Tag Archives: Iron Man

Mar 10 2013

Iron Man’s Best Armor

iron gallery

This month marks the 50th birthday of everyone’s favorite Armored Avenger, Iron Man. One thing that made Shellhead so unique among the superheroes is that until recent years he was one of the very few superheroes to sport a new look.

Often, the change in suits was necessary since Iron Man faced constantly changing threats and situations. This upgrading of his armor is one way to showcase how Iron Man keeps up with technology and the times. It is hard to imagine Iron Man being the popular hero that he is if he still wore that clunky Mark II armor seen in the early Avengers comic books.

There are many variations of his armor, while some were best left forgotten, others were very captivating and quite cool.

stealthStealth Armor Mark I (Iron Man # 152, Vol. 1)

One thing that stood out about this armor was its jet black color scheme, which lent itself to its stealth capabilities that made Iron Man electronically invisible.

Hydro Armor (Iron Man # 218, Vol. 1)

As its name suggests, this particular oversized armor was used for underwater missions, namely deep-sea salvages.

Hulkbuster Armor (Iron Man # 304, Vol. 4)Hulk buster

This large-framed armor boosted Iron Man’s strength to allow hand-to-hand fighting with the powerful Hulk. This concept led to other variants like the Asgardian Armor for fighting Thor and Spider-Man’s Iron Spider suit seen in the Civil War mini-series. The Hulkbuster armor apparently makes an appearance in the new Iron Man 3 movie as seen at the end of the latest trailer.

 

extemisExtremis Armor (Iron Man #5, Vol. 4) & Bleeding Edge Armor (Iron Man # 25, Vol. 5)

What made this armor so radically different was that it was actually part of its wearer Tony Stark. He was critically ill and injected himself with a techno organic virus, which bonded the suit to his body. Stark was able to store the armor in his bones and controlled it with his brain impulses. For all intents and purposes, this armor turned Stark into a cyborg, a true Iron Man. This wasn’t a state-of-the art armor, it was simply futuristic. The next stage of his armor was the so-called Bleeding Edge Armor. However, Stark had the armor surgically removed later on.  

Mark I (Tales Of Suspense # 39) tales of suspense

Sometimes retro is the way to go. Yes, its clunky and not aesthetically pleasing but it did a most important thing. It was the first armor to save Tony Stark’s life. Using raw materials and under life-or-death pressure, Stark demonstrated his genius with this creation. While funky in its inelegant, steampunk-like design, the armor would be replaced in the next issue of Tales Of Suspense by a more advanced golden armor. The basic grey look made a comeback of sorts in Iron Man # 191 (Vol. I) when Stark was forced to cobble together a makeshift suit when his regular armor wasn’t available to him.

classic armorMark III (Tales Of Suspense # 48)

The iconic, modern look of the red-and-gold armor was introduced in this issue and it set the design template for all future Iron Man armor. The Mark III differed from the first two designs in that it had a sleeker look and was more versatile. The design became a mainstay for Iron Man’s look (except for bulky alternates like the Hulkbuster or his Space Armor). The armor looked even sleeker and more formidable with the debut of the more modern Mark IV (Tales Of Suspense # 66) with the famous repulsor rays and the Mark V (Iron Man # 85, Vol. 1). This two-color, dynamic motif culminated, with his current Black and Gold Armor (Iron Man # 1, Vol. 5), which is made of a fluidic “smart metal”, mentally controlled by Stark and is a testbed for new tech.

black and gold

*Note: The above art was done by John Romita, Jr., Bob Layton, Kevin Hopgood, Adi Granov, Jack Kirby, Don Heck and Greg Land

Waldermann Rivera

Special thanks to GEO

Sep 18 2011

Thor Is Better Than Iron Man!

There’s the other blu-ray release this week, Marvel Studios’ Thor, which came off as a pleasant, unexpected surprise when released in theaters this past May. Why was it better than it seemed? Blame it on marketing, maybe (man did those awful heavy metal riffs at the end of the trailer nearly kept me away from the movie). But it looked very uninspiring in the trailers as some run-of-the-mill fantasy romp. Instead the film was a clever re-imagining of the Marvel character while celebrating its larger-than-life Kirbyesque landscape.

In the comic books, Thor is the God of Thunder from Norse myth. While the comics also state that he and his fellow Asgardians are more or less extra-terrestrials, this film full on states this as fact. The result is one of the more imaginative alien cultures shown on film. Basically, their technology is so advanced that it seems almost like magic to us. For example the famed Rainbow Bridge which leads to other realms is for all intents and purposes a sort of wormhole machine and it looked spectacular on the big screen.

More importantly, director Kenneth Brannaugh’s science-based vision of the Asgardian world is so rich that it fires any viewer’s imagination. Right away, I was able to conceptualize how Thor is probably genetically attuned to his hammer that is itself a probable lightning rod. Despite some misgivings from some about the Earth based scenes, which inject much needed humor, the entire effort pays off and enriches the burgeoning Marvel movie universe.

Why is it better than Iron Man? I could go on forever but I’ll just go over a few points. For starters, the villain Loki is so much better than Iron Man’s Obadiah Stane. Loki could’ve been a Joker rip off but in this film, he’s so calculating and subtle that you can’t help see his side that Thor isn’t entitled to rule Asgard. Stane on the other hand, is your average evil capitalist. Too many Marvel films have them. Another point is that with Iron Man, it takes forever for Tony Stark to actually become don his regular Iron Man armor. In fact, I believe there are only three scenes where he’s in the red-and-gold outfit and this happens after more than hour into the film! With Thor right away you see him using his powers (which is one of the main reasons he gets exiled to Earth) and actually Thor doesn’t bother with a standard origin storyline and that’s a relief. Instead the transformation into a hero has to do with Thor transforming his soul. And one last point is that Iron Man after a fantastic first hour starts to drag once Stark escapes his captors, then it’s waiting until he fights Stane. And that came off as a quickly done robotic fight straight out of a Transformers film. Not with Thor, I know some people complained about his scenes on Earth but to me it added more to his story and only made me wish they spent more time with the fish-out-of water aspect to it.

The film was a big hit and a sequel’s in the works. However, it did seem to get lost in the buzz but that’s because the market is saturated with superhero films. Add to that the crappy 3D conversion that everyone complains about (when will studios realize that cheaply done 3D results in hard-to-see film that will turn off audiences from shelling out moolah for any future films?) and that’s why it wasn’t as big as hit as Iron Man. That’s too bad, but now that it’s on DVD it’s worth a look.

Lewis T. Grove