>I wish we could get more Iron Man and Hulk issues into the comic store from the 70s and 80s. We have customers who want them. They move on in a hurry if and when I manage to get more in. >The latest issues of Iron Man and Hulk are low sellers. The characters have fans, but few are interested in their latest adventures.
Because he's always been a c-lister superhero, not that there's anything wrong with that. But because of the MCU people go into his comics thinking he's an A-Lister and marvel kept presenting him and marketing him as an A-lister but his comics aren't able to be more than c-list because the material is c-list
like this anon said
the problem isn't his comics, the problem is peoples expectations when picking up an Iron Man aren't in line with the type of experience an Iron Man comic can provide i.e. Comic Iron Man will never be remotely similar to MCU Iron man which is a good thing
>Because he's always been a c-lister superhero, not that there's anything wrong with that. But because of the MCU people go into his comics thinking he's an A-Lister and marvel kept presenting him and marketing him as an A-lister but his comics aren't able to be more than c-list because the material is c-list
Yeah, no. Any character who's consistently had his own ongoing solo book since the 1960s is at the least a solid B-lister, and Marvel have put a number of their supposedly higher-tier writers on the book over the last 20 years, but the runs suck because they just don't get Iron Man. They're the types of people who inherently resent him for being all of the stuff
Iron Man is a character that is conceptually loved and timeless, but actually writing around the premise is unfortunately no longer clicking with modern audiences. Tony Stark is akin to James Bond, a male power fantasy that's appealing on multiple fronts. He's attractive, he's smart, wealthy, drives fast cars, fricks supermodels, saves the world, and can kill bad guys. He is Howard Hughes meets Q. However a lot of that hasn't aged well enough to keep clicking with certain groups. Tony isn't allowed to drink anymore, corporations are often seen as bad guys, and any sort of tech CEO is seen as some hoodie wearing dickwad who plays basketball in the office.
So I guess the short answer is writers are constantly trying to reinvent Tony when the core should work by itself, and none of them can agree.
talks about, so you either get cucks like Bendis trying to replace Tony, or anti-capitalist lefties writing the book and seething about Tony being a rich guy. A book that's constantly tearing down and berating it's hero isn't one that really appeals to readers, so Iron Man's audience, like the audience for most other Marvel books, is largely just longtime fans hoping the industry will stop sucking, hoping things will eventually get better, and not wanting to have holes in their collections. And that's broadly true for most books, the size of the audience for most characters has been set in stone for decades, and only getting an A-list creative team on a book ever changes that much.
The MCU makes people think Tony's going to be more important in the comics than he is because the comics are controlled by people who don't care for Tony Stark.
Stop hiring writers who resent or dislike Tony Stark for being a rich, successful straight white genius.
Stop hiring writers who want to take everything away from Stark or have other heroes beat him up.
Stop hiring writers who ignore the Iron Man rogues gallery or want to use them as jobbers.
>Stop hiring writers who ignore the Iron Man rogues gallery
He has a rogue gallery?
As a kid I only liked his armor especially around 96'. And playing him in video games. Tony Stark was never interesting and the deepest thing I knew of him was he was once a alcoholic. Isn't he a bit more playboy flamboyant cause of the MCU now? Frick that
Someone have his essential reading list pic?
>Stop hiring writers who resent or dislike Tony Stark for being a rich, successful straight white genius.
This should be rule number one, yet it seems like Tony's humilliation trip never ends
I think nowadays guys like Elon Musk make themselves impossible to ignore. He wants to be Tony Stark so fricking bad and it's atrociously embarrassing. It's hard to separate the reality from the fiction at this point.
Elon feels like Superior in the sense of "why wouldn't you want to be perfect for $100 a day?" For most the MCU I feel like we've seen Stark Industries retreat from the world in providing like hover cars or powering transportation stuff.
I think nowadays guys like Elon Musk make themselves impossible to ignore. He wants to be Tony Stark so fricking bad and it's atrociously embarrassing. It's hard to separate the reality from the fiction at this point.
