Todd – or "Ion", as the press have christened her – has spent torturous hours trying to recreate her human features, though they quickly fade as her concentration lapses. Seeking death or a cure, she heads to the Baxter Building, headquarters of the Fantastic Four! Her violent entrance to Reed Richards' lab sets off an alarm, disturbing the Human Torch and the strawberry-scented, bubble-bathin' Thing. The Torch finds his fireballs are ineffective against Ion, and she buries the Thing by electromagnetising the lab's computer equipment into a pile.

Machine Man, who has been monitoring police bands for Ion activity, tracks her to the Baxter Building, where the Human Torch attacks him as another intruder. Time is short to save Dr Todd, so Machine Man lowers the temperature of his hand to absolute zero in order to incapacitate the Human Torch. Ion seizes the moment to escape, and without her magnetic field, the Thing frees himself and confronts Machine Man, who abruptly trips the idol of millions and exits.

At street level, Ion leaves a trail of destruction, searching for someone to put her out of her misery. Machine Man taps into the power source of a street lamp and zaps her, disrupting her magnetic field. Wounded, she flees into a nearby meat market. Machine Man is at a disadvantage in these close quarters, especially when Ion uses her magnetism to spin him around at speed. He strains himself into the meat locker. Ion changes her priorities, putting Machine Man's destruction at the top of her list – but she is shocked to see her human body reforming in front of her eyes. Machine Man has lured her into the refrigerator, as he suspected she would be affected by the change of temperature. Now a normal human, Dr Todd is easily subdued. Machine Man reflects on how they were both outsiders in a world of conformity – but perhaps Dr Todd may someday be cured, yet he...

Some time later, Reed and Sue finish their shopping trip and meet the Human Torch and the Thing at the meat market. Johnny explains that Machine Man was gone by the time they arrived, but he had left instructions to keep Dr Todd in cryogenics until the Fantastic Four could develop a cure for her condition. Sue pities the poor woman, but Thing encourages her to save it for Machine Man by the time he gets through with him.

Meanwhile, Machine Man heads back to Gears Garvin's repair shop, wondering what other surprises fate has in store for him.

Featured characters

Regular cast	Antagonists	Incidentals	The Fantastic Four
Aaron Stack/Machine Man Peter Spaulding Oswald F. "Gears" Garvin Delmar Insurance Eddie Harris Maggie Jones Pamela Quinn Byron J. Benjamin	Ion/Dr. Voletta Todd	Sexist lab technicians FDNY	Johnny Storm/The Human Torch Ben Grimm/The Thing Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic Sue Storm/Invisible Girl

Quotes

"Old stone face is making things rough for the rest of us. He begins the job promptly at nine and his paperwork is never late."

—Eddie is outraged at Aaron's audacity.

"Keep away! You're a blasted freak!"
"No, I'm a machine... a machine who just saved your life! If you object to the way I did it, you'll have to file a written grievance!"

—The lab technicians prove ungrateful for Machine Man's rescue.

Ion: "IIYEE! I sense you are a machine -- what would a thing of metal and wire know of compassion?"
Machine Man: "Plenty -- but this is hardly a time to debate the issue!"

"Super-heroes are an extremely paranoid group."

—Machine Man's thoughts on the "Let's You and Him Fight" trope.

"Now I ask ya... is this any way ta treat the idol of millions?"

—The Thing, not realising he isn't in a Fantastic Four book.

"Sorry, but no one thought to include "cringing" on my basic program!"

–Machine Man is too based to fear Ion's threats.

Ion: "We are both creations of technology, robot. Yet, even though you are an inhuman, grotesque mockery of life -- you are far less of a horror than I! For that I hate you most of all!"
Machine Man: "Somehow, I'm not flattered!"

Notes

Kill Me or Cure Me on Marvel Database, an external wiki

Original printing

• Machine Man (vol 1) issue 15, June 1980

This was Tom DeFalco's first issue penning Machine Man. The credits are drawn into the opening splash page, appearing on diegetic pieces of rubble. DeFalco brings with him a Silver Age-style in medias res action teaser to open each story.

Edits

• Pages 1-2 and 6-7 of part 1 are printed in black and white.
• The side bar on the first splash page has been altered from "special guest star issue" to the plural "issues".
• "Doc Martin's" credit is changed to "colours" from "colors", which required a little more effort than is usual due to the aforementioned diegetic pieces of rubble.
• On page 3, "caliber" is corrected to "calibre".
• Instances of Dr Todd's workplace read "Alternative Resources Centre", as opposed to "center". On page 6, "analyze" becomes "analyse".
• Pages 1-3 and 6-8 of part 2 are printed in black and white.
• "The Muppets" is changed to "Dallas", and "KISS" is changed to "ABBA". (See #Real-life references).

Artwork and technical errors

• Myriad U.S. spellings slip through this issue, including "realize", "utilizes", "realizing", "ionized", "patronize", "pulverize", and "energize". A non -ize related example is "updraft", which is traditionally spelled "updraught" in British English.
• On the first page, "monstrous" is misspelled as "monsterous".
• It's probably an over-correction that a sign outside a New York-based facility reads "Alternative Resources Centre" rather than "Center".
• As Machine Man dodges Ion in the meat market, his "She's right" is missing an ending punctuation mark.
• The Human Torch's fireballs pass straight through Ion, because she is "a gaseous being of charged hydrogen". In real life, hydrogen is hella flammable.
• In the meat locker, Ion's speech bubble splits the word "destruction" over a line break, transforming it into "des-tructruction".

Continuity errors

• The previous story had a plot point whereby Peter phoned Aaron from his apartment. This story begins with the two of them getting ready in tandem, Peter referring to Aaron as his roommate. (Oh my god, they were roommates.)
• In "Byte of the Binary Bug!", Eddie's surname was White. Here, it's Harris.

Continuity notes

• Despite what certain other wikis may tell you, this is the debut story of Pamela Quinn, whose interest in Aaron would confuse and confound him for the rest of the book.

Real-life references

• The narration compares Ion to a will-o-the-wisp.
• Aaron quips that if he dies, he'll have seen his last episode of Dallas. In the original U.S. version, he would instead have seen his last episode of "The Muppets".
• The narration refers to the Fantastic Four as "the most famous foursome in the world! (No, we don't mean ABBA!)" Again, the U.S. version featured a different reference in the form of KISS.