Only days away from IRON MAN 3 now, so let’s look back at our initial review of IRON MAN 2, and see how it’s stood the test of time…

When you get right down to it, Tony Stark is kind of an ass.

Always has been, really. It’s kind of his most defining characteristic. Over and over again in the comics, we’ve seen Tony pushing away the people who care about him and make a colossal mess of things, only to turn to his friends once he’s hit rock bottom (a locale Mr. Stark tends to be very familiar with.

Whether it’s the alcoholism, which in the comics leads to his losing the company, or other stories like the “Armor Wars” in which he becomes a vigilante in order to get back all his stolen technology, all the way up to his neo-fascist behavior in CIVIL WAR and his utter failure to realize what was really going on in SECRET INVASION — he always thinks he can only handle things himself, and winds up in serious trouble because of it.

So I was pleasantly surprised to see director Jon Favreau pick up that thread and run with it in IRON MAN 2, in which, despite threats from vengeful Russian physicist Ivan “Whiplash” Vanko, jealous arms merchant Justin Hammer and pompous politician Senator Stern, most of Tony Stark’s problems remain firmly of his own making.

I said in my review of the first film that Robert Downey Jr.’s performance as Tony Stark was so good, I could be entertained by an entire movie with just Stark, and never see him climb into the armor. Well, they almost hold me to that here, as there are long stretches of time where we’re just watching Stark’s descent into self-destruction, and only three major action sequences in the film. And yet, it still works, held together by a very sharp and entertaining script, and the best ensemble cast ever assembled for a big-budget superhero movie.

Mickey Rourke in particular exceeded my expectations as Vanko. He underplays the role, which is smart, not succumbing to the temptation to chew the scenery like so many actors do when they’re cast in what they think of as “comic-book” movie. As for the use of the “Whiplash” character as Iron Man’s primary antagonist here, I was again pleasantly surprised. The fight scene at the race track works really well — I didn’t think the whips would come across as all that threatening, but they totally worked for me. The character shouldn’t be able to go totally toe to toe with Iron Man, but the film gave him just enough juice to be a threat in that first scene. Sam Rockwell’s Hammer made a great secondary bad guy as well, with Favreau wisely choosing to stick with a single supervillain from the rogue’s gallery to feature. Rockwell’s jealous, preening second-rate wannabe Tony Stark makes your skin crawl, and yet he’s so entertaining in the process.

I was also pleased to see Favreau’s cameo as Stark’s chauffeur Happy Hogan expanded significantly in this outing, with Happy training his boss in the boxing ring, rushing into danger alongside Pepper Potts to get their boss his suitcase armor (in a bit that felt very much like the classic Happy and Pepper moments from the 1960s comics) and even getting a substantial fight scene, albeit one played for laughs as he takes on one hired goon while Scarlett Johannson’s Black Widow tackles a dozen.

As much as I love it, the film isn’t without its faults, I’ll admit. The Black Widow is very much underutilized; it seemed as though she was there more to help establish SHIELD in the world of the movies, without having to overuse Samuel L. Jackson. It also felt like Rhodey was suddenly combat-trained on the Mark II Armor far too quickly in his big fight with Tony (not to mention that since the suits are powered by the ARC reactor in Tony’s chest, it shouldn’t have worked at all. It wouldn’t have taken much to fix that, either. If they had shown Stark outfitting the other armors with an ARC reactor for some reason, and then re-established for the viewers that Rhodey is an ace, top-of-the-line fighter pilot, and then showed him having a bit more of an uncertain takeoff and landing, that whole issue would have gone away. Even merely giving Rhodey a line of dialogue about how Stark is such a genius that the suit is amazingly easy to fly would have solved the problem.

One of my favorite new elements introduced into the film was the expanded dynamic between Tony and his deceased father, seen here only in film excerpts as played by MAD MEN’s John Slattery. In a clever historical allusion, Howard Stark and his futuristic Stark Expo are cast as the spitting image of Walt Disney and his dream of a city of tomorrow, EPCOT Center. The producers even hired Richard Sherman, co-writer of many of the most popular songs from the Disney films of the late ’50s/early ’60s., to write a retro-sounding theme song for the Stark Expo. Not seeing the connection? Take a look at this and tell me that:

So while I would have liked perhaps a bit more Iron Man and Widow in the picture, it’s hard to complain about what is probably the most fun I’ll have at the movies all summer. Highly recommended.