I’ve been buying Iron Man month in and month out since Heroes Return in ‘98 and really before Bendis it was a fairly solid book with typical highs and lows of your average Big Two book that’s been running for a hundred years. The problem with him now is writers try to imitate Robert Downey Jr and make him “lolsorandum” (again, been reading Iron Man for 20 years but noped out at “awesome facial hair bros!”) or a sad sack “I’m so broken boo hoo” shit. He needs to go back to the corporate espionage/James Bond with a mech shit from the 70s-90s.
what era you reading? fraction was fun but felt like it leaned to far into trying togther all his villains. Director of shield era was just boring military stuff. Superior was a fantastic idea and showed how little of a push the character needs to be an irredeemable butthole. personally i like the stories where Iron man and Dr Doom somehow get transported to king arthur times (it's happened like 5 times at this point)
Iron Man comics have been stuck in a bad loop of: > recreating Demons in a bottle > trashing itself by trying to replicate RDJs humor > repeating iron man being a villain again
He needs to be written more serious (hes honestly got more in common with James Bond then MCU Tony) he needs a better supporting cast, and he needs a lot of focus on cool corporate espionage and tech villains. Right now iron man comics repeat the process of bouncing between MCU Tony and evil Tony fricking things up again
Iron Man is a character that is conceptually loved and timeless, but actually writing around the premise is unfortunately no longer clicking with modern audiences. Tony Stark is akin to James Bond, a male power fantasy that's appealing on multiple fronts. He's attractive, he's smart, wealthy, drives fast cars, fricks supermodels, saves the world, and can kill bad guys. He is Howard Hughes meets Q. However a lot of that hasn't aged well enough to keep clicking with certain groups. Tony isn't allowed to drink anymore, corporations are often seen as bad guys, and any sort of tech CEO is seen as some hoodie wearing dickwad who plays basketball in the office.
So I guess the short answer is writers are constantly trying to reinvent Tony when the core should work by itself, and none of them can agree.
>Because he's always been a c-lister superhero, not that there's anything wrong with that. But because of the MCU people go into his comics thinking he's an A-Lister and marvel kept presenting him and marketing him as an A-lister but his comics aren't able to be more than c-list because the material is c-list
Yeah, no. Any character who's consistently had his own ongoing solo book since the 1960s is at the least a solid B-lister, and Marvel have put a number of their supposedly higher-tier writers on the book over the last 20 years, but the runs suck because they just don't get Iron Man. They're the types of people who inherently resent him for being all of the stuff [...] talks about, so you either get cucks like Bendis trying to replace Tony, or anti-capitalist lefties writing the book and seething about Tony being a rich guy. A book that's constantly tearing down and berating it's hero isn't one that really appeals to readers, so Iron Man's audience, like the audience for most other Marvel books, is largely just longtime fans hoping the industry will stop sucking, hoping things will eventually get better, and not wanting to have holes in their collections. And that's broadly true for most books, the size of the audience for most characters has been set in stone for decades, and only getting an A-list creative team on a book ever changes that much.
The MCU makes people think Tony's going to be more important in the comics than he is because the comics are controlled by people who don't care for Tony Stark.
It's not just Iron Man this happens to, in recent years there's been a trend of Batman writers taking similar shots at Bruce Wayne for being a rich guy who doesn't give all his money away to charity, or actually putting the moronic meme that Batman is just "beating up the poor and the mentally ill" into comics. But there are always multiple Batman books going on at any time, so these are just blips people can try to ignore, while there's usually just one Iron Man book, if it sucks, that's all there is.
The Batman supporting cast and rogues gallery being much better known even by casuals means most writers have more awareness of them than they do for Iron Man's cast outside of the people who were in the movies, and more pressure from fandom to do right by them. But until Marvel and DC stop hiring writers like this, the trend of trying to tear superheroes down will continue.
>writers taking similar shots at Bruce Wayne for being a rich guy who doesn't give all his money away to charity, or actually putting the moronic meme that Batman is just "beating up the poor and the mentally ill" into comics
Which everyone who unironically believes this point is a spoiled/privileged dickhead who tries to associate with the struggling/working class but has zero economic or political knowledge to even comment for those groups. You can't just throw money at the problem. It's a mixture of envying the well off for their accomplishments, and personal guilt for being wealthy in some cases.
>corporations are often seen as bad guys, and any sort of tech CEO is seen as some hoodie wearing dickwad who plays basketball in the office.
are these not true?
>Tony isn't allowed to drink anymore, corporations are often seen as bad guys, and any sort of tech CEO is seen as some hoodie wearing dickwad who plays basketball in the office.
