literally anyone saying he was an obscure character pre-MCU is moronic, why do the most mischaracterizing things get treated as gospel facts by casuals about comics
he was an original Avenger [argument 1 acknowledged: the avengers were the unsellables. yes, but not really. they weren't carrying their own books well, but they certainly weren't fricking unsellable]
he had a show in the 60s, a show in the 90s, was in the Fantastic Four show from 2005
he was on t-shirts, and if you look at the Marvel merch of the 60s, most of it is Avengers and F4-based, with the X-Men pushed to the back because Giant-Sized hadn't happened yet.
Why does blatantly wrong shit about comics get treated as gospel by casuals? Tony was not as popular as the Hulk, but holy frick you see morons say shit like "lol iron man was a z-z-z-z-z--z-list hero before the mcu bro and rdj is nothing like comic stark"
if you actually read the fricking comics, RDJ Stark is actually pretty close to pre-Millar 616 Stark especially in Iron Man 1, Captain America 3, Infinity War & Endgame
and another thing, why do Millennials say everything "rips" now upon approaching middle age? and it's always some dance scene from some moronic critically panned movie from 1994 "um this actually RIPS lol"
 It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
 |
It's All Fucked Shirt $22.14 |
He wasn't obscure he was a b-lister, I didn't know who he was a kid till I got action figure of him.
Nobody's ever said he was obscure, I think you tried to sneak that one in. He was definitely not as "cool" as properties like X-Men, Spider-Man, Ghostrider and several others though until RDJ. He never had juice like that, even with the cartoon.
>Nobody's ever said he was obscure, I think you tried to sneak that one in.
No, OP's right. This isn't even an adaptations-only normie casual thing from people who'd never heard of most Marvel characters until they got movies, it's primarily older comics fans, clinging to their belief that "Marvel is just Spider-Man, X-Men and certain other characters I remember and like, no other characters mattered or ever had fans until the MCU".
To consistently always have his own solo book, Iron Man was at least a solid B-list in the comics, and got his own cartoons, toys, games, etc, even before the MCU. Even the jibes about the MCU being built on characters nobody else wanted to make movies about isn't accurate, an Iron Man movie had been in development for years, with both Tom Cruise and Nicholas Cage in line to play Stark at different times.
It's usually just X-Men fans sperging out and b***hing because they're not king of the mountain anymore. Particularly early 90s ones, it's noticeable by how they always talk about Ghost Rider and Punisher as inherently bigger more popular characters than any of the Avengers, which was only true for a short time in the early 90s.
>no other characters mattered or ever had fans until the MCU".
You're just repeating the lie the other anon was talking about. No one ever said that.
>Iron Man was at least a solid B-list
Yes, that's what the other anon said.
>No one ever said that.
We wouldn't be complaining about people saying it if there weren't people saying it. Just because they're not here in this thread doesn't mean they don't exist.
>It's usually just X-Men fans sperging out and b***hing because they're not king of the mountain anymore. Particularly early 90s ones, it's noticeable by how they always talk about Ghost Rider and Punisher as inherently bigger more popular characters than any of the Avengers, which was only true for a short time in the early 90s.
This person doesn’t exist schizo.
>Nobody's ever said he was obscure,
People on Twitter keep saying it
It's morons over and under listing everything.
In the era immediately before the MCU he was B list. He has sometimes been A list. I don't think he's ever hit C list.
Do I need to post the werewolf jones pic?
>Do I need to post the werewolf jones pic?
Yes, OP needs to see that
Please do, I need to save it for personal use.
people on twitter a fricking moronic psycho's anon.
I hate when casuals try to defend how MCU shit the bed with Iron Man 2 and 3 by parroting “Well the comics were never good”. Iron Man was one of the most consistent decades long runs Marvel had, and hit angles you couldn’t with other heroes. I would’ve killed for an espionage movie about Tony Stark trying to stop a not-doofus Hammer from ruining his company and image. It could’ve led to a legit Armor Wars movie instead of some afterthought like it’s going to be.
