For a serial womaniser with a piece of shrapnel in his heart and a serious drinking problem, Tony Stark has done well to end up where is he today. Despite a backstory that reads like the best episode of Jeremy Kyle never committed to tape, the billionaire industrialist, playboy and superhero flew right into our hearts and minds, obliterated those precious vital organs with repulsor rays, and made a home there as the superhero Iron Man! A perennial part of the Marvel comic books, it's with Robert Downey Jr's star turn as the character in the cinematic universe that has made ol' shellhead into one of the most popular superheroes around today. Being the first big hit for Marvel Studios, the Iron Man films hewed closer to their source material than any other comic book movie has done before. Storylines, characters arcs and designs were lifted straight from the newsprint, which means that it's pretty easy for a fan of the movies to get into the comics. In theory, at least. In practice, it's a little more tricky. The Tony Stark we see in the Iron Man films wasn't always present in the comics. In fact it's debatable if he's present now. Since his debut in 1963 the character has gone through any number of changes, and not just in his armour; his personality has gone through several permutations, his love life's a mess, he's spent time without his robotic suit and time with too many suits, he's been replaced by his teenage self (not that we speak of that), and he's flitted between being a grounded, hard sci-fi guy and somebody who goes to space to fight aliens on the reg. Amongst all these varying and contradictory depictions of Iron Man, where's a new reader supposed to start? Well, we have the answer. Answers. Ten of them. Not necessarily the greatest Iron Man stories ever produced, but the ones that are best for new readers who want to get a sense of what the character is like in the comics - how he fits into the world, what's similar to the films, what his history is - whilst still being recognisable as the charismatic RDJ-shaped guy on the big screen.