Iron Man was literally created to subvert those tropes back in the 60s.
And having a tech bro villain would be a good enemy for him
>Because he's always been a c-lister superhero, not that there's anything wrong with that. But because of the MCU people go into his comics thinking he's an A-Lister and marvel kept presenting him and marketing him as an A-lister but his comics aren't able to be more than c-list because the material is c-list
Yeah, no. Any character who's consistently had his own ongoing solo book since the 1960s is at the least a solid B-lister, and Marvel have put a number of their supposedly higher-tier writers on the book over the last 20 years, but the runs suck because they just don't get Iron Man. They're the types of people who inherently resent him for being all of the stuff [...] talks about, so you either get cucks like Bendis trying to replace Tony, or anti-capitalist lefties writing the book and seething about Tony being a rich guy. A book that's constantly tearing down and berating it's hero isn't one that really appeals to readers, so Iron Man's audience, like the audience for most other Marvel books, is largely just longtime fans hoping the industry will stop sucking, hoping things will eventually get better, and not wanting to have holes in their collections. And that's broadly true for most books, the size of the audience for most characters has been set in stone for decades, and only getting an A-list creative team on a book ever changes that much.
The MCU makes people think Tony's going to be more important in the comics than he is because the comics are controlled by people who don't care for Tony Stark.
To provide a suggestion of how to help the character, newer stories should focus on his "inventor side." I feel like what made the first Ironman movie so well received was that it was basically about some guy test driving suits that he made, and slowly becoming a hero in the process. Perhaps newer plots should be about Tony creating a new suit and dealing with the conflicts would result from the new suit's numerous bugs, along with trying to save other people.
>Perhaps newer plots should be about Tony creating a new suit and dealing with the conflicts would result from the new suit's numerous bugs, along with trying to save other people.
That was Iron Man 3 and it sucked big time.
>James Bond, a male power fantasy
it's kinda interesting that James bonds was designed by Fleming to be a more complex character compared to contrey spy pulp charecters like Bulldog Drumond or richard hannay from John Buchan's book series. Bond was meant less as a power fantasy but a complex flawed dislikable charecter.
equally Iron man was also meant to be a flawed character the readership hated but then grew to like later on at least according to stan lee
I'm casual but I have no idea what the state of "Stark [Company]" is these days. Last few times I checked in they: >out of business >sold off >becoming AI/Robot supporters >out of business again >back to weapons >a division of Roxxon >out of business a third time >frozen while Iron Man's on trial
I think one thing to jump start him would be copying Elon and make Stark Industries come up with a hit product by accident. Pepper it randomly into other books as people drive Stark Cars now or some shit. Show the extent of his influence. Then The Mandarin can come back with his own car made from the souls of puppies or something.
I remember an interview with Stan Lee on how the premise of Iron Man was to make someone people inheretly hate into a hero.
You can meme me, but he has to provoke the same reaction as someone like Elon Musk does in real life. Completely polarizing.
I suspect an older Stan was putting a more revisionist spin on it than they'd actually been thinking of back in the 60s. The inventor most cited as an inspiration for Stark was Howard Hughes, was he really someone that was hated by the public?
Do an entire run about Stark deciding to make a killer production and a series of trial and error: >Make repulsor vehicles, gangs steal them to make "guns" but it tends not to work >Guardsmen armor mark xx which work great but when he reveals the price the states and governments balk >Stark gets into tele-health and biometrics; a group comes together to hack the data and steal it. But they're unaware Stark hired Ghost as CISO with the payment that he keeps the company honest and if it ever falters he can nuke it >Stark makes a version of a FlipperZero and encourages people to tinker and hack it. Someone figures out how to control Iron Man armors with digital phreaking. >Stark holds an AI conference to discuss making a universal home OS AI; eventually one balks that they're being asked to make a slave worker. A Doombot in attendance questions this and begins to work on individualizing the Doombots to decide whether they wish to serve or work for Doom.
you know, frick it. Give Iron Man to Mike Judge, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky from Silicon Valley.. That'd be a fricking trip.
the problem with Iron Man is all on the art side, He needs an artist who can draw plausible mecha designs and functional looking armor.