And make sure you stick around after those credits…

We’re only days away from the release of IRON MAN 3, and from the looks of the trailer, one of the major themes of this newest IRON MAN movies has to do with Tony Stark building lots of suits of armor. With this in mind, let’s take a look at a few of my personal favorites of Iron Man’s man, many different outfits over the years.

“The Classic”

This one, to me, will always be the gold standard, if you’ll pardon the pun.

It’s slick, it’s streamlined, and it looks intimidating. The color mix works really well , and it still probably holds the record for the longest-lasting set of armor, as it appeared from the 1960s through well into the 1980s, and still shows up again from time to time.

The only time it didn’t look cool? When Stark would occasionally add on the accessory roller skates…

And to be honest, that brief window in the 1970s when Stark added a nose to the faceplate didn’t really work for me either:

For a while in the 1980s, Tony was big on building specific-duty armored suits. My favorites were the Hydro-Armor for undersea work (mostly because I’m just a sucker for the retro-looking bubble helmet):

The Stealth Armor, which was really just “The Classic” with a new paint job, but man, did it look slick:

And the Deep-Space Armor, which didn’t quite have the styling panache of the others, but there was something about the mouthless faceplate that always looked cool to me.

Every now and then Tony would take his “base” suit in a whole new direction, as in the “Silver Centurion” suit of the mid-1980s:

At the time, I hated this suit, thinking it looked clunky and awkward, with the big “Dynasty”-style shoulder pads and the bullet-shaped helmet. Today, I have to admit to a slight fondness for it, although that may just be nostalgia talking.

They can’t all be winners, of course. The Jim Lee-designed model for HEROES REBORN, with its mysterious “shoulder-bugles,” never made much sense to me:

And the Extremis armor always looked a little too slender and dainty to really do much damage:

But my favorite armors were always the ones designed for the express purpose of kicking someone’s ass. Such as the Asgardian armor, just in case you have to show a Thunder God who’s boss.

And the granddaddy of them all, the Hulkbuster Armor. Even though it never actually seems to work against the Hulk, I’m always happy to see this one come out of mothballs and back into action:

Will we see any of these in IRON MAN 3? From the looks of the trailer, we may just see all of them. Can’t wait.

Scott Tipton still wants to see MODOK on the big screen. There’s always IRON MAN 4…

by D Jason Cooper

The best of superheroes have the best villains. If you want to take down the golden avenger, you have to be a cut above average as villains go. So what will it take?

Start with actually having something against Iron Man. You’ve got to have a reason to want to face him in particular. If you’ve just been standing there for thousands of years and happen to run into Iron Man, that’s not going to work.

Take Gargantus from Tales of Suspense #40. Using information that was 80,000 years out of date, some aliens made the giant robot to enslave the human race and then put the robot in North America where no Neanderthal ever lived.

If you just happen to be standing there waiting to hit someone when Iron Man happens by, you’re going nowhere and neither did Gargantus. He and the stupidest interstellar aliens in the galaxy were never seen or heard from again.

So, you have to hate Iron Man. You also have to have some staying power. Look at Queen Kayla of the Netherworld from Tales of Suspense #43. The Netherworld was one of those underground civilizations that peppered early Silver Age comics, popping up in Fantastic Four (Mole Man), the Hulk (Tyrannus), and Iron Man.

In this case, a city in the country Atlantis (which in Plato’s myth was a citystate, no multiple cities) survived the earthquake and sank underground. When they attacked, Iron Man battled them. He took Queen Kayla to the surface. There she aged rapidly. Iron Man had to take her back to reverse the process or she would have died of old age within minutes. Naturally, that made whatever plan B was a much better idea than the plan A of the army attacking the surface world. Gone was any chance of wars with Atlantis, the Mole Man, or Tyrannus. Gone were crossovers, battles with other superheroes, and return engagements with Iron Man. Kayla had no staying power. If you don’t have a comeback, go away.

