I’ve been a rabid fan of Iron Man for seven years. As an avatar of America’s ego, greed, and casual attitude towards its own self-destruction, Tony Stark is more reflective of US attitudes that Captain America will ever be.

With the character enjoying a resurgence in popularity due to the release of a pair of explosion-saturated films, I’ve decided an article series on my thoughts on the character would be a fine way to kill time, appease the comic-centric part of my reader base, and abuse Iron man’s search engine preeminence.

One of the more interesting traits of the Armored Avenger is that his very existence goes against a certain adage about superheroes. A common belief among critics and fans is that a superhero is ultimately only as good as his running villains. If Iron Man doesn’t disprove this outright, he’s certainly an exception to the rule. Every Iron Man villain falls directly into at least one of three categories: worthless, offensive, and dead.

The worthless category encompasses two breeds of villain: those with no business attempting to fist-fight a walking armory, and those who are simply built around shitty or poorly executed ideas.

As for the offensive grouping, Iron Man has the dubious distinction of being the only superhero to have more leftover Cold War caricatures in his rogue’s gallery than Captain America. This has the effect of making many of their appearances seem anachronistic at best and overtly prejudiced at worst.

The dead category is self-explanatory. I have a personal theory regarding the trail of dead Iron Man leaves behind him, but we’ll save that for the third part of this series.

Spymaster

Boy, I sure am tired of life. I think I’ll fight a human tank today.

Worthless: Relying primarily on small arms and spy…mastery, Spymaster would be a challenging antagonist for street-level heroes like Daredevil or Spider-man. He would fit in well thematically in comics following the exploits of Nick Fury or the Black Widow. So why he’s attached to a superhero that can break his spine over his knee in seconds is beyond me.

Dead: During Civil War, Spymaster got tackled off a high ledge by the extremely ordinary Happy Hogan, and is presumed dead until a bored writer reuses him.

Fing Fang Foom

On an unrelated note, you should be reading Nextwave.

Dead: FING FANG FOOM is fucking awesome! FING FANG FOOM is a loosely-explained space dragon! FING FANG FOOM has unfortunately died twice! FING FANG FOOM will be back for vengeance!

Ultimo

Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of an alcoholic billionaire.

Dead: An alien weapon dug up by the Mandarin, Ultimo spent several decades as the video game puzzle boss of Tony Stark's antagonists. Its core schick was being literally indestructible, so I raised a bit of an eyebrow when it was disassembled by SHIElD. It has since been used to create a virus that makes people shoot lasers from their eyes. Don't ask me to explain it.

Madame Masque

Worthless: This is a bit of a petty gripe, but her costume sucks like a prostitute holding a vacuum cleaner.

Offensive: I was going to give her a pass on this, but I've railed against Stephenie Meyer too many times to ignore the fact that Madame Masques origin essentially boils down to her being unable to live normally without Tony Stark's man-meat.

Obadiah Stane

Dead: Very, very dead. Shooting yourself in the head with a repulsor blast will do that to you.

The Crimson Dynamo

Player 1 may shoot the glowing star for extra damage.

Offensive: In a forced attempt to create a foil for Tony Stark, the Crimson Dynamo was conceived as a villain who was essentially Iron Man with the most half-assed imitation of a Russian accent possible. Naturally, he's considered a classic among fans.

Dead: Crimson Dynamo pilots just keep dropping like flies. I’m surprised anyone even takes on the appellation anymore.

Titanium Man

Look familiar?

The Titanium Man is a glorified recolor of the Crimson Dynamo. Thus, let’s save time and just extend his description here.

Whiplash

Really Marvel?

Worthless: Whiplash is terrible. If he wasn't burned into the public's mind by the second movie, I honestly wouldn't even have bothered mentioning him. The whip theme sounds dull on paper and looks ridiculously stupid in execution. And last, but far from least, his most memorable costume looks like a gimp suit.

Dead: Mark Scarlotti was killed by an rogue A.I. driven suit of Iron Man armor. That's correct folks: Tony Stark killed Whiplash with broken autopilot. Good riddance.

The Mandarin

Offensive: I love the Mandarin, but we have to face certain facts. The Mandarin was a Chinese man with robes and fu-Manchu facial hair. That they called the goddamn Mandarin without a hint of irony.

In the hands of poorer writers, the character had a bad tendency to represent every bit of xenophobia held toward the rising force of China. Luckily, things have improved. The Mandarin has received a fantastic reboot over the last three years that have stripped the character down to the badass core and thrown away the anachronistic chaff.

Fuck with this man and they will never find your corpse.

The real trouble begins in adaptations, which take everything questionable about the character and increase it by a factor of ten. For instance, let’s take a look at the old Saban cartoon:

How can you say no to that smile?

I can hear the chorus crying out now. “But Hyperion, that was a 1990’s cartoon that drew abdominal muscles on a metal suit of armor. Surely we’re more enlightened now!” Well, here’s the Mandarin’s appearance in 2007’s Invincible Iron Man.

Not pictured: his army of clay soldiers.

Or how about the Mandarin in this year’s Iron Man: Armored Adventures?

Cyber-shogun? Are they even using the right stereotypes anymore?

If the trend continues, expect a few protests around the release of Iron Man 3.

5/13/2010
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