I like the old suits as much as the next guy but they're relics of the past and only show up because the artist can't draw geometric shapes.
Extremis isn't really that good, it just had good art. Ellis may have been a tech idea writer but he was another writer who didn't get Tony Stark. Way too much of Tony moping and getting torn down by his hippy mentor.
>iron man needs his own universe
Yes! >set in the sixties.
No, frick off. The whole point is the constantly advancing tech, why would you make it a period piece?
Currently reading Demon in a Bottle enjoying it but kind of feels dated in some areas other than this and Fraction's run back in early 00s what else would you say is worth picking up?
When we get right down to it we acknowledge conceptually Iron Man isn't broken, he just needs to embrace what he is known for. We need Sterling Archer in a metal suit, traveling around the world like a super spy with no regulation, saving lives and partying like he's about to die at any moment
I think a big problem too is that modern writers think every arc needs to be four or more, usually more, issues long. Cape comics need to go back to snappy story telling and knock out more one to two issue stories with plotlines building slowly and getting proper conclusions within that one book
The early Joe Quesada/Bill Jemas days at Marvel trained writers to write in decompressed 4-6 issue story arcs, plotted for the trade and with individual issues built around a character suddenly appearing at the cliffhanger ending you've possibly spoiled on the cover. DC largely followed suit, and it's lasted so long it's just how cape comics are made now. The absolute state of the industry means the cancellation threshold is a lot lower, most lower-tier books are lucky to last a year, even on the bigger books a writer is usually only around for a year or two before the next relaunch. So everything's plotted around getting 2-4 trades, which are easier to sell if they're one cohesive story than a collection of single issue stories.
I don't know how they change things unless they stop collecting everything in trades immediately and go back to the days when only the popular and important stories earned that treatment, everything else just has to wait for Marvel to do an Epic Collection, and for DC to finally do their own equivalent.
The reason he doesn't get good runs is that most writers are left-leaning and that makes them hate the rich, white people, capitalism, sexy white women, and the like
is like the thing with James bond where he is hecking problematic and you have some pozzed Californians trying to "fix him" or "subvert him"
I would argue the biggest difference between rightwingers and lefties is that leftist genuinely dont understand the other side at all and actually believes they are bad, and that affects all the media they do
with all of that being said teen tony actually works if you look at armored adventures
>I would argue the biggest difference between rightwingers and lefties is that leftist genuinely dont understand the other side at all and actually believes they are bad, and that affects all the media they do
He's basically right though. We've had around 20 years of writers, many of them Marvel's 'star writers', who just can't accept Tony Stark as a character because he's a rich white male genius, he's everything they were indoctrinated to hate, they can't bring themselves to write him as a capable and confident hero.
Everyone's already said what the problems with Iron Man are, so I won't go over them again. And honestly, I don't think he can be fixed at this point, when the entirety of the comic book market is crashing. But personally I think Iron Man is an evergreen character, as he represents the pulse of the moment. He could endure after most other capes have been forgotten in the annals of time. He could even ascend as Marvel's Superman, a timeless icon representing the ever-coming tomorrow, but he's been mishandled so much that nobody can make him work.
In an ideal work, as a solo character in his own little corner, with a beginning, middle and end, he'd have had a classic tale and been fondly remembered. As it stands, he's stuck repeating the same beats, and because no writer currently is smart, imaginative and talented enough, let alone willing to properly and realistically write someone like Stark, he can't progress.
Personally I've always felt that the "everything and the kitchen sink" approach of the Big2-verses was detrimental. Marvel works better because 80% of the MU was set up by Lee and Kirby, so there's more cohesion, but it's still too scattershot. Tony would've worked in a world populated by him, SHIELD, Cap, Hulk, and the such. Basically early Ultimate. Keep the FF more grounded, or put them over to the Cosmic-Verse. Separate the Streets and the X-Verse, and then keep the Supernatural to its own place. But that's not possible, clearly. I think you could make a Sci-Fi-Verse work the best. Even Dr. Strange works as magic in high enough levels becomes cosmic. It's Ghost Rider and the such that really break the flow. Generally, it's just too much for any character/team to properly work, and for IM to do so, his actions need to have repercussions in the rest of the wider MU.
All in all, Iron Man should be written as a mix between MGS and Zone Of The Enders, with a dash of House Of Cards/Succession. That's the exact sweet spot.
