Was Iron Man really a no name before the movie?

Was Iron Man really a no name before the movie?

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He was a important character in the comics and had his own cartoon back in the 90, so he wasn't a nobody. But it wasn't 1/100 of his post movie popularity

Id argue normies didn't really give a shit about Marvel in general if it wasn't Spider-Man or X-Men

No, he was always a big deal. The movie definitely made him much much more popular though.

Big in terms of comics, but unknown to the general public. The movies just made him a household name

In comics he was a big deal. Nobody else knew or cared

He was a big deal in comics, but comparatively obscure to the mainstream. There're plenty of people who'd tell you they know who Iron-Man is, but they wouldn't really be able to tell you much more beyond that.

They didn't use him for Civil War for no reason

Marvel's always been good about pushing their character line-up in general, so he's been out there in pop culture. Definitely one of Marvel's a-list characters,and very popular toywise. But yeah, not as much of a presence as after the movies.

Well to be fair, non comic readers are more interested in a heroe's villains than the hero himself half the time. And lets face it, Tony's rogues gallery fucking sucks

I still don't know if jack shit about his villains. The movies did a terrible job of it, and the only comics of read of him were avengers and events.

He was a b-lister with a fairly consistent ongoing. People, especially comics readers knew him but most didn't know him as much more than as a rich guy in power armor. Stark was always important to the Avengers but the Avengers weren't nearly as important to Marvel as it is now.

Let's see:

- Tony Stark is a interesting character.
- Founding Avenger.
- Decent secondary characters.
- Decent rogue gallery.
- Decent stories.
- Popular within the comic book community.
- Appearances in animated series and videogames.
- Relevance in the Marvel Universe.
- Ongoing series in every decade since he exist.

Of course the MCU made him popular all over the world and now he's maybe at Spider-Man level but Iron Man already had everything to be successful with or without movie... you can't make a characters popular if the character has nothing to offer, like Carol Danvers for example, not even the MCU will help her.

Hulk's always been popular, Blade had 3 big movies tough to say how many people knew he was from the comics, though

The only cool villains Tony has are The Mandarin and Crimson Dynamo, and they managed to fuck both of them up beyond recognition.

Yeah. I think the reason Stark's villains suck so much is because they are almost all either outdated cold war era creations or villains he fights while a part of the Avengers.

Ghost was cool in Armored Adventures.

Originally just evil industrialists and commie spies. Guys like the Unicorn, the Living Laser, Whiplash, the Melter. Crimson Dynamo and Titanium Man. Lot of B and C listers. Mandarin of course, for how little anyone cares about him. Then he had Jack Daniels. Stane was the first really big "Iron Man" villain who was all about Tony himself, stole his ex-girlfriend, ruined his company, tried to make him crawl back into the bottle. Then when he failed and his big dumb armor knock-off didn't work he killed himself.

Tony's most consistent, ever present villain has always been himself. First his own selfish war profiteering, then his heart, then his alcoholism, then his own fears, then his fucked up immune system, then Extremis coursing through his veins, then his retarded Futurist/Fascist phase. Now it's RJD and his own popularity. He always finds some way to bounce back.

I wonder, Has the MCU boosted the popularity of characters like Iron Man, Thor, Captain America in the same regard as the Trinity and Spiderman?

Oh wait I fucked up, completely forgot Justin Hammer. He was Stane before Stane, minus building the big dumb suit when he could just hire people to fight Iron Man for him.

How could you leave out Fin Fang Foom?

Stark did hate Commies
I forget, is Ghost technically an Iron Man villain? He, or rather she, is going to be in Ant Man 2 anyway.

he was a B lister. important enough to have his own book and had "Founding Avengers Member" cred but he was nowhere near A list like Spider-man. the 2008 movie pushed him into the next tier.

>no Madame Masque
MCU fucked her up too, though.
>inb4 not-canon fags

I don't quite think so. They've certainly caught up to Wolverine, Hulk and Wonder Woman. But Superman, Batman and Spider-Man have this insane international pull. People all around the globe, who may have never seen any media with those characters, can often tell you who they are.

If Marvel can keep those three in the public eye for a few more years then we can say yeah.