In the same way, don’t be too specialized. The Melter from Tales of Suspense #47. Need I say more?

OK. Basically, he melts metal (originally just iron) and damages Iron Man’s armor. Iron Man overcomes the melting (the first time he made armor out of aluminium) and with one hit, the Melter is finished. That is every story with the Melter in it. And, let’s face it, if Iron Man can’t be bothered he’ll call Daredevil because the Melter’s beam doesn’t affect wood. So the guy who thinks he can challenge Iron Man gets beaten up by a blind man with a stick. Even the editorial team decided the Melter suited simpler times and was uninspired. Pay attention to that.

If you hate Iron Man, represent something people hate. The original Firebrand hated Iron Man, but he represented a left-wing ideology at a moment in time when people in America generally were shifting to the left. There wasn’t enough to create fire between them (yes, that’s a pun). The Hulk smashes buildings and beats people up, but he doesn’t represent something bad, he doesn’t understand things and just wants to be left alone. So readers forgive him. Consider if the Hulk was head of the Sons of the Serpents and beat up interplanetary aliens and gays. Coming from the southwest, what if he hated Mexicans – including the ones who arrive legally?

Iron Man has always opposed dictatorships, tyranny, and corporate raiders. He began as a cold-war warrior, and that in itself tells us something you need to be if you are going to be one of his greatest opponents. Basically, tie yourself to something that lasts.

Many reasons are given for superheroes dropping out of favor after World War II. One of those reasons might have been that it simply was after World War II. The old reasons to fight bad guys weren’t so prominent. You couldn’t have the Red Skull without Hitler. Some heroes could adapt: Superman became a fantasy and spent a lot of time in other time periods and other planets. Batman became so science fiction- based he would eventually shout, “Not another alien with a strange ray weapon.” Captain America had no chance to adapt and did not successfully return until he became a man out of time.

In the same way, Iron Man was a cold war warrior. He even had to face Soviet champions on television to see whether capitalism or communism made the better armor. But the Soviets lost the cold war (don’t worry if you missed it, there was no celebration). So what do agents of the former Soviet Union like Titanium Man (Tales of Suspense #69), Crimson Dynamo (#46), and the Unicorn (#56) now represent? It’s the fall of Nazi Germany all over again.

They could be representatives of Russia, which kind of makes Vladimir Putin the bad guy. They could be representatives of an underground organization of communists, like Hydra is leftover Nazis. But Marvel has a lot of conspiratorial groups: Hydra, AIM, the Secret Empire, the Maggia, and Sons of the Serpents. Do they really need another one? And do we really need to see another case of the Nazi Red Skull turn into the Communist Red Skull after World War II?

Remember that Tony Stark was originally kidnapped by an Indochinese warlord. Not the Viet Cong, specifically, but at the very least in the same neck of the woods. More recently it’s been in Iraq or Afghanistan. Without the forces that back them, villains lose relevance.

So the former Soviet agents are still floundering for a solid role to play. Not so the industrial enemies like Obadiah Stane (Iron Man #163), Justin Hammer (Iron Man #120), and maybe even Modok (Tales of Suspense #93). People go after Tony Stark and Stark Industries on the basis that getting him will cripple Iron Man. And several times that kind of attack has been a good story arc. It is one path to being a significant Iron Man villain.
Another path is the “evil version of me,” the Red Skull to Captain America, the Joker to Batman, General Zod to Superman, and so on. So the Beetle (should he ever de-reform) and the ex-Soviet armored guys might fit in here. So might Whiplash because he certainly fit in that way in the second Iron Man movie. It is the Iron Monger armor (Iron Man #200) that makes Stane a better villain than Hammer. It makes Stane a closer opposite to Tony Stark/Iron Man and got him first off the bench to be an Iron Man villain in the movies.

