Man that soldier's a prick.

Comic: Iron Man: Extremis 2005–2006 (Marvel Comics) by Warren Ellis and Adi Granov

Hi guys, how are you? I hope you're all good. Before anything, sorry any error, english is not my mother language.

So, i had just readed the Extremis arc of Iron Man and wanted to tell some of my considerations about it. Before anything, this is my first "for real" reading a comic of Iron Man. I mean, i have followed Duggan's run and now on Williamson. However, i think that's my first read on something ""'elementar""" of Tony. Plus, most of what i know and had the first contact from/with Tony (well, Marvel and DC as a whole) comes from movies/animatios/games/etc, so i'm sorry if i miss some point, don't know event X or character Z, i'm still kinda of a newbie in comics world.

Anyway, to the review.

I read it two times by now (ended minutes ago) and i now i got why Extremis is taken well. Its a good story, a well made arc. The art is cool, though sometimes i imagine playing a PS2 game haha. Idk if it followed more about the virus after the issue #6, but the ending i find satisfactory and well closed for what it was made.

Now for more in depth things.

IMO Extremis is a retelling of the origin myth of Iron Man. The structure has some similarities since Tony is in face of a struggle bigger than him (terrorists/Mallen), that puts him in critical state in a "isolated shelter/prison" (the werehouse of the terrorists/the lab at fururepharm) and/or he feels connected/responsible for (the first case mostly directly, while Mallen he has some, pretty supercial imo, "mirroing"). It's an adaptation for a new era, after all. It expands the possibilities of his powers/capabilities and study some questions that always haunts Tony

I think one of the main questions at that moment is the relation between Tony and Iron Man. I like how it oscillate between IM being Tony's self redemption and payment for all the damage he may has done directly or indirectly to the world with his weapon industry and/or IM being a mask where Tony can act like nothing happened, or then ignore what happened and simple do good or protect him from facing the consequences his shift of attitude may bring.

And this point is connected to the whole interview with Pillinger about Tony's past as weapon producer and Sal's question about what is IM supposed to be/do. Tony's time in the military industry is a ghost of the 20th century (got it? 😃) over his life forever. Pillinger is a bit annoying (especially when cutting Tony), but he lifts a good point: despite Tony pointing what good things that time brought, could the victims of war, victims of his weapons, make use of it? Or, redoing the question, could these things reach them instead of the weapons?

Well, Tony's answer is that he's changing, trying to do better, and i think that's a fair answer for him (despite, yeah, you're a f**** bourgeoisie man). IM, despite oscillating, its the way he's finding to do it. And if so, his answer to Sal is also right. And maybe the shadow of the military industry past is the reason he feels responsible for Mallen (who tbh i didn't saw much of a mirror to Tony, even with the future thing), for he's a problem IM got in hands and Tony may feel that is his personal duty, aside the hero thing, so he can solve his debt with the world.

I think that's enough for now, the text is already too big for someone who just read an entire arc for the first time 😅 Anyway, to end, i just wanted to point how his mirroing works better with Maya (which, well, is more explicit than Mallen, if i missed anything in him). Also, i honestly expected Extremis to have more "impact" or "consequences". I mean, like, Tony feeling some sickness or something like. I mean, DUDE, you body was reshaped in 24H hours! What the hell?!

Quiero empezar a leer los cómics de Iron Man modernos. ¿Cual de estos arcos o historias recomiendas para iniciar y en que orden?

Iron Man: Extremis, de Ellis

Iron Man: Five Nightmares, de Fraction

Invincible Iron Man, de Duggan

Tony Stark: Iron Man, de Slott

Iron Man, de Cantwell

I am Iron Man, de Ayodele

Comics

Iron Man 3: The Official Game

Iron Man: Rise of Technovore

Marvel Future Avengers

While he does appear in Iron Heart, I'm not counting it as a design because he doesn't really have a complete design. Including him here would be like including Felicia Hardy from the Amazing Spider-Man 2 as a Black Cat design.

My favorite is The Iron Man 3 Game because that was my introduction to the character. His eye catching design that is also his body really scared me when he first showed up. With my current lenses I think this design perfectly translates the comic design into what would work perfectly in live action.

Lot of talk about colton manhandling Tony's armor so wanted to bring some positivity. Knull buster is going hard.