>not-doofus Hammer
Iron Man's villains need to be taken more seriously, and given the nature of who a character like Iron Man goes up against, it should be easy. Billionaires and governments that run the world and have access to dangerous technology should be treated more seriously. Everyone keeps referencing Armor Wars as an iconic Iron Man story yet Marvel seems hellbent on making Tony's only stories revolve around alcoholism and being broke. A character who can explore AI, the impact of emerging revolutionary technology, transhumanism, corporate espionage, and geopolitics, and has cool power armor fights, and the best Marvel can do is turn repeat the same fricking plot points and turn him into an X-book currently? I genuinely think Iron Man is the most wasted Marvel property since he definitely has the most potential out of a lot of Marvel's characters.
He definitely would have been ripe to take advantage of the 80s interest in tech-based properties like Transformers, Voltron, and Robocop. Hell, I genuinely think he could have been a bigger hit with Japan than even Spidey because he falls in line with the fantasy of wearing cool power armor + dating hot women as the CEO of a power corporation. I feel like if there was a greater effort to push him under writers that could take advantage of Iron Man's unique niche of technology+corporations and write to his strengths, Iron Man could have definitely been an A-lister long before the MCU push.
The problem is in part the comics industry's fear of creating any new superstar artists after 90s Image threatened the big 2's dominance, so the kind of artistic talent you'd need to pull off ideas like that is going to be making more money outside of comics. Secondly we have to address that Marvel have been putting their "star" writers on Iron Man books for more than 20 years, but they just can't or won't write Tony Stark without constantly dumping on him. They can't leave their politics at the door and just write Iron Man as a hero and lean into the power fantasy aspects of his life because a rich straight white male genius like that is everything they've been trained to hate in real life. They can't conceive of him being a good person, nor of deserving any of the things he has, so we have all these constant stories of tearing him down and having him lose everything and having everyone around him tell him how much he sucks, and not in the way of those 1980s stories where his failures were part of a long-form narrative that eventually had a triumphant payoff.
You're partly right, but Adi Granov was such a boon o the character they immediately based the movies directly off his art. Even guys like Adam warren, who gets mecha sensibilities, through their hats in the ring. It just doesn't seem to sync up.
Yeah no one’s claimed z list, pre 2008 he was always b/c list.
I still remember when iron man was being made and everyone was talking about how on earth are they going to make a cinematic universe without their heavy hitters.
>literally anyone saying he was an obscure character pre-MCU is moronic, why do the most mischaracterizing things get treated as gospel facts by casuals about comics
My number 1 pet peeve
He wasn't in the X-Men in the late 70s/early 80s.
Therefore, he wasn't a big name.
>Every random X-Men character from when the book was popular is an A-list character
>Other characters don't matter
>Even the ones that literally always have their own solo book, something X-Men not named Wolverine seldom manage to hold on to
Why are you people like this? You're consistently the worst comics fandom.
I feel the need to point out that one of the artists on late 70s X-Men has said they were on the brink of cancellation several times, the book didn't really take off in sales until the early 80s. The fan narrative that the 1975 relaunch was an immediate hit that instantly became Marvel's top seller just isn't true.
Sales may not have been that high in the 70s but the book definitely was selling
https://bleedingcool.com/comics/from-john-byrnes-1978-uncanny-x-men-to-1995s-speculator-burn-out/
It's just the 80s was when it was a superstar book
I'll take John Byrne's word for it that they were in danger of cancellation several times, he was there, he'd know. People like to pretend the X-Men or the concept of mutants are so inherently appealing they immediately outsold everything else and have just always naturally been Marvel's #1 book, but the actual true story of Claremont and Byrne slowly turning the book into a success by word of mouth is just a more interesting story. By Byrne's own admission, they didn't even make it all the way to the top until after he'd left.
Obsessed
weren't the Avengers pretty popular in the 80s, they had two books, right?
