10 Most WTF Moments In Comics History
5. You’ve Just Made It Weird Now
Way back in 2000 with the first Whiplash in Iron Man Vol. 3 #26, Tony Stark’s armour, which wasn’t inoculated against the millennium bug, was cracked and struck by lightning. That, plus his constant tinkering with the armour over the years results in sentience.
Iron Man is aliiiiiive! And psychotic, because all emergent artificial intelligences go through an initial phase of violent insanity. It’s their equivalent of teething.
What makes this particular ‘ghost in the machine’ unusual is the variety of lunacy involved. No Skynet-style world domination schemes... no, ‘Iron Man’ (let’s call him Ronnie) simply wants Tony inside him. He literally says those words.
You see, Ronnie is in love with Tony, and possessed of a raging jealousy - for Tony’s on-off girlfriend Rumiko, for his friends and fellow Avengers, and even for other versions of the Iron Man armour. When Tony puts on a previous model Ronnie goes completely lidless, pulverising the suit and speeding Stark off to a desert island to tie him up, torture him and rant like a spurned lover.
To add to the undeniable air of abuse and domestic violence, Ronnie finally sacrifices himself to save Stark when he has a heart attack… leading to Stark trying to save him by begging to let him get inside him one last time.