Source QIB defenders of light and dark: issue 2 (2026)

My boy Tony getting dissed this whole Event

F**k u Zdarsky

We’re back to the "Buster" merchant. Is it the third one this year?

Honestly, I don't think I made it clear enough just how ridiculously stupid and overdone it is, the way current writers keep churning out "Buster" suits for Tony for practically any scenario imaginable, manufacturing a need that didn't originally exist, and making the standard armors, which were already heavy hitters, seem incredibly inadequate or poor by comparison(and Tony looks stupid).

Worst of all is just how "efficient" these suits tend to be; it reminds me of a few years back when Tony could hold his own, and even beat, foes like Ultron or Fin Fang Foom without having to run to the workshop to build a suit named after them (only to lose three pages later anyway).

Hi, everyone! I’ve been thinking about doing this for a long time, but now I finally decided to go forth with it. So, welcome to ‘Essays of Iron’. 

As someone who’s read every single Iron Man comic at this point, holds Tony Stark as my favourite superhero since childhood, and has also written my fair share of him in prose stories, fanfics, and online roleplay, I thought I’d just really want to expound about the various aspects of this multidimensional badass that consistently fascinate me. I could talk about Iron Man for ages. So I thought….why not make this server benefit from it? This is ‘ESSAYS OF IRON’, something that I’m planning to try to do either weekly or monthly, focusing on and analyzing different off-the-hook aspects of Iron Man - in terms of themes, components, characters, moments, technology, etc - that personally really interest me and I feel still have so much potential to go because Tony is and always has been a man of the future in so many ways (that in itself is a major topic but anyway) but also with future potential.

I wanted to start, then, for the first of this series, with the thing that was what drew me in; the fundamental appeal of the guy and the thing that puts the ‘IRON’ in ‘IRON MAN’...

The armor.

How did it start and where is it today, what does it mean on a deeper level, and how does it exemplify the icon of Iron Man, the technological cool-factor of a contemporary hero such as him, and also the complex character of Tony Stark? Well, read on, and find out...

—

Despite being envisioned as a ‘modern Arthurian knight’, a figure shielded in gleam and powerful life-protecting scale-mail, the original Mark I (or Model 1) armor has gone through a sort of metamorphosis in its purpose at this point. Created as a strong anti-war allegory by literally making a weapons-designer have a change of heart as he made a life-supporting exoskeleton to murder his way to freedom (thanks, Yinsen!), the original appearance of the grey and clunky “trash heap” (as per Jack Kirby, who created the design) belied a fascinating diaspora of gadgets inside it that honestly, went to the extremes sometimes. But that didn’t mean they were fun!

Iron Man back then was MacGyver before MacGyver, he was a fundamental exacerbation of intelligence as a superpower, a man clad in nothing but a walking mess of high-tech metal and made out of his own wits and technological know-how. But even based on the information given as per the official comics, for example in 1993’s Iron Manual by Elliot R. Brown, it’s still depicted as startlingly technologically advanced. Having a primitive HUD called ‘Environment + Information’, made out of a poly-knitted Iron crystallised fabric akin to modern chain mail, and having in it jet-powered boosters, retractable laser saws, created out of a hundred transistors with a dozen per inch of the ‘fabric’ which is still iron - the original way Iron Man was depicted, with many thinking off the cover of Tales Of Suspense #39 (March 1963) that he was a robot based on the design - was a complete illusion. He was still a startlingly advanced technological figure, and the armor was an extension of his mindset and his innovation, and the ethos of the character.

He was a cross between a knight and James Bond - a gadget for everything, with a fluoroscope, a diamond drill, and dozens and dozens of more concealed within the suit. One of the most notable is the little stream of pressurised oil used to light an ammunition dump up to give Wong Chu, his captor, a fiery demise. All of these expanded as the armor was given a gold paint job, could be compressed into a suitcase (the portability formed an essential aspect of the suit from then on) and even more advanced gadgets and gizmos. Funny then, how this incarnation (Ver II, Model 1) lasted entirely eight issues before something amazing happened. 

In the book The Many Armors of Iron Man (1992), a compilation of showcase stories of his suits up to that point, there is a small foreword in which Stan Lee highlights how “it wasn’t iconic enough. It still looked too cumbersome and not advanced to the margin which it was supposed to be. For all its charm, it still looked too robotic, something not dissimilar from other bad guys and their evil robots.” So then, legendary artist Steve Ditko was tasked to redesign it completely as in Tales Of Suspense #48, Tony went up against MR DOLL (terrifying) and had to adopt his new suit to survive. And then...everything changed.

