The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls

« Machine Man »
Kitty Pryde he ain't.
The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls
Publisher	Marvel Comics
Published in	The Transformers issue 8 issue 9
First published	29th December, 1984 (part 1) 12th January, 1985 (part 2)
Writer	Marv Wolfman
Artist	Steve Ditko
Colorist	R. Slifer
Letterer	John Costanza
Editor	Marv Wolfman
Consulting editor	Jim Shooter

Machine Man is framed by two of Brickman's goons and their especially dense slave.

Synopsis

Part 1

In tonight's news: Machine Man has heroically prevented a school bus full of children from crashing into the ocean after a bridge collapse. Senator Miles Brickman, hearing the report, is positively seething about it. He rants to his goons, Fred Greenfield and Archie Goldsmith, that every good deed Machine Man commits threatens his anti-Machine Man presidential campaign platform. Fred suggests that they could tie him to employment, and though Brickman dismisses it at first, he eventually cottons on to the idea of Machine Man representing automation, putting Joe Public out of work... and takes credit for the idea, sending the lads home for the day on the orders they find a new smear campaign for the next morning.

Archie invites Fred to dinner with him and his brother, Dr. Hiram R. Goldsmith. Stopping by at "Ham"'s lab, they find him at a critical stage of his latest experiment. His test subject, the down on his luck Barry Witherspoon, tries to console his family that things'll be fine, but his wife, Gloria, tearfully takes the kids away from watching their father become a lab rat. Hiram preps Witherspoon for the experiment, which is intended to siphon excess mass from other dimensions and saturate a human being with it, thus increasing their density. The experiment is too successful, and the lab is wrecked around the screaming figure of Witherspoon – and when the energy subsides, he blankly turns and walks through the wall as if it were paper!

An injured Hiram gives a set of sonic amplifiers to Archie and Fred, who were safe behind a radiation shield, telling them the apparatus is the only way to cut through Witherspoon's newfound density to communicate. The goons catch up with Witherspoon, and order him to stop. Archie realises that they can command the entranced Witherspoon with the amplifiers, but Fred realises that this could be the answer to discrediting Machine Man on Brickman's orders...

Elsewhere, Machine Man is helping to repair the bridge, though Peter encourages him to take it slowly for the benefit of the assembled press and paparazzi. A journo asks Peter if this display is in response to Brickman's campaign, which Peter readily admits – because Brickman's accusations are ridiculous, as a living robot doesn't need to take jobs from people. TV reporter Dorothy Mayson argues that Machine Man is right now taking a job from a derrick operator, and that with a hundred Machine Men, there'd be thousands fewer employees in construction. As Mrs Mayson storms away and the press disperses, Machine Man laments that it is not yet time for man and machine to live together... and he already has a job to get to.

As Aaron arrives at work, he is pounced upon by Maggie Jones, demanding a kiss. Aaron effortlessly strands her on top of a high filing cabinet, just as wiseacre Eddie Harris is wandering by. The furious Maggie declares war on Mr High and Mighty Aaron Stack.

That night, on Wall Street, Witherspoon forces his way through a wall, heading for a vault – dressed as Machine Man! The guards fire on him, but his density has rendered him immune to bullets, and he easily knocks them out. Soon, he has returned to Archie and Fred with a bag full of cash, and the two goons decide to try and make it without Brickman.

About an hour later, Aaron gets a call from Peter, who tells him to brace himself and put on the TV. Mrs Mayson is reporting live from the scene with one of the guards attacked by Witherspoon, who identifies the thief as Machine Man, "who else?" Peter leaves the phone off the hook to answer a knock at the door, where he finds two of New York's finest with a warrant for Machine Man's arrest, and since Peter isn't providing his whereabouts, his arrest too! Machine Man makes to go on patrol to stop this miscarriage of justice, but spies Maggie surveilling his apartment, so he takes off from the roof.