Ghostface Killah used to call himself Tony Stark, and released the classic Iron Man album in the 1990s.

That was my first time noticing him. The cartoon (terrible as it was) was my second taste.

Civil War made him an A lister in comics only but the movie made him a superstar on par with Spidey and Batman.

It's rare you see such a natural progression.

I think Cap's always been just barely under the big household names in terms of popularity. Even before the MCU most normies would know who Cap is, he just wasn't plastered on everything the way Superman and Batman are.

Remember watching a mega64 podcast from 2007, and they were all sure it would bomb, because Iron Man was a nobody,

Yeah, she would have been cool. But the Iron Man films have run their course at this point

He wasn't a no name, after all he did have a show and made it into the Marvel games.

But he wasn't a household name at all, he just was known by people already into capeshit.

He was a B-Level hero. Howard the Duck got a movie first. Well known, but if the movie sucked like 90% of comic book movies before that, no one would have cared.

I'd say this' a big issue for most Marvel characters. Marvel has a really weak rogues gallery in comparison to DC, and what genuinely good villains they do have are either wrapped up in film rights issues, like Dr. Doom or Magneto, or killed off after their first movie, like Red Skull. Spider-Man has a pretty solid villain roster, but most of them are pretty street-level, and thus not really suited for other characters.

Before the movie, Iron Man's popularity with the general public was overshadowed by the Black Sabbath song. 90's kids might remember the cartoon series from that era, and fighting game fans would remember him and War Machine as those characters nobody really used in Marvel vs Capcom 2. Comic readers would know more about him, but honestly if you weren't reading his comics or a lot of Marvel in general it was easy to forget him.

He was more than Captain America.

OP do you know how you can tell that Iron Man wasn't A list before the films? Its because they were able to make the film in the first place. The rights to all Marvel's then A Lister's were bought out years ago. Hulk was also bought and the movie a collaboration

Spider-man is going to be a real headache if Sony goes ahead with their universes

Spider and X still rule the Marvel U in comics sales.

I'm sad we never got a proper Armor Wars adaptation.

Iron Man 2 is the closest we will ever get.

Same for Demon in a Bottle.

Marvel comics dropped the ball hard not capitalising on the MCU

>Decent rogue gallery

Ehh.

I was an avid comics reader before the movie, and somehow I always assumed Iron Man was a robot and not a guy in a suit.

...

>but the movie made him a superstar on par with Spidey and Batman

Superman, Batman and Spider-Man have reached an almost unattainable pop culture status. People the world over know who they are without consuming any media directly related to them. Iron Man can never reach that.

I think what I most knew him for as a kid was "Iron Man, Iron Man, does whatever an Iron Can."

Iron like ironing your clothes.

Im from Brazil and knew Iron Man before

I mean he was more popular than the Inhumans and maybe as popular as Dr Strange. But he was below X-men, Spider-Man, Thor, Hulk, Fantastic Four, Deadpool. I guess he's still like the 3nd most popular Avenger but that's not saying much

I knew of Iron Man before the movie came out but couldn't really tell you much about him. Somehow missed his cartoon growing up and didn't start actually reading comic books seriously until 2011 or so. Prior to that all my cape knowledge came from various cartoons and a few games like Maximum Carnage and MvC.

Iron Man is now one of a few titles i've done a full continuity read on, minus the current Bendis run.
I want to see the Living Laser in a movie.

It's not necessary to have a great rogue gallery, but it does help. Look at Green Arrow, his rogue gallery is basically two characters (he just gets involved in random villains that allow him to have a political story) but he's a bigger character than Iron Man.

No. Only people who pretend to be comic nerds think that.

Wonder Woman is now more popular than ever, I'd argue Wonder Woman is more popular than Wolverine and Hulk right now. Same with Harley Quinn.
>tfw maybe Aquaman is next
Weird as fuck timeline if you ask me

I prefer the comic version - a murderous-filthy paranoiac with a heart of gold.

X-men, Spider-Man, Thor have great rogues gallery and can compare to any of DCs characters
Fantastic Four has probably an even better one than Batman.