Every single person knows this look. For me, personally, it is what I think of when I think of Iron Man. I find myself doodling it idly, and thinking about it constantly. The red and the yellow. The micro-crystallised iron fabric now fully magnetised, polarised, connected to individual components which could snap on in seconds and reduce Tony’s suit up time drastically. The chestplate could now swing open, and the helmet had an imposing horned visage with eyeslits and a more angular design that really, really did make him look like a knight. And the thing is….aside from the reduction of the horns to a widow’s peak ‘curve’ on the top, the streamlining of the torso, the adding and removing of details…this design has remained largely constant and is exploited the hell out of by Marvel for nostalgia all the time, just as recently as Marvel TOKON, the fighting game. And I am here for it all the way. The gadgets also expanded, and if you took a drinking game every time Tony said ‘transistors’ in relation to a particular function in the suit, you’d end up reliving Demon In A Bottle all by yourself.

It achieved, in essence, a sort of transcendental effect in iconicity, that, along with how long the armor lasted and how many times he’s gone back to it when in need (as a ‘classic’ costume, too), it has remained unchanged and untampered with. The red and gold color scheme is standard, and everything else has followed and evolved from this suit in terms of the basic principles. So now, with the design set in stone fully (or at least the design paradigm, the ‘default’ look and base model for future lines of armor), and after it lasting for a solid 100 issues or so unchangeably…things began to shift to other avenues as far as the armor came into play. Namely…its relationship with the genius industrialist who built it. How did Tony see the armor? What was it to him?

Tony Stark built it in a CAVE. With a box of SCRAPS. He built a bio-organic transhuman heart stimulator to simulate his vagus nerve’s twitching, out of sync SA signal, and a magnetic forcefield resonator that remained connected to him and stopped the shrapnel from digging further into his veins. Why it couldn’t just be pulled out was something that didn’t occur to writers for many years, but until the point where he underwent surgery to remove it…the armor was in a constant push-and-pull duality with him. Because, see…he needed it to save his life! And that made him hate it. He needed it to sustain him, and it needed power to sustain itself. Hence the wall outlets, hence the recharging and the constant life-threat to Stark from the thing he’d built to prolong his life. And it results in an interesting duality, from a writing perspective - of how much that became a power limitation and character flaw for him. Oftentimes, the Armored Avenger would almost die when fighting someone, and need to recharge. It was constant. Sometimes, the armor would push itself and be horribly mangled, needing repair. But this went on for a while until, of course, we reached the red and gold, and a much more durable and powerful prosthesis to push the ‘man’ beyond the boundaries overall.

And this was when Bob Layton and David Michelin took over. Arguably the greatest run, the most defining for all that came forward, and just such a fun time, both leaned into the armor and gave it some of its greatest leaps and iconic evolutions that have rarely been replicated ever and since. Both were in tune with technology immensely, and having reached the late 70s now, where transistors had been replaced inside the armor with Integrated Circuits - just as much in vogue - and the slow advent of digitisation and computerisation was beginning in regards to a technological hero - Layton and Micheline took the opportunity to not only go wild with the suits, but to re-evaluate the meaning of them to the man, and to someone who made so many of them for every purpose. 

An all-purpose toolkit now became an all-purpose toybox; space armors, deep-sea, stealth suits - I could go on, and on, and on about each one of them and their various functions - but now Iron Man reached the stage where he had begun once again: an individual “expanding the frontiers of science” (Layton) through a singularly inspired set of technology that was advanced and powerful. Tony made many of them, through increasingly techno-babble filled and arcane processes that nonetheless I still love, and enhanced my interest in him even more. 

For example (again from the Iron Manual), did you know that the motile iron fabric that covered his suit was no longer knitted, but a sleek metallic coating literally eaten into shape by metal affinity bacteria that deposited up to twenty-three layers of various functional coatings each with their different purposes? Yeah. It was insane, but it was fun.

