10 Mind-Blowing Facts About Iron Man

10. Iron Man Was Briefly Secretary Of Defense

The early 2000's saw Marvel comics shift towards telling more grounded stories with real-world consequences, and this involved giving Iron Man a major change.

The idea of Tony Stark pretending that Iron Man is his bodyguard is one that stretches suspension of disbelief even in the world of comics. After all, it's a pretty terrible bodyguard who is never in the same room as his employer. In 2002 Tony dropped the act and publically revealed himself as Iron Man.

This had an unexpected downside though. Years ago, Tony Stark had signed a contract with the military which forbid them from copying the Iron Man design as long as an employee of Stark's wore the suit. With the revelation that it was Tony himself in the suit, the contract became void.

The US army began trying to build their own Stark tech but were pretty bad at it. The technology they built was faulty and nearly blew up Washington D.C., the exact opposite of what it was supposed to do.

Tony stopped the disaster and was afterwards appointed as Secretary of Defense by the President so that he could control how his technology was used.

Unfortunately, he had to step down during the events of 'Avengers Disassembled' when an insane Scarlet Witch used her reality warping powers to make Tony go on a tirade against the Latverian Embassy.