The Avengers had 3 books in the second half of the 80s, in addition to the various solo books. For most of Marvel history it's been an A- or B-tier book, the only time it ever really sank below that was in the early 90s era when the entire X-Men line was carrying Marvel and antiheroes like Punisher and Ghost Rider had their own lines of books. Too many people think it's always been like that because it was like that when they started reading. By 1996 Heroes Reborn put Avengers, FF, Iron Man and Captain America back near the top of the sales charts.
he was a b-lister or c-lister
Source?
sales figures
Reality. Come on, stop being ridiculous. He wasn't "obscure" but b/c-lister is right.
well B-list was probably right
he wasnt super famous, but he at least got to take part in major comic events and do a lot of team ups
C-list would be, like, iron fist or hawkeye
the guys only people who read comics would recognize
and the ones regular people have probably seen more in parody than print
his books and his teams books, his runs in the 60s,70s, 80s, 90s and 2000s, his videogame with manowar, him being replaced by warmachine in mavel vs capcom games, his tv series with only 2 short seasons each one.
it's funny watching people born after 2000 try to argue about "this character was popular" back in the 19__s when they weren't even there
welcome to obama's republic of hitlerstan
He wasn't as big as Spiderman or the X-Men but became the face of the MCU, he was def not obscure but MCU pushed his popularity
Gun to their head, you were always going to get Spidey, Hulk, and maybe X-Men out of the average normalgay. Next was Captain America and Iron Man, that was the public's next level of knowledge, so I would call that B. That may have changed a little bit after the 90s cartoon, but not by much. A true c-lister would be Daredevil.
Also the public barely knew the Fantastic Four, let alone the Avengers. Mention Avengers and they would have assumed you meant the British spy show.
t. old millennial
>Gun to their head, you were always going to get Spidey, Hulk, and maybe X-Men out of the average normalgay.
Hulk's a strange case where normie awareness of him came almost entirely from the 70s tv show, despite a lot of other adaptations over the years. 90s normies would likely be the only ones who'd say X-Men, and the average one would probably only be able to name Wolverine.
>Also the public barely knew the Fantastic Four, let alone the Avengers. Mention Avengers and they would have assumed you meant the British spy show.
Marvel kept trying to make the Fantastic Four happen outside of comics, and some people assume they're more well-known and popular than the actually are because they kept getting cartoons, but none of them really did that well, only the 90s one even got a second season. The two movies in the 2000s did OK but nothing spectacular, while the 2015 movie was obviously made just so Fox could hold on to the rights, and nobody cared about it.
Marvel's pre-MCU insistence on trying to push Captain America, Iron Man, Thor and Avengers as four entirely separate brands outside of comics, together with their focus being firmly on milking Spider-Man and the X-Men for all they were worth meant there weren't many attempts to do anything with the Avengers before the MCU; a few videogames in the 90s, and a late 90s cartoon most kids didn't even know existed, it was sent out to die alongside Spider-Man Unlimited when everyone was watching Pokémon instead. Between the MCU and EMH, Avengers is a case of Marvel characters quickly taking off with normies the first time Marvel made a real serious effort to adapt and push them.
>t. old millennial
I think you're not accounting for the fact that comics were pretty popular right before the 90's when they were more commonly available and video games and internet hadn't completely taken over entertainment. I'm not saying they were massively popular or Tony Stark was a household name, but talk to men aged 40-60 and knowledge of these characters is more than you'd think. As another old Millenial, we're the first generation where comics stopped really being relevant to boys growing up.
Iron man was always around, but nobody I knew gave a frick about him. He always seemed like B tier to me.
To most people, even Gen x kids, prior to 2008, Iron Man was an awesome Black Sabbath song first, some dude only comic nerds knew about second.
T. Old Gen X.
>talk to men aged 40-60 and knowledge of these characters is more than you'd think
Would like to hear some others elaborate on this- one of my HS teachers like ten years ago knew of the Human Torch both the android and F4 one. My supervisor at a radio station had Silver Surfer stamps and knew who Jack Kirby was. My mom somehow knew what fricking Krakoa was when I mentioned it offhand. My grandfather knows too damn much about Captain America
People knew him from toys and Marvel vs Capcom.
They're right but you look like you're willing to put in way more to argue than I am.
It's amazing how bungled Iron Man's rogue gallery is done in comics and movies and yet cartoons always seem to make them *just* right.
Source: Earth's Mightiest Heroes and Armoured Adventures.
I like most of the comic villain designs from the 60s to 90s too much to ever prefer any of the later cartoon redesigns, but most of the cartoons are actually trying to use the hero's rogues gallery as actual serious threats, while the comic writers just want to use them as jobbers who get beaten up before we move on to the real story where Iron Man fights another hero, or the writer's OC villain.
>Iron Man fights another hero, or the writer's OC villain.