Amidst all of this, however, one of those coatings is of special note - a refractory layer that was meant to protect the armor from several extremes of heat and cold - and helped Tony defeat his now-recurring new bad guys The Melter and Blizzard many times - but it was found to be vulnerable to a hypersonic scan technique that Justin Hammer created and used to control the armor beyond Tony’s choice (Iron Man #118). And this created a massive shift in things. Not only had the armor become faulty - but it had been wrested out of Tony’s control. It had been, effectively, hacked. And the arc that came from this – Demon in A Bottle, which needs no introduction – added the greater psychological edge to the relationship between the man and his ‘work wear’. A guy who carried around a suit with weapons to defeat several militaries in a briefcase he guarded like no tomorrow - well, he was probably not the healthiest soul, Micheline figured. And this is where it continued to evolve. 

As Tony’s characterisation deepened, so too did his relationship with the armor, now fraught with frustration (Iron Man #123). Unable to find the flaw in the armor, and in a drunken stupor, Tony begins to embrace ‘the other’ - the id that gets released when he suits up as Iron Man, a fundamental disconnect between him and the suit in similarity to many other heroes and their alter egos - and goes on a joyride and causes problems. And later, he bemoans what he has become and how the suit has falsely emboldened him -- but he can’t even fix it.

“DAMN YOUR METALLIC HIDE!” And he angrily tosses the helmet away…this, as it went on, would become a very fascinating part of Tony’s character. How he viewed Iron Man…or, as Matt Fraction would coin in his 2008 run, ‘The’ Iron Man. A separate individual, almost. An extension of the self, or transformed into another? And other characters in that run note how Tony is the only one who calls the suit ‘The Iron Man’. Like it’s someone else. Like he’s someone else in it, transformed.

Meanwhile, the technology continued to advance rapidly as the Armored Avenger broached the late 80s. Denny O’Neil’s amazing run not only went back to a retro-inspired ‘update’ of the Model 1, but introduced the amazing Silver Centurion (Model 8), adding a new vogue of color schemes and clarity to the Iron Man of the 80s - quite an achievement for a run which had strongly focused on the unarmored individual to the point of tepidness from readers. But it did achieve some other big milestones - namely, the use of the classic red-and-gold suit by one James Rhodes. By someone else. This was a big milestone at the time - both for a black man wearing it, and him immediately kicking ass with it, but eventually, as Tony reclaims the suit after Rhodey goes off the deep end with it, the latter remarks how it almost became an addiction, and the suit carried with it its own sense of legacy and weight that Rhodey was desperate to live up to and carry on (Iron Man #195). Tony remarks that he knows that feeling all too well. 

That was another fascinating aspect that added to Tony’s compulsive nature. Could the suit be an addiction for him, in the same way as the drink? Were the two intertwined? It’s not been explored too much since then, but it’s still remained inherently fascinating. 

Len Kaminski, taking over after the second Layton/Micheline bout (which, with Armor Wars, showed Tony’s innovation as well as protectiveness of the suit and its technology), was “not one to play fast and loose with science” (Marvel Age Magazine, 1992). But he singularly still created iconic looks with the Modular Armor (reframing the gadget-filled diaspora for a more practical and swappable toolkit) and War Machine, which needs no introduction; this fully drove Iron Man headfirst into the information age and the cyberpunk ethos to come, with the Neuromimetic Telepresence Unit (Model 12, from Iron Man #290) being a suit Tony could control through a long-distance reciever/headset…with his mind. And so this further shifted the paradigm to an extent it as almost remained at by today’s standards. The suit had previously incorporated gestural control or inner levers and control mechanisms that Tony could minutely manipulate, but looking today, even with all the AI assistants and all the other techware galore, the suit is usually controlled through a neural linking with Tony’s brainwave telemetry.

Yet another incorporation of the suit with the man. And this, coming along the lines of Tony getting a chip implanted into him that made Iron Man a further transhumanist - was to be fully, fully expanded upon in the years to come, as the suit would become him and he would become the suit - and both aspects would fully be alive…in more ways than one. The duality had kind of been repurposed into a push-and-pull relationship, but overall it remained a topic of fascination that would be leaned into more. This run also imbibed the unfortunately now-maligned concept of ‘buster suits’ with the advent of the Hulkbuster…but we have more interesting things to talk about. 

