10 Comic Book Characters You Wish You Could Be

5. Tony Stark

Tony Stark is another character on this list who owes more than a small amount to his portrayal in the adaptation for the screen - and who’s generally better known by his given name than his codename. More than just another billionaire playboy genius in a flashy suit (they grow on trees in the Marvel Universe): Stark’s flashy suit is a high-tech battlesuit designed and built by the man himself, ‘billionaire’ and ‘genius’ being the operative words.

A futurist and visionary, Stark believes in changing the world through innovation, creating new scientific paradigms before breakfast. But, as much as smart is sexy, that’s not how he gets on this list.

Previously a mid-level superhero in Marvel’s roster and having just emerged from the 2006 Civil War storyline not entirely smelling of roses (he engineered a forced countrywide registration of all superhumans, resulting a lot of nastiness up to and including the arrest and assassination of Captain America), it took Robert Downey Jnr’s unstoppable razzle dazzle to rehabilitate Stark’s faded aura for 2008’s eponymous movie... and boy, did he.

Single-handedly making our Anthony fun, charming and sexy again, RDJ is the main reason Iron Man would ever make a list like this, and the only reason he’d make it to number five. And let’s be honest: he flies a custom built jet fighter with pecs. Yeah, we’d like Tony Stark’s life for a day or two.