4. Haunted
As an Iron Man fan, one of the things that excited me most about Iron Man 3 was the prospect that after two movies, Id finally get to see Iron Man square off against his arch-nemesis, the Mandarin. And then we gotwell, we all know what we got. My feelings on Iron Man 3s treatment of the Mandarin have already been
well-documented, so I wont go into them again here. Ill sum it up for you very briefly: what we got in Iron Man 3 was definitely
not the Mandarin. And thats where this comes in. Whenever someone talks about the Mandarin being a racist caricature who has no place in modern storytelling, I direct them to Haunted, a great story that ran through Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. #21-28 and written by Daniel and Charles Knauf with art by Roberto de la Torre. Tony Stark, now Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. following the events of Civil War, seems to be suffering from a mental breakdown, hearing voices of people hes failed who are providing him clues to a case hes working on. Meanwhile, a man named Tem Borjigin, CEO of Prometheus, a company specializing in bio-engineered weaponry, is working with the government and Maya Hansen to produce an army of soldiers enhanced with Extremis. Borjigin is actually the Mandarin, once again back from the dead and this time with artificial hands and his rings fused to his spine. His plan is to release Extremis as an airborne virus across the entire world. But since only 2.5% of the population possesses a specific gene receptive to Extremis, that means most of the worlds population would be killed, including the Mandarin himself. So why do it? Because the survivors will be free from disease and effectively normal, creating a new and far greater human race. Personally, my thought is that this is what Iron Man 3
should have been. But theres still a chance to right the wrongs. Have Tem Borjigin be the real mastermind behind the Ten Rings, Killian, Extremis, everything. All building up to this plan. That would give us the
real Mandarin many fans hoped they would see.