10 Things Everyone Always Gets Wrong About Iron Man

8. Stark Doesn't Get Along With S.H.I.E.L.D.

Iron Man Director of SHIELD
Marvel Comics

In the MCU, Tony Stark and S.H.I.E.L.D. share a pretty simple relationship. He's recruited by Nick Fury to be a member of the 'Avengers Initiative', a super-team of individuals designed to fight the battles no one else could. Except they go about recruiting him in a pretty underhand way, with Black Widow infiltrating Stark's company to profile him, and that's where problems begin to start.

In Iron Man 2, but particularly in the first Avengers film, it's clear Stark has a big problem with S.H.I.E.L.D., and Nick Fury in particular. The latter part is pretty common trait shared among Marvel's heroes in the comics, but it is the former that's more pertinent, with Stark having even gone so far as to hack into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s network in order to understand Fury's true intentions.

The main message is that Stark isn't a fan of Fury's agency, but the actual truth of the matter is slightly different. Yes, Stark does harbour a distrust for S.H.I.E.L.D. in the comics, but he didn't come to loathe everything they represented, even going so far as to become the agency's director in the wake of 2006's Civil War, written by Mark Millar and drawn by Steven McNiven.

Would a man who hated S.H.I.E.L.D. take on that responsibility? Probably best to say 'no'.

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WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.