10 Things Marvel Wants You To Forget About Iron Man

2. And Then He Was A Teen For A While

...and that choice was to go back in time, grab the teenaged version of Tony Stark, and bring him into the present day to defeat his evil older self. Which is pretty much what's going on in the X-Men now, except that's pretty cool and fun, whilst the denouement of The Crossing was one of the worst parts of the worst comic story ever. The worst of the worst. Teenage Tony nicks a set of Iron Man armour and goes after Evil Tony and Kang, resulting in his older self sacrificing himself to defeat the villain. Which then means that Iron Man is a 19-year-old boy. A 19-year-old who had to wear the armour because Evil Tony ripped his heart out before he decided to go all heroic, so the chestplate is necessary to keep him alive in the same way that old Tony needed it to stop shrapnel from bursting his own heart. What Marvel hadn't taken into account was that they may have damaged the hearts of lifelong Iron Man fans who were devastated to discover their hero had been a traitor all along, slyly murdering teammates and wiping out the Wasp's bank account (something else that actually happened). Even worse was the replacement of an iconic character, who had a storied history, with a wise-cracking teen whose existence as a way to draw in younger readers couldn't have been more obvious if he was drawn in an anime style and he gave his armour a radical redesign. Which they did do. Teen Tony would stay in the suit until Heroes Reborn, and we've already seen how that mess turned out.