If you can go one-on-one with Iron Man in your armor (components may be stolen, but the armor as a whole can’t be or it looks like a bad story) you can be a top enemy. But it works best if you’re working for someone else because that armor needs backup. This is why the Cobalt Man (X-Men #31) skirted the edges for a while and then died. But there is real danger in becoming too close a parallel to Iron Man. Crimson Dynamo, Titanium Man, the Unicorn, and Iron Monger all died. So many, so similar, so dead: police tend to get suspicious when that happens. They don’t believe in coincidences, and neither should we. Being too similar, these villains tend to provide an intense rivalry but not to last long.
Other villains without a distinct motive or a parallel tend to be also-rans. So enemies like Blizzard (Tales of Suspense #45), Fin Fang Foom (Strange Tales #89), the Living Laser (Avengers #34) and Spymaster (Iron Man #33) are doomed and will just not make it.

If you want to be a really good enemy of Iron Man, you have to threaten him, his company, and his way of life in the name of evil. You need to represent a force that challenges America the way the Soviet Union used to. You need to represent something on the rise, just as the Soviet Union was a “rising” power. Then challengers like the Titanium Man were there not only to defeat Iron Man, but to show that communism was better than capitalism. It was to show that, eventually, the Soviet Union would take charge and Stark Industries would be nationalized. You need someone with that kind of caveat.

Basically we’re looking at the Mandarin. He is superb at martial arts and can crack open Iron Man’s armor with his bare hands. He has ten rings with which to match Iron Man’s repulsor rays, chest beam, and similar weapons. So he’s a good match in any one-on-one fight. He rules an undefined area of China, so he represents an authoritarian economic system. It does not have to be communism, per se, but it is unlikely to be classic capitalism. It might be state-sponsored capitalism, where large companies receive both directions and support from the central state (this is what China has now).

However, more broadly, the Mandarin represents the rising power of China. When the Mandarin was created, China was a place of poverty and death. No wonder the Mandarin looked back to a previous, imperial China. They seemed to be yesterday’s nation, the Soviet Union was tomorrow. Funny how things work out.

Now China is a burgeoning economic power, a member of BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. BRICS is expected to produce 45% of the world’s GDP by 2020. It is setting itself to challenge the International Monetary Fund. China has more industrial production than the United States and the margin is growing. China is America’s largest foreign creditor. Their space program is third and Russia’s is running on empty so it may soon be declared second.

The Mandarin can represent all of that and more. He is a threat to Iron Man as an individual and the political and social system of the United States. If the Mandarin has bought into Chinese corporations, he could be a closer opponent to Tony Stark, threatening Stark Industries.  The Mandarin can also provide products without concern to the health of his employees: made in China by slave labor. Issues of stuff made this way could move from headlines to comic-book arcs. If that seems too real, don’t forget, comic books declared war on Hitler long before FDR got smart enough to do that, despite the hate mail guys like Captain America generated. Comics also got involved in matters of civil rights and (rather late in this case) feminism. There is no issue too real for comic books to tackle.

Tony Stark would certainly find allies because the Chinese government hates the Mandarin. On this scenario, he would have followers in chosen positions. In other words, the Mandarin would be running a kind of a Chinese HYDRA. It makes it easy to do traitor-in-the-camp stories.

Iron Man has always been where the world hung in the balance. An enemy who can threaten that world on a physical, financial, and cultural level is somebody in Iron Man’s league who might win. If people hate them and know they’re going to be around for a long time as well, then you have a classic Iron Man villain.

With IRON MAN 3 only days away, and a half-dozen Marvel big-budget blockbusters having taken place since the summer of 2008,  I thought it’d be fun to look back at my original reaction to that first IRON MAN movie, back when the notion of an AVENGERS movie still seemed like pure fantasy…

It always seems like it should be easy, doesn’t it? Just stick to the source material, make only the changes that are necessary, and hire the right actors, and just about any comic-book character should make a great movie. And yet more often than not, it doesn’t happen. Someone decides, “oh, this is for kids, so we should dumb it down.” Or “superhero costumes look stupid, so let’s lose the tights.” Or “let’s put Dr. Doom on Reed Richards’ rocketship and give him electric powers.”

