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IRON-MAN
July 26, 1994
December 19, 2003
March 4, 2009
Iron-man is the only Marvel March 18, 2009
title I still buy, however
irregularly. There are some areas
where I have to be
The usual comic book super-hero careful not to
premise supplies not just an repeat myself over
explanation of the hero's and over again.
powers, but an excuse for the
hero's individuality. This is an
example of the
Why is the main character the opposite. I've
only one with the winged feet been saying this
and the x-ray orbs? for so long,
I couldn't
SUPERHERO believe it
wasn't out there
Birth on a planet long destroyed, already in "the
the secret formula that has been doomfiles".
lost, the blessing of a capricious
alien or god, the irreproducible
technological accident--
My contention: this is the domain
of Fantasy, whether or not there's HARD
a technological gloss on the
explanation.
Iron Man is one of my
The central premise of "Iron Man" examples of the way
is that there's this really smart even bad science
guy who figured out who to build fiction can have
this high-powered exo-skeletal armor. advanatages over
straight fantasy.
This, of necessity, takes us
into a domain different from the The technological
typical super hero story. premises underlying
Iron Man are complete
It's completely subversive of the super nonsense-- there's no
hero form -- it tends to kick the story such thing as a
line away from muscle-man fantasies and "repulsor ray"; for
back toward reality. him to go flying
around just using the
A guy who can build a gadget energy stored in those
like the Iron Man armor is little battery packs
clearly far more powerful than on his hips is crazy--
the schmuck wearing the armor. and yet the bare fact
that these powers are
The special power is not supposed to be
super strength, but extreme technological
intelligence. completely changes the
nature of the story.
The high-powered armor is
just one of the more
obvious manifestations of Iron Man story lines tend
his intelligence, and it to gravitate toward
isn't even one of the more topical issues, concerning
important ones. the military industrial
complex.
Over the year's there have been In the 60s, Tony Stark was
periods when Stark has gotten hauled before Congress,
someone else to wear the Iron-Man because the government
armor; or has built armor for other wanted him to manufacture
people to use-- sometimes he builds powered armor for soldiers
intentionally degraded armor, in Vietnam, and Stark
keeping the high cards for himself. refused.
In the 80s, there was an
attempt by an agency of
the government to do a
hostile take-over of Stark
Industries.
An Iron-Man story from 1994, involved
Stark doing a complete redesign of the way
his corporation does business,
reorganizing on some more "enlightened"
ideal of what a corporation should be.
(So right after that they
did some issues with silly
fight scenes in them, just
to keep the usual audience
happy.)
In recent years, Stark
has been tempted to take
a Government position
(Science adviser? Head
of DOD? I forget)-- and A problem with all
the question is whether these ideas, however,
this would be inherently is the underlying
corrupting, or a chance notion that Stark is
to influence things for so brilliant his work
the better. can't be duplicated
by anyone else.
Really: once a
technology has
been demonstrated,
it's only a matter
of time before
someone else
duplicates it--
or exceeds it.
But then, there are constant problems
with what appears to be pirated, leaked
versions of Stark's technology that That's more
have found it's way into the toolkit of like it.
super-villains.
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