From TheBestLinks.com
This article is about Iron Man, the Marvel Comics superhero. For other uses of the term, see Iron Man (disambiguation).
Iron Man is a comic book superhero in the Marvel Comics universe, and a founding member of The Avengers. The character was created by Stan Lee.
While on a visit to Vietnam to see how his new mini-transistors could assist the American war effort, millionaire industrialist and inventive genius Tony Stark was caught in a booby trap. Captured by a Vietnamese warlord, Wong Chu and dying from a piece of shrapnel lodged in his heart from the booby trap, Stark was pressed into building weapons for Wong Chu together with a fellow prisoner, the famed physicist Yin Sen. However, Stark and Yin Sen used the workshop to secretly design and construct a suit of powered armor - an iron exoskeleton that gave Stark tremendous strength as well as other abilities - that would not only keep Stark's heart beating, but allow him to escape. Yin Sen sacrificed himself to buy Stark enough time to charge the bulky suit of armor, and as Iron Man, Stark made short work of Wong Chu and his men. Returning to the United States, Stark continued to upgrade and refine the armor, establishing a dual identity as the adventurer and superhero Iron Man.
The cover for Iron Man was that he was Stark's bodyguard and corporate mascot. To that end, Iron Man fought both threats to his company as well as Communist opponents and independent villains like The Mandarin. No one suspected Stark of being Iron Man as he continued to cultivate his image as a rich playboy and engineering genius. The comic took a fairly right-wing anti-Communist stance in its early years, which was softened as the comics readership displayed opposition to the Vietnam War. This took place in a series of stories with Stark profoundly reconsidering his political opinions and the morality of manufacturing weapons for the military. Stark, however, has remained essentially a conservative character, and is often shown to be willing to justify the means with the ends.
Another notable element of the character is, unlike other superheroes, his appearance and abilities are continually in flux as Stark continually modifies and upgrades his equipment. This is most obvious with the regularly changing appearance of his armor. In addition, writer David Michelinie also had Stark develop several specialized function armour suits for space travel, deep sea diving, stealth and so on. The most consistent characteristics of the armor, however, have been a red and gold color scheme, enhanced strength, flight, and offensive capabilities in the form of "repulsor beams" fired from the palms of the suit.
Stark has a vast personal fortune, and is also known as a philantropist. He has not only donated the use of the house he grew up in as Avengers Mansion, he also funds the Avengers' operations through the Maria Stark Foundation, a non-profit organization named after his late mother.
Eventually, Stark's heart condition was discovered by the public and eventually cured with an artificial heart transplant. However, Stark was also developing a serious dependency on alcohol. The first time it became a problem was when Stark discovered that the national security agency S.H.I.E.L.D. had been buying a controlling interest in his company in order to ensure Stark's continued weapons development for them. With the support of his friends and employees, however, Stark pulled through.
Some time later, a ruthless rival, Obadiah Stane, manipulated him emotionally into a relapse. As a result, Stark lost Stark Industries, became a homeless vagrant and gave up his armored identity to his pilot Jim Rhodes, who became the new Iron Man for a lengthy period of time. Eventually, Stark recovered and started a new company, Circuits Maximus, which came under assault from Stane. Finally, Stark defeated Stane in personal combat where his superior skill with his new armour proved superior over Stane's unskilled use of his own variant suit.
In an attempt to stop other people from misusing his designs, Stark then went about disabling other armored heroes and villains who were using suits based on the Iron Man technology. However, these "Armor Wars" had tragic consequences, when he inadverdently caused the death of the Soviet Titanium Man. Declared a danger by the United States government (whose Guardsmen suits were based on Stark designs), Iron Man was hunted down. Stark eventually had to fake Iron Man's demise, and claim that a new person was in the armor.