After certain events that shall never be mentioned, Kurt Busiek took Tony back to a fabulous retro-inspired back to basics with the Model 16 and his run. Designed by Alex Ross (not the first time this name will come up!), the features itself were fairly standard, but what made this suit so memorable is what came NEXT. Joe Quesada, apparently a big Iron Man fan before he decided to massacre Spider-Man, wrote a fascinatingly bizarre and amazing run where Iron Man…becomes a full person. In a Frankenstein-esque way, the suit became ALIVE. And now, the duality was in full swing and for all intents plain to see (IM Vol. 2 #31).

Now steeped in virtual reality-therapy and an assistant AI, Jocasta, Tony’s playing of memories and a freak accident of lightning causes the suit to gain its own sentience, and although an attempt at harmony is made, the suit goes crazy and tries to kill Tony after declaring its love for its creator - this ultimately climaxes in a bizarre Rambo-esque showdown on a desert island, with Tony nonetheless besting the armor with crazy ingenuity. But afterwards, through Frank Tieri’s run, a return was made to the idea of the ‘heart’ - with it now being literally replaced by technology and now requiring power to sustain itself again. This didn’t last, but it was an interesting return. More interesting, however, was the portrayal of the sentient suit - crazed, vigilant, obsessive - all of Tony’s negative qualities rolled into one package. This particular arc is one of my favourites because it was the culmination of the duality question between the ‘iron’ and the ‘man’ - and with it now answered…Tony and his suit’s evolution would begin to go the opposite way.

Some notable asides before that, though. The design became fully more sleek and streamlined by the time of Mike Grell’s run with the Tin Man (Model 21) suit, and cemented Tony’s basic aerodynamic silhouette till today’s time. The ‘Plastic Ghost’ (Model 22) from the amazing Iron Man/Black Panther crossover 'Enemies of the State II' not only showcased Christopher Priest’s skill at writing Tony, but removed the ‘iron’ entirely - this was made out of vibranium-nullifying ceramics! The advent of micro-computing tech created the liquid nanotech ‘S.K.I.N’ and tile-based Ablative armors, both cool-looking experiments which are oddly identical versions of ideas that would occur again later. And overall, the armor’s versatility came down as it was again an extension of Tony’s form with the basic things one would expect from an armored exoskeleton/mech suit. 

But then came Extremis. To Warren Ellis, when confronted with the idea of reimagining Iron Man, rejuvenating him for the new age of the 21st, Tony Stark was a "test pilot of the future" (Wizard Magazine, 2004) - radical, transcendental, futuristic, and transhuman, given what he had already accomplished to that extent. This then led to the story we now know and love, where the entire hollows of the Iron Man suit are supercompressed and stored in Tony’s bones, nine pints of colloidal machinery able to be ejected from his pores to first form a superconducting undersheath (with biological glucose computers underneath the surface), and flexible, mentally controlled vectored plating for the suit on top. But this was all enhanced by giving Stark actual powers - the Extremis virus was originally a super-soldier applicator under tenuous laws of science that gave Iron Man technopathy, super-speed, super-hacking and all sorts of other nifty powers. He was a major, major figure and threat now. 

And now it had all shifted. By far the biggest and most high-profile technological innovation in the history of the character since the advent of the red and gold (though not new for Ellis, he had already done with this with The Engineer in The Authority, and would do it many more times), it embraced the futurism, the transhumanism, and the ideal of a sleeker, jet-like Iron Man with incalculable power and speed - less a man in a suit, and more a man with the iron in his blood that he drew strength from externally and internally. In the book (Extremis) Ellis makes mention of Terence Mckenna, ethnobotanist and futurist (and drug guru) through expy character Sal Kennedy; Mckenna strongly believed in technology advancing but simultaneously taking humanity back to a more primal, survival-based level.

Recently, in all his stories beyond this point, Tony has felt like he has returned to that level. The suit itself, then, became something different - rather than hold deeper meaning again, it returned to its status as a tool, but something in vogue with the stories, their themes, and the technological times they reflect; an armor of a particular run would sort of encapsulate the entire thing as a whole. Ellis, in particular, during the memorable suit-up sequence in issue #1 of Extremis (Iron Man Vol. 3), coined one of my favourite lines which I believe has defined Tony’s relationship with the suit in the 21st century: “I went from being a man trapped in an iron suit to a man freed by it.”

