Iron Man/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


YMMVs for the comics:

  • Adaptational Attractiveness: Iron Man is one of the few superheroes whose costume looks better in live action film than it does in the comic.
    • That's a very old version of the armor. The movie version is based on the Extremis armor.
      • It still looks waaaaaaaaaaay better in Real Life than drawn.
    • Not in terms of physical appearance but in personality. Before the first film came out if you asked fanboys to list the funniest Marvel Comics characters they would would say Spider-Man, The Thing, Hawkeye, Deadpool. Tony Stark was definitely not one of them. In the movie however Tony's quips, wisecracks and timing, whether improvised by Robert Downey, Jr. or written by a writer like Joss Whedon make Tony the funniest film superhero ever and one of the most appealing ones.
  • Alternative Character Interpretation: Tony Stark. Good guy, or imperialist scumbag?
  • Awesome Ego: Tony Stark.
  • Awesome Music: While the film has a serviceably action-movie score, there's a surprising track of very reverent music when Rhodes arrives at Edwards AFB in what will become the War Machine suit. Seriously, it sounds like the soundtrack for Jesus discovering the Grand Canyon or something.
  • Base Breaker: For Stark: "The Civil War". For Rhodes: "Sometimes The World Needs A War Machine".
  • Complete Monster: Obadiah Stane, in the 1980s comics. His strategies involved the cruelest forms of psychological warfare possible; even as a little boy, he murdered a chess opponent's puppy to give him an edge in a tournament. To say nothing of what he did to Tony Stark...
    • The Mandarin and the Controller have also been written as this.
  • Crowning Moment of Awesome:
    • Tony's had a few but one of note is the entirety of Iron Man (vol. 1) #200 where he reclaims the Iron Man mantle, faces off against his greatest enemy Obadiah Stane, out-gambits him at every turn and leads to Stane committing suicide out of sheer frustration.
    • In Iron Man (vol. 1) #293-294, as part of the Infinity Crusade story arc, Tony's confronted with the Goddess, a female cosmic being who wants to "purify" the universe of evil; she wields several Cosmic Containment Units, basically omnipotent plot devices which make her all-powerful. She's trying to bring over superheroes to her cause and one of them is Iron Man. Twice, both times completely at her mercy with his naked spiritual form like a shrimp in her fist, he tells her she is a presumptuous hypocrite and no thanks, he won't join her.
    • Iron Man's victory over the Mandarin in Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. #28. Forced to wear an irremovable power-dampener to shut off his Extremis abilities, and racing against time to prevent the Mandarin from releasing an airborne form of Extremis (which will kill 97.5% of the world's population), Tony dons an outmoded armor, tracks down his old nemesis, and engages him in a particularly brutal slugfest, during which he yanks half of the Mandarin's power rings (which were fused into his spine) right out of his body, whilst sustaining a broken arm and a dent kicked in his helmet. He then downs the Mandarin temporarily with his own weapons and the Mandarin's own rings, then deliberately severs part of his own foot to get the power dampener off, fights through the pain and shock and the sensory overload of his Extremis abilities returning, then averts the Extremis outbreak. The Mandarin then gets up again and punctures a container of Extremis, prompting Tony to freeze him AND the Extremis with freon spray. Only then does he pass out. Damn...
  • Dork Age: Civil War and the aftermath. See Strawman Political, below. Before Civil War, there was his Face Heel Turn during the terrible "Crossing" storyline that led into Teen Tony and Heroes Reborn. Thankfully, much of that was retconned out in Avengers Forever.
    • The Iron Nose. It was hated so much that the comic had fans at a convention wearing armor replicas without the nose and telling Tony Stark how hideous it looked.
  • Epileptic Trees: Immediately following Civil War, Tony is fighting Mole Man creatures with his Avengers team when, all of a sudden, Ultron reveals it has invaded his biology and transforms Tony into a copy of the Wasp. Considering Tony's biggest crime during Civil War was building a cyborg with the power of Thor (as well as locking up heroes and building a giant ersatz Masters of Evil which Ultron used to lead), it's not so hard to just assume that a lot of Tony's immoral actions were the product of Ultron inside of him, influencing his actions.
  • Ho Yay: Piles, both with War Machine in the Iron Man books, and Steve Rogers in The Avengers.
  • Idiot Ball: The S.H.I.E.L.D agents, first ignoring the more advanced suit on the computer monitor and then trying to shoot at Iron Monger with handguns.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Stan Lee has stated that this was his original intention in the creation of Tony Stark. He wanted to create a character who was a bit of a bastard for his war-profiteering, womanizing, and fast lifestyle but was also pitied (especially by women) for his insecurities due to his injury and the knowledge that what he was making was killing people.
  • Magnificent Bastard: The Mandarin has been one since the 1960s. There's also Stark himself, depending on the writer.
  • Memetic Sex God: "Every time you kiss Iron Man, you taste Galactus." This list is out of date by years, since then he has bagged Maria Hill and She-Hulk, the latter who was on the list indirectly.
  • My Real Daddy: David Michelinie and Bob Layton in the early 1980s transformed the character with such innovations such as his specialized armors and his drinking problem.
  • Never Live It Down: Tony's alcoholism, although his actions in Civil War are catching up in their effect on his reputation.
  • Straw Man Has a Point (in the first film): The senator is an ass, and Hammer is an idiot, but both of them make a lot of valid points in the senate hearing. Tony is a loose canon, his suit is a weapon (whether he likes the term or not) of the sort that would ordinarily be denied a private citizen, and he is acting totally independent of anyone who could review his actions or rein him in if he gets out of control. None of these things are remotely desirable traits in someone who is trying to be a one-man police for the whole world.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: As discussed in the Strawman Political section, they could have had an interesting plot in which Tony is forced to go to more and more extreme measures to enforce an act that would hold responsibility over all other things. Something, he believes in due to his own shortcomings. Instead, they decided in some books to turn Tony into a power hungry fascist and decided accountability = slavery. Also he's a war criminal now... yeah, apparently believing in responsibility is akin to amorality.

YMMVs for the 1994 television series:

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