10 HUGE Comics Moments (That Were Revealed In Spin-Offs)

In terms of comic events, AXIS managed to make itself relatively contained. While it involved an event that turned Marvel's heroes evil and its villains good, the vast majority reverted to their original state by the end of the comic, with precisely five exceptions.

Tony Stark would be the most potent of these exceptions, having protected himself from being returned to his heroic status by shielding himself from the second inversion spell. As such, when everyone else went back to their normal life, Iron Man went home with a newfound sense of villainy, which would lead into the Superior Iron Man series.

Which made sense, because people buying the series knew what they were in for - or, at least, they thought they did, as the commonly held belief among fans was that this run would end with Tony finally returning to his heroic ways. And yet, the series concluded, and Stark remained a cold and calculating figure, unfixed and unchanged.

When Iron Man reappears in the joint Marvel canon in Avengers: Time Runs Out, he's still the person AXIS left him. He appears to remain this way until the universe is rebooted in Secret Wars - although weirdly, it's never properly addressed the whole time, which suggests people were mostly trying to ignore that the storyline had happened in the first place.