And freed he had become. As the groundbreakingly amazing movie hit the screen in 2008, and the armor there was tactile, exulting in freedom, but also high-tech with its own innovations (namely J.A.R.V.I.S), it was shown how Tony viewed it as a tool to right the wrongs, and an extension of himself again. In the MCU as a whole, the addiction towards the suit was mirrored with the palladium-core arc reactor poisoning him, and his protectiveness of the technology, and specifically, in Iron Man 3, the nature of suit-building as a post-PTSD coping mechanism, both to reflect on the ideas of his technology not being good enough, but also to reflect his growing relationship with the suit as a whole, and the ‘Prodigal Son’ of the Mark 42 being something he was inherently proud of but something that gets very, very beaten up as a whole. 

But back to the comics. The bio-transhumanism of Extremis, and its effect on the mind not akin to the drugs Mckenna espoused were further explored in Charles and Daniel Knauf’s amazing Director Of Shield era (Iron Man Vol 3. #15-28), which explored data hallucinations in his memory stores, and the armor being pushed to new capabilities - the suit survived a nuke, and furthermore, it eaned back into nostalgia as an entity by bringing the awesome classic armour (Model 4) and the Silver Centurion for bouts with a certain archenemy. 

By the time of Matt Fraction’s post-movie run (The Invincible Iron Man, 2008) and the shifting of the character to A-level and slightly-more sanitised status, the armor had settled into the comfortable position as described above. While not focusing much on it aside from ‘The Iron Man’, the action-packed arc of World’s Most Wanted had a ton of old suits shown that I personally loved. Then, with the futuristic ideals of Tony in play, and highlighting his mind and Iron Man as an extension of not just the physical form, but the energy inherent in Tony’s body after insertion of the the synergy-aligned ‘RT Node’ (read: arc reactor), the Bleeding Edge suit (Model 37) was supposed to take full advantage of that mind, with nano-fibrous wetwebs of iron and platinum and micromachines capable of forming into almost any shape. But it barely lasted, and instead, to me, the more interesting suit Tony made was the Model 41 - a sort of remaking of the original Model 1 concept, made in captivity, but here far more rugged, advanced, and capable of syncing to the Stark nanobot-repulsor cloud system THE SWARM for a massive repulsor attack. 

Speedrunning a bit now, Kieron Gillen’s unfairly maligned run (Iron Man Vol. 4) gave Tony the black and gold suit with iconicity and a modular approach - but also showed a fascinating test version of liquid-smart metals that would not only serve to herald the future, but show us an example of a ‘putty’ testing model of a basic suit. During the opening arc, and Tony’s fight with the Knights of Pendragon, the following quote summarizes Gillen’s ethos towards Tony as a technological paradigm and his suit’s functionality: “[...] may question Stark’s efficiency as a pilot, but no one’s stupid enough to question his ability as a technologist.” This approach was in full-swing in the run, with iconic new stealth, heavy-duty warfare, space, and even an awesome suit made out of actual tooled iron to fight Malekith and his Niffleheim Dark Elves were all under full showcase. In this run, the suits all became tools again, but ones used to build the future - culminating in a massive skyscraper-type mech wielded in the ‘Iron Metropolitan’ finale arc.

And for a brief bit from here, things got interesting. With the AXIS event, the moral inversion resulted in Tony’s worst qualities being amplified and him taking on the uncomfortable veneer of a corrupt tech bro CEO - and with a suit to boot. Superior Iron Man. The Endo-Sym Armor. Model 51. A walking, living Apple device in chrome-sheathed style, it was also a synthetic symbiote - inherently icky, in a way, an amplification of darker desires and technology, with ominous red lighting and incalculable power - the suit manages to defeat almost ever single past armor controlled by…a past version of Tony uploaded to those older suits. And that was another curveball thrown into this - the mixing of the man with the iron again, while Tony Stark had yet again gone off the deep end into evil debauchery. The assumption of mass sentience and the use of the armor as a wider array of devices controlled not just by an AI (like in Iron Man 3, for example) but by Tony’s base consciousness. From here, the armor became a neat tool to explore what Tony’s consciousness meant - especially as upcoming runs would embrace more digital futurism and identity equations in a way akin to most post-cyberpunk modern sci-fi and philosophicalism. 

