Stark Facts

Lets see how much of an Iron Man fan you really are. Here are One Dozen Iron Man Facts!

1. Stan Lee based Anthony "Tony" Stark off of Howard Hughes. In 1963 Hughes was colorful, rich, adventurous, and flirtatious. He was the embodiment of success.

2. Stan Lee also created Iron Man on a self given dare. It was on the height of the Cold War and readers of that era were anti-military and anti-industrial, Tony was basically everything the 1960's youth disliked.

3. In 1979, David Michelinie and Bob Layton wrote an Iron Man story called "Demon In A Bottle" which saw Tony Stark become an alcoholic. Layton claimed he and David were paid to basically do a PSA on the issue of alcohol abuse and the two of them treated "the bottle" like the villain of the arc. They led up to Tony's drinking problem over the course of a few issues before bringing it to the forefront and had the intention of the alcoholism being a result of stress. This story aided in the modern characterization of Tony Stark.

4. During an event called "Fear Itself" Tony needed to get the attention of the Norse God Odin. To do this he had to do something he'd never do under any other circumstance. So, after thirty-two years of sobriety Tony Stark drank an alcoholic beverage to get Odin's attention. This-and several other incidents-showed readers that Tony's strict sobriety was important to him.

5. Originally, the shrapnel caught in Tony's heart was kept at bay by a metal torso he wore. This torso was also part of the armor and the intention was that in order to stay alive Tony would always be bound to his armor. Of course later stories would minimize this element by changing the armor torso into a small reactor.

6. There is one issue of the 1960's Iron Man series where Tony's face-plate has a nose on it. This is due to Stan Lee once asking why the armor had no nose and then forgetting he mentioned it until he saw the nose in one issue of the book and had it removed from future issues.

7. In a 2009 CGI cartoon "Iron Man: Armored Adventures" Tony Stark and his supporting characters were shown as teenagers. An odd change until you discover a late 1990's story called "The Crossing" in which Tony turns out be a sleeper agent for the time traveling villain Kang The Conqueror. Tony-mind controlled-had killed a few allies of The Avengers and joined Kang in taking over the world. In order to stop them, The Avengers went back in time and recruited a teenaged Tony Stark. The Tony Stark of the present dies sacrificing himself to stop Kang and teenaged Tony Stark becomes Marvel's new Iron Man until he is killed by a villain named Onslaught (whole other story).

8. In the comics Tony Stark's loyal butler was named Jarvis. When the film "Iron Man" was in production Jarvis was made into Tony's artificial intelligence servant to avoid comparisons to Batman's butler Alfred. In the miniseries "Agent Carter", Jarvis-as a human-appears as Howard Stark's butler. It is believed Jarvis lived long enough to take care of Tony when he was a baby and in respect for Jarvis, Tony gave his AI the butler's name.

9. We're familiar with The Hulkbuster Armor-an armor designed to take down The Hulk if necessary-however, Tony has also created an armor to take down Thor called The Thorbuster. The suit resembled the Asgardian robot "The Destroyer" and is powered by an Asgardian crystal. Sadly, Thor destroyed this armor.

10. Even without his armor, Tony is shown to be quite capable in combat. Like many other Avengers Tony was trained in hand-to-hand by Captain America.

11. The Extremis Virus was created by a villain named The Mandarine to rewrite the blueprint of the human body. This would result in a person gaining higher brain processing, stronger organs, and better immune systems. However, the Virus would only improve a minority of the human race, everyone else would die. In a recent story Tony was able to retool Extremis into an exterior enhancement, making whoever was infected with it into the most physically attractive as they could be. Tony could also cure blindness with Extremis.

12. In 2005, Brian Michael Bendis established a team called The Illuminati that had operated in secrecy since the 1970's. Iron Man was a member of this secret group along with other important and intelligent members of The Marvel Universe. One of The Illuminati's biggest decisions was launching The Hulk into space.

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