However, Stark's health continued to deteriorate, as it was revealed that the armor's cerebral interface was causing irreversible damage to his nervous system. This was exacerbated by a failed attempt on his life by a mentally unbalanced former lover that injured his spine, paralyzing him. Stark constructed a "skin" made up of artificial nerves, intended to assist his own failing nervous system. Ultimately, the damage done almost killed him. Faking his death, he placed himself in suspended animation to heal as Jim Rhodes once again took up the mantle of the Iron Man. Stark's recovery was slow, initially only to the point that he could pilot a remote-controlled Iron Man armor, not wear the armor himself. When Rhodes learned that Stark had manipulated his friends in faking his own death, he became enraged, a characteristic that would soon dominate his personality. Rhodes's manic mental state was later revealed to be the result of his using armors whose cerebral interfaces were calibrated for Stark's brain, leaving any other long-term user disoriented and confused.
Stark eventually made a full recovery and reassumed the mantle of Iron Man, and Rhodes used one of Stark's experimental armors in a new identity as War Machine. A difference of opinion as to the future of the Avenger's west coast branch led to Iron Man leaving the team and forming a new superhero group, Force Works, funded by Tony Stark. However, tensions within that team soon led to his resignation from it, and Iron Man attempted a reconciliation with the Avengers.
It was revealed soon after that a traitor was among the Avengers' ranks, and it turned out that traitor was none other than Iron Man himself. Apparently the villain Kang the Conqueror had been manipulating Stark for years, causing him to push aside his friends and unconsciously serve Kang. Stark, fully in Kang's thrall, killed an employee of the Avengers, then, having momentarily regained control over his actions, gave his own life battling Kang. However, this entire episode was later revealed to be the machination of a disguised Immortus, not Kang, and the mental control had only gone back for a few months. With Stark dead, the Avengers, needing his help to defeat Kang, travelled back in time and recruited a teenage Tony Stark to assist them. "Teen Tony" built a suit of armor and became the "new" Iron Man.
During the battle with the creature called Onslaught, "Teen Tony" died, along with many of his teammates and allies. However, Franklin Richards preserved these "dead" heroes in the "Heroes Reborn" pocket universe, in which Tony Stark was once again an adult and a hero. The reborn adult Stark, upon returning to the normal Marvel Universe, retained the memories of both the original and teenage Tony Stark, and considered himself to have been both of them. With the aid of law firm Nelson & Murdock, he successfully regained his fortune and set up a new company (during his "death", Stark Enterprises had been sold), Stark Solutions.
Iron Man also demanded that a hearing be convened by the Avengers to look into his actions just prior to the Onslaught incident, and he was cleared of wrongdoing. He rejoined the Avengers. Stark continued to be active as a member, even after he decided to finally reveal to the world that he had been the man behind the Iron Man mask all along.
Recently, Stark discovered that the United States military was still using his technology. Rather than confront them as he did before, he accepted a Presidential appointment to act as Secretary of Defense (his predecessor, Dell Rusk, had actually been the Red Skull in disguise). In this way, he hoped to be able to monitor and direct how his designs were being used. He continues act to as Iron Man while carrying out his government duties.
Bibliography of Iron Man titles
- Iron Man and the Sub-Mariner (1968)
- Iron Man (1968 series) #1-332 (May 1968 - September 1996)
- Iron Man Annual (1970 series) #1-15 (1970 - 1994)
- Giant-Size Iron Man (1975)
- Iron Man 2020 (August 1994)
- Age of Innocence: The Rebirth of Iron Man (February 1996)
- Iron Man (1996 series) #1-13 (November 1996 - November 1997)
- Iron Man (1998 series) #1-present (February 1998 - present)
- Iron Man Annual '98 (1998)
- Iron Man Annual '99 (1999)
- Iron Man: Bad Blood (2000 series) #1-4 (September 2000 - December 2000)
- Iron Man Annual 2000 (2000)
- Iron Man Annual 2001 (2001)
- Iron Manual (1993)
External links
Related links
Top visited
0 of
0 links
[no links posted yet]
>> place link >>
Discussion
Last posted
0 of
0 messages
[no messages posted yet]
>> post message >>
Watch
You can
add this article to your own "watchlist" and receive e-mail notification about all changes in this page.