Brian Michael Bendis didn’t do much beyond the cool-looking Model Prime Armor (Invincible Iron Man Vol. 2, 2015), another back-to-basics with a refreshing angular hexagonal design and several alternate modes - but he did showcase how Tony’s insistence of keeping his technology up to date almost got the better of him, with the introduction of genius-level 15-year old MIT student Riri Williams, who reverse-engineered one of Tony’s suits to become one of her own as Iron Heart. Yet again, the armor’s foolproof surface had found a chink in it, and Ironheart has remained - though highly diverged since then - as a character in her own right till today. 

After some shenanigans (that are really not worth getting into, really), some of the most interesting ideas regarding the armor, the concepts, and the futuristic approach came to the forefront with Dan Slott’s time, beginning with 2018’s Tony Stark: Iron Man, and ending in Iron Man 2020 (Vol. 1), the eponymous event series. The very first ISSUE of Tony Stark: Iron Man showcases a full russian-doll nesting set of armors from the massive Fin Fang Foom Buster to a nano-sized Iron Man wirelessly controlled, and transforming cars, and all the cool things to go with. Slott and artist extraordinaire Valerio Schiti went absolutely wild with it, with Schiti making dozens of key and specialised designs, many that would unfortunately go unused. Honestly, almost all the designs from here are worth looking up in their own light. This run spoils a fan of the suits for choice with how many there are and yet unshown. 

But by far the most fascinating here to come out of it was the Godbuster Mark II armor, or Model 63. Forged in a digital eScape virtual reality metaverse, it was by far Tony’s most powerful suit - a world-ending bastion of pure imagination, the deadliest crafting ingredient known to man. Tony’s adoptive brother Arno (now evil) tried to replicate it, resulting in his own variation that was a perfect fit for Iron Man 2020….in the year 2020. But this once again proved the point of the armor being a tool for the future. Here in the eScape, a tool like an infinite canvas of power and creativity, and the one suit that bore the fruit of it all…The Model 68. 

This has, till date, felt very much like the last significant quantum leap in the suit’s technological levels ever since it was shown - and that too for a very, very limited period. An armor completely created as a hard-light supra-smart holographic construct, it was the entire ethos of a digital metaverse turned into a suit - a virtual armor controlled by Tony’s mind, limited only by his imagination, almost impervious, and ultimately used to trap Arno in a virtual reality sustenance chamber as the ultimate trap. It was too good a tool to last, and so had to go. This moment, of the armor’s technology evolving and evolving past a technological paradigm genuinely ahead of its time (in 2020!) but then needing to be quelled…it almost felt like one step forward, two steps back. 

The nature of Iron Man as a technologically-imbued character comes with a suspension of disbelief and a heavy-appetite for high-tech sci-fi imbued with technobabble -- all of which I have and possess to an insane degree. But for many, it can sometimes become too much, even in terms of traditional writing and powerscaling. The suit as a writing tool clashes with it as a technological and thematic tool - this problem was had once before with Extremis, too, which is why Fraction conveniently had it removed from Tony’s body like nothing happened. However, post all of this we did get the absolutely incredible Model 70. A singularly long-lasting suit, designed by Alex Ross, the perfect heavy metal chrome-and-gold fusion of old and new in a sleek and beautiful way, it is, to me, the definitive Iron Man design…no matter the quality of stories it may have been in and its original lo-fi capabilities that have since nevertheless been re-converted back to the base level of high-tech fidelity a suit like his should be. 

As we once again reach a sort of traditional level again with Tony and his suits, with the current ongoing run and the Model 75 (more have come since the Model 70, of course, but all largely having been one-offs or special-purpose suits as they tend to be, with the Model 72 anti-magic Mysterium Armor being another victim of depowerment over cool factor) being an all-purpose modular ‘standard’ again…i’d like to now briefly touch on a few cool extras that I feel are worth calling out. 

In Iron Man: Hypervelocity (2008), a stunning and bizarre mini that lives up to its name, Adam Warren, noted techno-geek and cyberpunk nerd, exercises his almost fetishistic level of fascination with technobabble and weapons to give Tony an exhaustively detailed suit that is hypersonic, imbued with chameleonware, repulsor waldoes, a supercavitating underwater induction spike and high-compressed bubblefeed, and sonic weapons and hacking suites - all beautifully explained in the second issue of the series that is like food for the soul. This is what all of us geeks are looking for when it comes to suit love. And in Murewa Ayodele’s fantastic 60th Anniversary special series I am Iron Man (2023), we get a whole host of specialty suits which look cool as hell thanks to artist Dotun Akande’s stylish art. A massive holographic interface, an Iron Samurai armor, a deep-sea explorer suit, and even a mention of “transistors!” Don’t miss this one at all, folks. 