Can't fix something that's not broken.
First, reject any writer who thinks like
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/comic-store-in-your-future-is-this-business-or-craziness/
>I wish we could get more Iron Man and Hulk issues into the comic store from the 70s and 80s. We have customers who want them. They move on in a hurry if and when I manage to get more in.
>The latest issues of Iron Man and Hulk are low sellers. The characters have fans, but few are interested in their latest adventures.
but why? older stories are also quite mid
All older stories or specifically Iron Man? I haven't read a lot, but the 70s/80s Iron Man I've read is pretty comfy.
Because he's always been a c-lister superhero, not that there's anything wrong with that. But because of the MCU people go into his comics thinking he's an A-Lister and marvel kept presenting him and marketing him as an A-lister but his comics aren't able to be more than c-list because the material is c-list
like this anon said
the problem isn't his comics, the problem is peoples expectations when picking up an Iron Man aren't in line with the type of experience an Iron Man comic can provide i.e. Comic Iron Man will never be remotely similar to MCU Iron man which is a good thing
>Because he's always been a c-lister superhero, not that there's anything wrong with that. But because of the MCU people go into his comics thinking he's an A-Lister and marvel kept presenting him and marketing him as an A-lister but his comics aren't able to be more than c-list because the material is c-list
Yeah, no. Any character who's consistently had his own ongoing solo book since the 1960s is at the least a solid B-lister, and Marvel have put a number of their supposedly higher-tier writers on the book over the last 20 years, but the runs suck because they just don't get Iron Man. They're the types of people who inherently resent him for being all of the stuff
talks about, so you either get cucks like Bendis trying to replace Tony, or anti-capitalist lefties writing the book and seething about Tony being a rich guy. A book that's constantly tearing down and berating it's hero isn't one that really appeals to readers, so Iron Man's audience, like the audience for most other Marvel books, is largely just longtime fans hoping the industry will stop sucking, hoping things will eventually get better, and not wanting to have holes in their collections. And that's broadly true for most books, the size of the audience for most characters has been set in stone for decades, and only getting an A-list creative team on a book ever changes that much.
The MCU makes people think Tony's going to be more important in the comics than he is because the comics are controlled by people who don't care for Tony Stark.
>Yeah, no.
Pick one, you illiterate loser.
They take his villains seriously. Armoured Adventures did it right.
Stop hiring writers who resent or dislike Tony Stark for being a rich, successful straight white genius.
Stop hiring writers who want to take everything away from Stark or have other heroes beat him up.
Stop hiring writers who ignore the Iron Man rogues gallery or want to use them as jobbers.
>Stop hiring writers who ignore the Iron Man rogues gallery
He has a rogue gallery?
As a kid I only liked his armor especially around 96'. And playing him in video games. Tony Stark was never interesting and the deepest thing I knew of him was he was once a alcoholic. Isn't he a bit more playboy flamboyant cause of the MCU now? Frick that
Someone have his essential reading list pic?
Living Laser, spymaster, ghost, himself, His Armor (mask in the iron man), the mandarin, whiskey crimson dynamo, madame mask, whiplash, and most women
>Stop hiring writers who resent or dislike Tony Stark for being a rich, successful straight white genius.
This should be rule number one, yet it seems like Tony's humilliation trip never ends
Think there's maybe 2 writers at Marvel who don't actively hate every marvel character
I think you're wrong by 2.
I think nowadays guys like Elon Musk make themselves impossible to ignore. He wants to be Tony Stark so fricking bad and it's atrociously embarrassing. It's hard to separate the reality from the fiction at this point.
Elon feels like Superior in the sense of "why wouldn't you want to be perfect for $100 a day?" For most the MCU I feel like we've seen Stark Industries retreat from the world in providing like hover cars or powering transportation stuff.
Elon is better than Stark.
Then try harder.
Because he sucks, the only thing going for him is his suit.
I’ve been buying Iron Man month in and month out since Heroes Return in ‘98 and really before Bendis it was a fairly solid book with typical highs and lows of your average Big Two book that’s been running for a hundred years. The problem with him now is writers try to imitate Robert Downey Jr and make him “lolsorandum” (again, been reading Iron Man for 20 years but noped out at “awesome facial hair bros!”) or a sad sack “I’m so broken boo hoo” shit. He needs to go back to the corporate espionage/James Bond with a mech shit from the 70s-90s.
