Iron Man/Awesome


 * Iron Man Vol. 1, #200. Stark is finally taking the fight to Obadiah Stane after so long being his drunken Butt Monkey. In the ensuing battle in the very corporate building that Stane stole from him, Iron Man is trapped in a room with Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan held unconscious. Stane comes on a comm screen and tells him that if he moves, motion sensors would detect it and send a killer surge of electricity to kill his hostages, which means Iron Man will be forced to starve to death rather than kill his friends. After an arrogant rant, Stane signs off with a smug farewell, certain of the horrible, lingering and inescapable death he has just condemned Stark to. Against this, Stark has only one thought, "Don't count me out, Stane," as he calmly uses his greatest advantage against Stane, his incredible inventive intelligence, as he calmly scans the room and finds a critical power conduit point within the firing arc of his chest piece's unibeam weapon, which is fired strictly by a neura-link and defeats the deathtrap and rescues the hostages in seconds.
 * During the "World's Most Wanted" arc, Tony manages to protect the identities of his fellow heroes and humiliate Norman Osborne, all while his brain is slowly destroyed and he goes backwards through his armors until he fights Osborne in his original. Let me repeat that: Tony Stark, near brain-death and in an armor which he admits was built in a cave with a box of scraps, takes on Norman Osborne, at the time the de facto head of the United States and wielding the most up-to-date repainted Iron Man suit. Naturally, Tony fares terribly in the fight, but . Then he royally screws over Osborne while comatose by having appointed his doctor so that he won't have his life support terminated.
 * During the Dark Reign story arc, when Norman Osborn (dressed in Iron Man derivative 'Iron Patriot' armor) finally catches up with the near braindead Tony Stark, and proceeds to pummel him into the ground. And after deleting his brain, evading every government on the planet, reassembling every Iron Man suit he'd ever owned, and finally getting the snot knocked out of him, what does Tony have to say? Norman, you have just been pwn'd in the hardest of cores.
 * Another one from Dark Reign, Invincible Iron Man 17-18. Pepper Potts successfully infiltrates the H.A.M.M.E.R Helicarrier and frees Maria Hill and Black Widow by impersonating Madame Masque(wich tried to kill her and Tony and failed), I'm not usually fooled by gambits like this but this one got me by surprise, and it was AWESOME.