5. The Five Nightmares
What better place for the #5 spot than The Five Nightmares? This story, written by Matt Fraction with art by Salvador Larroca, launched what was then Marvels second ongoing series featuring old Shellhead, called The Invincible Iron Man. This series came out around the time of the first Iron Man movie. And if youre a comic publisher, one way to try and entice fans of the movie to check out the comic is by running a story where the hero fights the villain of the movie. This posed something of a problem for Marvel, since Obadiah Stane, the villain in the first Iron Man film, had been dead for around twenty years. And rather than resurrecting Obadiah, Fraction took a better route, he introduced Obadiahs son, Ezekiel Zeke Stane. Zeke, who had lived his whole life off the grid, is a genius in his own right, able to reverse-engineer Starks technology for his own uses. Hired by a tobacco company to improve their product, Zeke took the money and used it to create bio-upgrades for himself, upgrading his hypothalamus to utilize the energy within his body to fire repulsor blasts. He also farms this technology out to African suicide bombers and severely injures Pepper. In the wake of the Extremis events of Iron Man 3, setting up Tony against a younger, more brash and less moral version of himself could pose an interesting contrast between Downey and whatever young actor they get to play Stane. And if Downey does make Iron Man 4, it will likely be his final Iron Man film, so what better way to bring things full-circle than by giving him a send-off by going up against his old mentors son? Of course, on the other hand, Guy Pearces Aldrich Killian had a lot of similarities to Zeke. Which isnt surprising, given that in the comics, Killian shot himself on the same page he was introduced.