Well, there's gotta be a latent appeal in the character, or else he wouldn't have lasted 60 years with more or less an unbroken publishing streak.
I remember the Layton and Michelinie stuff was nice.
Missed the window when RDJ left the role.
True, but in age of automation and technology and huge tech conglomerates - Iron Man should be more relevant than ever
what era you reading? fraction was fun but felt like it leaned to far into trying togther all his villains. Director of shield era was just boring military stuff. Superior was a fantastic idea and showed how little of a push the character needs to be an irredeemable butthole. personally i like the stories where Iron man and Dr Doom somehow get transported to king arthur times (it's happened like 5 times at this point)
Superior was trash. I prefer when my heroes act like HEROES.
Iron Man works better as a villain.
Batman > Iron Man
Iron Man comics have been stuck in a bad loop of:
> recreating Demons in a bottle
> trashing itself by trying to replicate RDJs humor
> repeating iron man being a villain again
He needs to be written more serious (hes honestly got more in common with James Bond then MCU Tony) he needs a better supporting cast, and he needs a lot of focus on cool corporate espionage and tech villains. Right now iron man comics repeat the process of bouncing between MCU Tony and evil Tony fricking things up again
Iron Man is a character that is conceptually loved and timeless, but actually writing around the premise is unfortunately no longer clicking with modern audiences. Tony Stark is akin to James Bond, a male power fantasy that's appealing on multiple fronts. He's attractive, he's smart, wealthy, drives fast cars, fricks supermodels, saves the world, and can kill bad guys. He is Howard Hughes meets Q. However a lot of that hasn't aged well enough to keep clicking with certain groups. Tony isn't allowed to drink anymore, corporations are often seen as bad guys, and any sort of tech CEO is seen as some hoodie wearing dickwad who plays basketball in the office.
So I guess the short answer is writers are constantly trying to reinvent Tony when the core should work by itself, and none of them can agree.
Good way of summing things up. Good job anons.
It's not just Iron Man this happens to, in recent years there's been a trend of Batman writers taking similar shots at Bruce Wayne for being a rich guy who doesn't give all his money away to charity, or actually putting the moronic meme that Batman is just "beating up the poor and the mentally ill" into comics. But there are always multiple Batman books going on at any time, so these are just blips people can try to ignore, while there's usually just one Iron Man book, if it sucks, that's all there is.
The Batman supporting cast and rogues gallery being much better known even by casuals means most writers have more awareness of them than they do for Iron Man's cast outside of the people who were in the movies, and more pressure from fandom to do right by them. But until Marvel and DC stop hiring writers like this, the trend of trying to tear superheroes down will continue.
>writers taking similar shots at Bruce Wayne for being a rich guy who doesn't give all his money away to charity, or actually putting the moronic meme that Batman is just "beating up the poor and the mentally ill" into comics
Which everyone who unironically believes this point is a spoiled/privileged dickhead who tries to associate with the struggling/working class but has zero economic or political knowledge to even comment for those groups. You can't just throw money at the problem. It's a mixture of envying the well off for their accomplishments, and personal guilt for being wealthy in some cases.
>corporations are often seen as bad guys, and any sort of tech CEO is seen as some hoodie wearing dickwad who plays basketball in the office.
are these not true?
but Tony's different
He is a man on a mission
In armor of high tech ammunition
>Tony isn't allowed to drink anymore, corporations are often seen as bad guys, and any sort of tech CEO is seen as some hoodie wearing dickwad who plays basketball in the office.
Iron Man was literally created to subvert those tropes back in the 60s.
And having a tech bro villain would be a good enemy for him
To provide a suggestion of how to help the character, newer stories should focus on his "inventor side." I feel like what made the first Ironman movie so well received was that it was basically about some guy test driving suits that he made, and slowly becoming a hero in the process. Perhaps newer plots should be about Tony creating a new suit and dealing with the conflicts would result from the new suit's numerous bugs, along with trying to save other people.
>Perhaps newer plots should be about Tony creating a new suit and dealing with the conflicts would result from the new suit's numerous bugs, along with trying to save other people.
That was Iron Man 3 and it sucked big time.