This shit pisses me so off. I have no clue why there's no effort to explore the world and rogues of a character who was recently the face of the most popular film franchise in the past decade. His books during and after the MCU's peak have never capitalized on expanding his mythos and promoting or revamping it. Instead, we get broke Tony (for the 5th time) who's treated as a frick-up for the lolz rather than any serious attempt to push the character forward. I wouldn't even be mad at OC villains if the villains were actually compelling, which should not be hard when writing a villain for a character based around the themes of technological transformation/progress and powerful corporations. He has so many potential villains and storylines to explore, as well as old who should be revamped, but instead Marvel seems hellbent on ensuring he fades back to B-lister status
>NOOOOO IRON MAN WAS SUPER POPULAR JUST TRUST ME
He was a B-lister at best. I spent alot of time in the comic shop and at collector conventions in the late 90s and early 2000s.
Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Hulk, and Thor were the A-List Marvel properties
Regardless of your own anecdotal experience, Iron Man was on a similar level to Thor and Fantastic Four during the time period you're talking about. Most of the Spider-Man and X-Men comics sucked around that time, Iron Man, Thor and FF were outselling some of them.
Post your source.
Show me X-Men and Spider-Man being outsold by Iron Man.
https://www.comichron.com/monthlycomicssales.html
You can clearly see the 1996 and 1997 Iron Man relaunches outselling Spider-Man books of the time. Only the #1s outsell the main X-Men books and Wolverine, but he continues to outsell most of the rest of the X-books for some time. The widely-believed idea that the entire X-Men line outsold everything else through Marvel's bankruptcy years and is what kept them in business just isn't true.
>1998-99
>Inhumans outselling Black panther and Thunderbolts
>even beats the hulk on a few occasions
>run still ends at 12 without even trying to bring in a new writer like they did for Black panther
What happen?
There was a kid in day care with an iron man toy (this was around 1985) and we all thought it was weird how he liked iron man.
it is inaccurate to call him obscure, thats very true
but it isnt an unfounded claim, he was a B-lister at most
his claim to fame of being a founding member of the avengers is also muddied by the fact that the avengers were themselves solid B-listers, coming in third behind the X-men and fantastic 4
it was only in the 2000s right before iron man 1 came out, and accelerated by the extreme hype that the 2012 avengers movie generated, that the avengers became A-listers and iron man the leading act
>the avengers were themselves solid B-listers, coming in third behind the X-men and fantastic 4
After Kirby left Fantastic Four the only times it was really consistently outselling Avengers was when it had a star artist like John Byrne or Jim Lee on it. Other times they were on near-equal levels a lot of the time, or Avengers somewhat ahead.
>b-b-but the FF got cartoons
Doesn't really matter if nobody was watching them. They were easier to adapt outside of comics, and their importance to early Marvel history meant the company wanted them adapted, but none of the attempts ever really took off.
That's because, as heretical as it is to say this about the supposed "First Family of Marvel", the FF themselves were B-listers post-Kirby.
We have a thread right now saying The Joker was a minor villain until Nolan, so that isn't surprising.
It's a common cliche to say Cinemaphile doesn't read comics, but Cinemaphile, really, really doesn't.
I've seen x-gays claim that no other marvel franchise has any great runs or stories. You shouldn't worry about the shit people say about things they don't read.
He also showed up on SMTAS
I don’t get it either l. civil war was the most popular Marvel event and was heavily promoted with Ironman and Cap at the forefront. There were even spoofs of him I’m cartoons and had his own shows to boot so he had some notoriety before the MCU.
I loved Iron Man in pretty much all Avengers media as a kid in the late 80s/early 90s, but man it was x-men and spider-man mania at that point. Just bringing up Avengers would get you picked on by younger Gen Xrs and older millennials. At least the comic book store owner of the day defended me! I miss that guy.
And sure, Tony's comics were largely shit, and he was hit or miss as a character, but I mostly enjoyed what I read and the games I played.
Boy how the tables turned when he became the star of the show when RDJ brought him to life on the big screen, and essentially pulled Marvel out of its downward spiral. It was all Avengers at that point, and even though they all got ruined eventually, I was at least vindicated in my Avengers/Iron Man love. Honestly, I miss those early 90s iron man comics. The nu marvel writers of the late 2000s and 20-teens really screwed everything up.