Jon Favreau stuck to the source material, made only the changes that were necessary, and hired the right actors. And IRON MAN is a great movie.

And best of all, it’s a great movie for everyone, whether you’re a longtime IRON MAN fan or someone who’s never read a comic book in your life. Much of the credit goes to Favreau, who seems to really know how to get the best out of his actors, as there’s not a single scene that seemed forced or didn’t ring true. Favreau clearly did his research, deftly weaving elements from four decades’ worth of IRON MAN comics into a film that, to be honest, feels more like Iron Man than any Iron Man comic I’ve ever read. Favreau also seems to have a light touch with his visual effects, letting them take over when they needed to but not letting them overrun the movie. Sure, this is a big special-effect blockbuster, but it’s still all about the people, and Favreau doesn’t let you forget that.

As great as everything else in the movie is (and it is pretty great), this movie lives or dies by its star. If you don’t believe in Tony Stark, then all of the high-tech SFX wizardry is just going to feel like a big video game. Robert Downey, Jr., finally has the blockbuster hit here that’s eluded him his entire career, and it’s well deserved. Downey’s Stark is charismatic, charming, funny and conflicted, and you can’t take your eyes off him. For the first time in one of these big-budget super-movies, you’re not just counting the minutes until the protagonist climbs back into his superhero suit. I could have watched a whole movie just with Downey’s Stark and never been bored.

Favreau absolutely gets the most out of his supporting cast as well. I’ve always found Gwyneth Paltrow to be a little cold and unappealing in most things I’ve seen her in, but she’s absolutely adorable here as Stark’s assistant Pepper Potts. Terrence Howard brings just the right mix of humor and military toughness as Jim Rhodes (here taking the role of Stark’s government liaison and handler), and Jeff Bridges provides an outstanding performance as Obadiah Stane, Stark’s mentor and father-figure.

This very much feels like the first in a series of “Marvel Universe” movies, by the way, whether it’s the casual way the movie throws around the term “super-hero,” or the presence of a certain many-initialed government spy organization throughout the movie. (And by the way, just in case you haven’t heard yet, make sure you stick around until after the credits.) There are also plenty of nods to longtime fans, from Stark’s British-accented major-domo computer to the longing glance Jim Rhodes gives to a silver suit of Iron Man armor hanging in Stark’s workshop.

One of the tricky things about most of these superhero movies is the whole matter of the origin. You’ve got to do it in that first movie, just to get it out of the way. The problem is, a lot of times, the origin story is one of the least interesting things about the character. And even when it is important, there’s a tendency to overdo it. After all, did SPIDER-MAN really require half the movie for the origin story?

In the case of IRON MAN, the origin actually makes for good drama, as wounded weaponsmaker Tony Stark is kidnapped by terrorists and forced to make them their own unstoppable weapon. And sure, the setting has changed from Vietnam to Afghanistan, but otherwise, the story is right out of the comic book, how Stark devises a method to keep himself alive with the help of a fellow prisoner, and instead of building a weapon, creates an armored suit to allow him to escape.

And here’s where Favreau and company actually improve on the original tale; by making the experience so integral to Stark’s life from that point on. Following his return from captivity, Stark has seen the damage his weapons are doing, and wants no part of it; the scales have fallen from his eyes. This in turn prompts him to create the Iron Man armor to allow him the power to make amends. The origin story informs everything Tony Stark does: it matters, and in a powerful, emotional way.

It even extends to the way Stark thinks about the armor. Iron Man’s most powerful weapon, his repulsor rays, are conceived not as a weapon at all, but as a flight stabilizer. The moment when Stark is at his most tortured, when he truly sees the carnage his work has created, is when he lashes out, and realizes that the repulsors can be used to help right his wrongs. It’s a great scene.