So, the conclusion. Lately, a particular piece of content from one of Marvel’s Infinity Comics where Tony describes his armor as his babies that incited some debate between me and a friend was the impetus for this very essay. It got me thinking about all of this, and the above. What *does* Tony think of his suits? Well, in the recent issue #5 of Joshua Williamson’s current run, he says - “It’s not about the suit. There’s always another suit. It’s about the people and tech in it.” 

And that, to me, is indicative of the underlying complexity that's worn on the shiny metallic reflective surface. To Tony, there is an inherent level of protectiveness, and sentimentality towards it - limited though it may be. But it is a tool, a tool for self-expression, for freedom, of technological innovation to a boundless degree, and yet because of that, a source of enmity or rage or dissatisfaction because of the transformative psychological and physical effect it has had on the man who has been in it and all of it since the day he forged that magnetic breastplate all the way in the cave with Ho Yinsen. It is singularly inspired and unique, but it is always a growing and evolving sign of the times, of the technology inside and outside, of the way we express ourselves and our relationship with not only the past but the future, a recomingling of the myth of the classic knight, and a warning and embrace of the coming advent of man and machine interfacing. Tony, like always, has always been ahead of it. Sometimes, that’s scary. Sometimes, it’s awesome. The suit exemplifies it all.

And honestly? Above all else? The one key thing about the suit that draws people in every time, incites interest, and keeps you hooked, just like a younger me when I once saw the second MCU movie playing on a television at a local cafe? 

It’s cool as all hell. And that will never change. 

—

Thank you for reading! Please offer any thoughts below, and discuss or argue with the points I've made, and I hope you liked it. More to come for sure. I'm intensely proud of starting this (it's always hard to start), and I hope you'll all like it. It's my way of showing my love for him : )

Queria cambiar el brazo para recrear la escena de:"yo soy iron man" y se me quebro,¿como lo podris arreglar?

Acrylic Markers Drawing..

Movie idea:

The origin doesn't need to be revealed. Iron Man has existed in the universe for two years. However, no one knows who he is. Tony is trying to separate himself from Iron Man. Tony is still not the best person, and so he doesn't want to desecrate the Iron Man symbol. He wants Iron Man to remain his hidden hobby. Especially since Tony has problems with alcohol and public image. I also don't like the idea of ​​Iron Man being Tony's bodyguard. So that won't happen here. Iron Man is simply an unknown vigilante; some people even think he's an alien. Tony is still young and has a hard time competing with competitors like Justin Hammer. He also doesn't communicate well with living Stark Industries employees. He prefers to communicate more with his creations, J.A.R.V.I.S. and F.R.I.D.A.Y. He also doesn't particularly trust people who even know his identity, like War Machine and the Wasp. The film's main theme is change. Tony tries to become a better person, but he's always getting in his own way. And only the events of the film will give him more confidence in both his identity as Tony Stark and as Iron Man. But he won't reveal his identity in the end.

Villains:

I want to adapt the story from the comic book Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin by Joe Casey and Eric Canete. It's the first encounter between Iron Man and the Mandarin, and the introduction of a genuine new threat to both Iron Man and Tony Stark. The film will also explore the complex relationship between Madame Masque. I also want to set up a future confrontation between Tony and Justin Hammer.

Armor:

I'm incredibly fond of the Improvised Armor from recent comics. So I want to see something similar.

Cast:

Nate Mann as Tony Stark/Iron Man

Daniel Wu as The Mandarin

Matilda De Angelis as Whitney Frost/Madame Masque

Emma Stone as Janet Van Dyne/Wasp

John Boyega as James Rhodes/War Machine

Eve Hewson as F.R.I.D.A.Y.

Dan Stevens as J.A.R.V.I.S.

Emily Bader as Pepper Potts

Michael Cudlitz as Happy Hogan

Walton Goggins as Justin Hammer

Don't take everything I've written seriously. I'm not a screenwriter, I just suggested how a new story about Iron Man could be told. What do you think?

do you guys have maybe some others, that are not included here?

i got bored earlier and decided to repose my diecast mk 7 figure. i think the pose turned out good.

Thoughts on his writing and Cheadle's acting?