I'd argue it was more like Ironman 1, as Tony made improvements to his armour as the plot progressed, whereas in IM3 he only stuck to one suit.
>James Bond, a male power fantasy
it's kinda interesting that James bonds was designed by Fleming to be a more complex character compared to contrey spy pulp charecters like Bulldog Drumond or richard hannay from John Buchan's book series. Bond was meant less as a power fantasy but a complex flawed dislikable charecter.
equally Iron man was also meant to be a flawed character the readership hated but then grew to like later on at least according to stan lee
Stop bringing up that he an alchie unless it's super important. You're not cute or original.
His greatest enemy is alcohol.
*Himself
well anybody can drink themselves
I'm casual but I have no idea what the state of "Stark [Company]" is these days. Last few times I checked in they:
>out of business
>sold off
>becoming AI/Robot supporters
>out of business again
>back to weapons
>a division of Roxxon
>out of business a third time
>frozen while Iron Man's on trial
I think one thing to jump start him would be copying Elon and make Stark Industries come up with a hit product by accident. Pepper it randomly into other books as people drive Stark Cars now or some shit. Show the extent of his influence. Then The Mandarin can come back with his own car made from the souls of puppies or something.
With the exception of Hickman, I can't think of any writers who can tell a story about genius-level characters.
I remember one time when Denny O'Neil was on the book after Michelinie's run. He had no idea how to write for Tony.
He's just not a good character.
I remember an interview with Stan Lee on how the premise of Iron Man was to make someone people inheretly hate into a hero.
You can meme me, but he has to provoke the same reaction as someone like Elon Musk does in real life. Completely polarizing.
What's "hate into a hero"?
Is English your first language?
It's correct besides the typo of "inherently", learn to read homosexual.
Agreed (although nowhere near as autistic)
I suspect an older Stan was putting a more revisionist spin on it than they'd actually been thinking of back in the 60s. The inventor most cited as an inspiration for Stark was Howard Hughes, was he really someone that was hated by the public?
He's a shitty Batman rip-off.
moron
Go mess with Superman fans.
Do an entire run about Stark deciding to make a killer production and a series of trial and error:
>Make repulsor vehicles, gangs steal them to make "guns" but it tends not to work
>Guardsmen armor mark xx which work great but when he reveals the price the states and governments balk
>Stark gets into tele-health and biometrics; a group comes together to hack the data and steal it. But they're unaware Stark hired Ghost as CISO with the payment that he keeps the company honest and if it ever falters he can nuke it
>Stark makes a version of a FlipperZero and encourages people to tinker and hack it. Someone figures out how to control Iron Man armors with digital phreaking.
>Stark holds an AI conference to discuss making a universal home OS AI; eventually one balks that they're being asked to make a slave worker. A Doombot in attendance questions this and begins to work on individualizing the Doombots to decide whether they wish to serve or work for Doom.
you know, frick it. Give Iron Man to Mike Judge, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky from Silicon Valley.. That'd be a fricking trip.
Iron Man should be killed off permanently.
the problem with Iron Man is all on the art side, He needs an artist who can draw plausible mecha designs and functional looking armor.
I like the old suits as much as the next guy but they're relics of the past and only show up because the artist can't draw geometric shapes.
Costs too much money.
What's his best story?
Demon in a bottle and Extremis.
Extremis isn't really that good, it just had good art. Ellis may have been a tech idea writer but he was another writer who didn't get Tony Stark. Way too much of Tony moping and getting torn down by his hippy mentor.
DIAB is dated and overrated. Extremis is decent.
What about Armor Wars
That too.
stark dismanteled
iron man needs his own universe set in the sixties. no other heroes except maybe war machine and the hulk.
>iron man needs his own universe
Yes!
>set in the sixties.
No, frick off. The whole point is the constantly advancing tech, why would you make it a period piece?
NTA but the fact that he's in the suit of armor at all is a dated concept. Advancing tech is all about remote drones and shit.
Tony had a remote armor back in the early 90s, but it's just not a satisfying narrative for a superhero comic for the hero to be in no real danger.
>Any mention of Ironheart
>Immediately drop series and pray for better next time
Easy
All sci-fi sucks now cause people have no vision of the future
Currently reading Demon in a Bottle enjoying it but kind of feels dated in some areas other than this and Fraction's run back in early 00s what else would you say is worth picking up?
