What Happened To Everyone Who Wore Iron Man's Armour?

11. Rhodey Rhodes

War Machine
Marvel Comics

Colonel James "Rhodey" Rhodes has been a part of the Iron Man family of comics since 1979, and is considered Tony Stark's BFF. Fortunately for Rhodey, he's also a heck of a lot more than just Tony's dependable friend, having assumed the identity of War Machine in 1992 and never looking back since.

Long before Rhodey became War Machine, however, he actually took on the identity of Iron Man. He did so in the wake of Obadiah Stane's takeover of Stark's company - at which point Stark himself succumbed to a booze-fuelled depressive spiral - and even served as a member of the West Coast Avengers. Even after he was injured and left temporarily unable to remain as Iron Man, Rhodey took on the armour once again after Tony's apparent death, taking control over the company and continuing the Iron Man legacy as his own hero - War Machine.

Since taking on the War Machine identity almost 40 years ago, Rhodey has become just as iconic as Tony. The two have worked together as allies and independently as their own heroes, and though the character has only been used as a supporting element in the MCU thus far, his comics more than illustrate that he's a leading man.

Unfortunately, just as Rhodey shares leading man status with Tony, he's also shared his fair share of tragedy. He was killed fighting Thanos during Civil War II, but was thankfully resurrected in 2018. He's yet to return to the War Machine armour though, and it's unclear if he ever will.

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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.