My Corner

ourladyoftheironmasque:

brevoortformspring:

For its first decade or so, IRON MAN was an overtly political strip, with many of its villains coming from an Iron Curtain/Cold War background. Those villains kind of lost their relevance after the fall of the Soviet Union, and while many of them have appeared since then, without the political aspect to their stories, they all just became guys in inferior armor or with one-trick weapons and not a whole lot more to them.

But this doesn’t explain why, in the 40 years since, there are have not been any iconic villains to emerge.  It’s one thing to say ‘here’s why the original villains are lackluster’ (totally valid reasoning), but how can it be that a comic that has run almost continuously for 50 years has failed to produce strong or interesting villains?

I maintain the reason is the villain in a Tony Stark story is Tony Stark.  Every good Iron Man story features the same central conflict: Tony vs. himself, and the super villains are just window dressing or metaphors for the actual, real conflict.

I think another thing is that creative teams haven’t ever really wanted to invest in his villains. There’s a reason there are four firebrands and around 12 Dynamos. This does help out the credence of a general theme of the lensman arms race in the Marvel Universe,since, it’s their powers that are important and not them but it also makes his rogues expendable.

It doesn’t help that the Mandarin has half of Tony’s villains powers on one hand either. Or that, threats like Justin Hammer or Obadiah Stane didn’t have the immunity as other comic baddies have.

Add to that, that not all comic heroes need “Iconic” villains either. As you said the good stories are Tony vs himself. Although, it’s not like having memorable villains has hurt guys like Green Lantern or Hulk any.