Extremis
None. The rest suck.
he needs a sci-fi writer along the lines of Michael Crichton to come in and do a run
Bendis run was absolutely atrocious
When we get right down to it we acknowledge conceptually Iron Man isn't broken, he just needs to embrace what he is known for. We need Sterling Archer in a metal suit, traveling around the world like a super spy with no regulation, saving lives and partying like he's about to die at any moment
I think a big problem too is that modern writers think every arc needs to be four or more, usually more, issues long. Cape comics need to go back to snappy story telling and knock out more one to two issue stories with plotlines building slowly and getting proper conclusions within that one book
The early Joe Quesada/Bill Jemas days at Marvel trained writers to write in decompressed 4-6 issue story arcs, plotted for the trade and with individual issues built around a character suddenly appearing at the cliffhanger ending you've possibly spoiled on the cover. DC largely followed suit, and it's lasted so long it's just how cape comics are made now. The absolute state of the industry means the cancellation threshold is a lot lower, most lower-tier books are lucky to last a year, even on the bigger books a writer is usually only around for a year or two before the next relaunch. So everything's plotted around getting 2-4 trades, which are easier to sell if they're one cohesive story than a collection of single issue stories.
I don't know how they change things unless they stop collecting everything in trades immediately and go back to the days when only the popular and important stories earned that treatment, everything else just has to wait for Marvel to do an Epic Collection, and for DC to finally do their own equivalent.
The reason he doesn't get good runs is that most writers are left-leaning and that makes them hate the rich, white people, capitalism, sexy white women, and the like
is like the thing with James bond where he is hecking problematic and you have some pozzed Californians trying to "fix him" or "subvert him"
I would argue the biggest difference between rightwingers and lefties is that leftist genuinely dont understand the other side at all and actually believes they are bad, and that affects all the media they do
with all of that being said teen tony actually works if you look at armored adventures
>I would argue the biggest difference between rightwingers and lefties is that leftist genuinely dont understand the other side at all and actually believes they are bad, and that affects all the media they do
lmao
He's basically right though. We've had around 20 years of writers, many of them Marvel's 'star writers', who just can't accept Tony Stark as a character because he's a rich white male genius, he's everything they were indoctrinated to hate, they can't bring themselves to write him as a capable and confident hero.
Everyone's already said what the problems with Iron Man are, so I won't go over them again. And honestly, I don't think he can be fixed at this point, when the entirety of the comic book market is crashing. But personally I think Iron Man is an evergreen character, as he represents the pulse of the moment. He could endure after most other capes have been forgotten in the annals of time. He could even ascend as Marvel's Superman, a timeless icon representing the ever-coming tomorrow, but he's been mishandled so much that nobody can make him work.
In an ideal work, as a solo character in his own little corner, with a beginning, middle and end, he'd have had a classic tale and been fondly remembered. As it stands, he's stuck repeating the same beats, and because no writer currently is smart, imaginative and talented enough, let alone willing to properly and realistically write someone like Stark, he can't progress.
Personally I've always felt that the "everything and the kitchen sink" approach of the Big2-verses was detrimental. Marvel works better because 80% of the MU was set up by Lee and Kirby, so there's more cohesion, but it's still too scattershot. Tony would've worked in a world populated by him, SHIELD, Cap, Hulk, and the such. Basically early Ultimate. Keep the FF more grounded, or put them over to the Cosmic-Verse. Separate the Streets and the X-Verse, and then keep the Supernatural to its own place. But that's not possible, clearly. I think you could make a Sci-Fi-Verse work the best. Even Dr. Strange works as magic in high enough levels becomes cosmic. It's Ghost Rider and the such that really break the flow. Generally, it's just too much for any character/team to properly work, and for IM to do so, his actions need to have repercussions in the rest of the wider MU.
All in all, Iron Man should be written as a mix between MGS and Zone Of The Enders, with a dash of House Of Cards/Succession. That's the exact sweet spot.
Have single issues where Iron Man has wacky adventures
>Iron Man turns into Iron Ant after getting exposed to red Ironite
stuff like that
the cantwell run had a bunch of issue like that and most people hated that run(for. everything else in that run) fun one-shots will not save iron man