In Midtown, Witherspoon breaks into Tower's Jewelry Store, swiping valuables from the display cases while Archie and Fred wait in a getaway van. From the air, Machine Man detects the high frequency of the sonic amplifiers. He attacks his criminal doppelganger, but is surprised that the human is not only shrugging off his super strength, he's not even responding to thirty thousand volts of electricity... nor is he speaking or responding naturally. Witherspoon gets the better of him, as his gyro and gravity centres are affected by the wail of the amplifiers, and the crooks escape with their loot. Shortly, the cops arrive, responding to the jeweller's silent burglar alarms. Machine Man is there at the crime scene, dead to rights!

Featured characters

Regular cast	Antagonists	Incidentals
Aaron Stack/Machine Man Peter Spaulding Oliver Broadhurst Delmar Insurance Maggie Jones Eddie Harris	Miles Brickman Brickman's supporters Fred Greenfield Archie Goldsmith Barry Witherspoon/"Machine Man" Dorothy Mayson	Newsreader Hiram R. Goldsmith Gloria Witherspoon The Witherspoon children News photographers Wall Street security guards Dobbs The NYPD Warden Dean Prison guards

Quotes

"Archie, something tells me the senator is a loony bird."

—Fred has no job satisfaction.

"I'm afraid, Miss Jones, that your romantic endeavours do not interest me in the slightest... I suggest the next time you feel the need to kiss someone... try Eddie!"

—I wouldn't, Aaron.

Notes

The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls on Marvel Database, an external wiki

Original printing

• Machine Man (vol 1) issue 14, April 1980

This was Marv Wolfman's final issue of Machine Man, likely as a result of his departure to DC.

Edits

• Pages 1-4 and 8-9 of part 1 are printed in black and white.
• On page 6, "endeavors" is changed to "endeavours".
• Panels on the last page of part 1 featuring both Machine Men colour them in different shades of maroon – apart from one panel where they start to blend in to each other.
• A "DON'T MISS NEXT ISSUE!" caption box is added to the final page of part 1.
• Pages 1-2 and 5-7 of part 2 are printed in black and white.
• Brickman lists his political rivals as "Carter and Kennedy and the others" – the "Carter and" is removed from the UK printing.
• On page 2 of part 2, "candor" is (very poorly) edited to "candour". On page 5, "humor" is similarly edited to "humour", shifting the next word, "Peter", along a little.

Artwork and technical errors

• For the first time in a TFUK Machine Man strip, no effort is made to change the colorist credit to "colourist".
• A lot of U.S. spellings slip through in this story, including "theorized", "re-energizing", "aluminum", "jewelry", "transistorized", "analyzation"... and, ah, "mommy".
• One of the guards on Wall Street has hair in an unusual shade of green.
• The jeweller's robbed by Witherspoon is referred to once as "Tower's Jewelry Store" and once as "Towers Jewelry Store" (sans apostrophe).
• Shortly before Archie tries to call it quits, one of Fred's speech bubbles is attributed to the comatose Witherspoon.
• The final speech bubble is attributed to Machine Man, though it refers to him in the second person ("You've been proven innocent.").

Continuity notes

• Fred and Archie do not appear to be the same two goons who accompanied Brickman in "Byte of the Binary Bug!".
• It hasn't been made explicit until now that Aaron has his own apartment, having only been seen waking up in Peter's apartment the previous story.
• Either Fred and Archie and/or Witherspoon and/or Mrs Mayson are doing a lot of commuting between Washington, D.C. and NYC, or Brickman is operating from a New York campaign office instead of the one seen in "Byte of the Binary Bug!".
• It's Dr Broadhurst! In the TFUK printing, there was no indication that Machine Man had kept in touch with the X project creator since "Introducing Machine Man", but in the full story it was adapted from, "Renewal!",  Broadhurst performed emergency surgery on him to save his life at Peter's behest.

Other notes

• Adding density to a person from another dimension isn't so far-fetched in a universe with mass displacement,  huh?