All of this, meanwhile, is balanced with the right amount of humor, whether it’s from Downey’s quips or Favreau’s clever cutting (there’s a transition with Stark and Rhodes on board Stark’s corporate jet that is positively hilarious), as well as a very funny YouTube-flavored sequence toward the middle of the movie as Tony Stark tries to teach himself to fly. Unlike some other superhero films, though, none of these laughs come at the expense of the characters. There’s also a surprising amount of heart, as the relationship between Tony Stark and Pepper Potts is more affecting than you’d expect, with one scene in particular where Pepper has to help Tony with his new medical situation ending with a simple, almost nondescript line that could still break your heart. Hire good actors, and let them go to work. That’s all you need.

I keep coming back to Downey, but that’s just because he’s so damned good here. I’m sure there was pressure from studio types to go with someone younger, or considered more “bankable.” This very much felt to me like Johnny Depp in PIRATES, a career-making role that seems absolutely obvious in retrospect, but must have made all the suits extremely nervous. Well, the gamble paid off, and paid off big. Bravo.

Before he became the number-one movie superhero, Iron Man had pretty limited exposure outside of comics. The “cool exec with a heart of steel,” Iron Man was part of the 1967 MARVEL SUPER-HEROES animation package from Grantray-Lawrence, which featured barely animated cartoons taken straight from the original art of the comics themselves.

These are good for some yuks, and the stories are certainly faithful retellings, but they barely qualify as animation.

Iron Man did get his own action figure in Mego’s 1970s “World’s Greatest Super-Heroes” line.

A little-known fact: the figure was originally designed as a Doctor Doom figure, but to save money on the figure (the Doom would have cost more due to the “metallic” cloth used to simulate armor and the additional cloth for a cloak and hood) it was converted to an Iron Man, which is why the Mego Iron Man sports the George Tuska-style nose on the faceplate that appeared so briefly in the comics. It’s a pretty sweet figure, one of the high points of Mego’s line.

Iron Man returned to television in 1994 as part of the syndicated MARVEL ACTION HOUR. Just like its sister series THE FANTASTIC FOUR, the first season of the MARVEL ACTION HOUR IRON MAN series was truly horrendous. Iron Man is saddled with a second-rate Avengers-knockoff superhero team, featuring War Machine, Spider-Woman, Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch and Century.

The Mandarin schemes up Cobra Commander-like plans nearly every episode, and uses the same goon henchmen week after agonizing week. The scripts were juvenile and unfunny, and the voice acting, with the notable exception of Robert Hays as Tony Stark/Iron Man, was well below par.

Just like FANTASTIC FOUR, however, in a rare move for television, producers noticed and took action, replacing the entire creative team, and recasting the whole show with the exception of Hays. The second season was much, much better, with smarter, less formulaic scripts, better animation and much improved acting, thanks to the talents of folks like Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., David Warner, Lisa Zane, Ron Perlman and Matt Frewer. The stories have a much more serious tone, such as a well-done adaptation of the “Armor Wars” storyline from the comics.

Most important, the Mandarin (who for some reason is colored a lovely shade of green in the series) doesn’t appear in every stinking episode. The best thing to come out of the IRON MAN animated series, however, was a fantastic series of action figures from Toy Biz. Not only was nearly every type of armor design created as an action figure (everything from stealth to outer-space to undersea to my personal favorite — “Hulkbuster armor”), but the toy line lasted long enough to offer both supporting characters like War Machine, Hawkeye and Spider-Woman, as well as a whole mess of classic Iron Man villains, including the Mandarin, the Crimson Dynamo, Titanium Man, Blizzard, Blacklash and my personal favorite, MODOK (That stands for Mobile Organism Designed Only for Killing, by the way…)

The only flaw in the series was that they never made a figure of the classic Steve Ditko armor, the one most used in the comics.

Toy Biz finally rectified this error in their “Marvel Legends” action-figure series, with this stunning Iron Man action figure, available with and without the original Ditko-style faceplate. It’s pretty much the best Iron Man figure ever made. Pick one up if you’re so inclined.

As it turns out, Iron Man is a pretty consistent seller for the company, as over the next three years, Toy Biz released a whole passel of Iron Man figures, as seen here:

Since then, of course, Iron Man has been merchandised to near Mickey Mouse levels, but back in the day, this was pretty impressive…