Now we should get into some serious Iron Man history lessons. The first ongoing, multi-part epic to appear in the comics was Armour (or "Armor", but never "Amour", that's something very different) Wars, which ran for a good year and provided much of the material for Iron Man 2. A huge, crazy, action-packed blockbuster of a superhero comic, the story saw Tony Stark's closely-guarded blueprints for his suits stolen and sold on the black market. Before too long the number of heroes and villains wearing armour based on his tech has proliferated to a crazy degree, and Tony is none too happy about it. So, despite contravening international law and really any sort of good sense, he seeks to reclaim his property. Armour Wars can be read as either a capitalistic power fantasy or more in line with the films, where Stark is worried about the Iron Man tech falling into the wrong hands and being used as a dangerous weapon. The third reading happens when it does end up in the wrong hands and he has to fight a series of supervillains almost as powerful as him, resulting in some thrilling action sequences. His righteous fury puts him at odds with as many heroes as villains, however, as Iron Man tries to forcibly take back his technology from people he'd previously given it freely. He draws the ire of Captain America when he accidentally starts a riot in a maximum security prison for supervillains (because the robotic guards used his technology) and sees himself fired from the Avengers as a result. It's a brilliant, morally complex story, and further develops Stark's place in the universe of the Marvel comics: hugely powerful and wealthy, strong willed, hated and loathed in equal measure by both heroes and villains.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
