World’s Finest 6 offered a story that was essentially Iron Man versus Superman, circa 1942.
“Superman’s powers, though nowhere near their eventual levels, had nonetheless become so potent and so varied that the world of urban crime and corruption (writer Jerry) Siegel had hitherto favored in his plotting no longer offered sufficient challenges,” observed Kurt F. Mitchell in American Comic Book Chronicles.
“Those stories never went entirely away, but super villains and other fantasy elements cropped up with increasing frequency. The Man of Tomorrow bested such evildoers as Metalo, a renegade ‘robot’ unmasked as a scientist wearing sophisticated armor; Funnyface, a failed newspaper cartoonist (and dead ringer for one Jerome Siegel) who created a machine that could bring comic strip characters to life; Akthar, cruel dictator of a race of mermen; the Lightning Master, a robed and hooded extortionist who used electricity as his weapon; and the Emperor of America, whose will-deadening ray allowed him to seize control of the American government without firing a shot.”
Metalo was George Grant, a criminal scientist whose purple-caped armor and super-strength serum combined to make him powerful enough to threaten even Superman.
“Impervious to bullets, (Metalo) can fly through the air and possesses monumental super strength equivalent to Superman’s,” noted comic historian Michael L. Fleisher. “Operating from a subterranean hideaway situated beneath the main tent of the Farnham Circus, somewhere on the Metropolis waterfront, Metalo stuns the city with a series of spectacular crimes, including the theft of an entire mail car from the Metropolis train terminal, and an attempt to extort $5 million from the city’s businessmen by threatening to destroy Metropolis.”
“Even in 1942, Superman was suspicious enough that the police thought he might be involved in the crimes actually committed by Metalo,” noted Steve Carper.
The Man of Tomorrow clears his name in a battle in which “…the very mountains tremble and are rent asunder.” Knocking Metalo into a lava-filled crevice, Superman assumes he’s dead. But the villain manages to cling to a ledge, vowing revenge. He never got it, though, because he never returned (until Superman Family 217 in April 1982).
However, 17 years later, the armored Metalo was revamped as the kryptonite-powered cyborg Metallo (The Menace of Metallo, Action Comics 252, May 1959) when an elderly scientist performed a lifesaving operation on the criminal John Corben. That version has returned many times, becoming an enduring part of the Superman mythos.
Meanwhile, over at what was about to become Marvel Comics, we got The Thing Called Metallo (Tales of Suspense 16, April 1961), the story of a prison inmate who escapes in an invincible suit of armor. The same title would be introduced in the actual Iron Man 23 issues later.
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