The C-listers don't have great ones but their main titles have great stuff

>Wonder Woman is more popular than Wolverine
HAHAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAAHA

>X-Men
Tied up in film rights
>Spider-Man
Street-level. Suitable for Spider-Man, not really suitable for anything else.
>Thor
Disagree, but not being utilized that well regardless
>Fantastic Four
Tied up in film rights, and the idea that their Rogues Gallery is comparable to Batman's is dubious at best.

Not quite (he had his own cartoon series in the 90's and made a guest-appearance in various other Marvel shows, and was in the Capcom games), but he wasn't a big name either.

>I mean he was more popular than the Inhumans and maybe as popular as Dr Strange. But he was below X-men, Spider-Man, Thor, Hulk, Fantastic Four, Deadpool.

I wouldn't really rank Thor with the rest of the ones you listed. He was about even with Iron Man in terms of a character non-comic readers being aware of.

Deadpool was popular among comics readers in the 90's (but not huge in the way he is today; his comic came close to being considered for cancellation several times, but the fanbase was strong enough to keep it going) but only started really attracting other people outside of the established readership in maybe the 00's, definitely the 10's. I would've ranked him among Iron Man back in the 90's in terms of normie awareness. Now currently it's a different story.

sorry, I missed the part that you specifically were talking movies. I ment comics.

I agree that the Thor movies have used the rogues gallery badly, besides Loki of course. But the comic version is one of the best set of villains in comics and they are so varied. You have gods, cosmic entities, family members, aliens, and then silly humans that get magical wrecking tools. In Marvel I would say only the F4 have a cooler set of villains.

Iron Man has never had an acclaimed run like Simonson's Thor, and Kirby Thor was far better than the old Iron Man. It was only in the 90s that Thor lost some popularity, and that isn't the decade you should be using to say whether any character was popular

He might not be wrong.

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Pretty much. He doesn't even have "that one great story" like most other B-Listers get.

>movie box office
>popular
ok, mate

But that's just comics. Most people that don't read comics aren't aware of them.

Kirby's Thor and Simonson's Thor are vastly better than every Iron Man run, even Iron Man stuff I like like MIchelinie's or O'Neil's. But not many people outside comics are aware of those runs. So from there the only thing you can do is compare how well they're seen outside of comics. They both had those cheap cartoons in the 60's that were basically adaptions of the comics with limited animation (if you can even call it that) and they made guest-appearances on other shows. Thor only beats Iron Man to the live-action appearance first but it was in the Hulk TV film and most don't really remember that one.

I only compare Deadpool's comic with Iron Man because Deadpool barely had any non-comic presence in the 90's. They used his look in the cartoon but never actually had the character (it was usually like Morph turning into him or something).

Uh yeah, that is how you judge popularity. I think you may be confusing popularity with quality in your argument.

The thing is Thor has the benefit of being a real mythological character. It's not really fair to have your memorable status as being a rip off of a mythological god, especially one of Norse myth.

Speaking of which, when did this current fascination with Norse myth and Vikings in general start? It seems like everyone loves Vikings these days I must have been into it before the craze happened...right?

movie goers are not everyone you idiot

>Green arrow bigger than iron man
Hmmm...

There are probably more movie goers than comic book readers.

Wolverine has been fucking dead for like 3 years in comics, so WW is definitely destroying him there too.
5 years ago, you'd be right, but Marvel crashed the X-Franchise, and WW has soared in popularity.

People always say this,

but doesn't X-men have like three comics again?
Plus they have two TV shows, two of the most successful recent movies, and more on the horizon.

How does this equal 'crashing'?

They tried to mix things up. X-men fans get butthurt so easily.

He had a cartoon nobody watched and was important in the comics, but was a complete pop culture nonentity

>How does this equal 'crashing'?
There still aren't as many X books as there were back in the late 90s or so. The ones that are out now don't sell as well either.

yes, but take a character like Superman. You know him whether or not you watch movies or read comics.
So? Do you think that negatively effects his popularity? It pisses off some subset of comic fans but other than that does nothing to his popularity, his death may have increased his popularity

Yeah, and just like when Spider-man has 3 books, team up, and an arc book going at the same time, it is possible to have too many books focused on one camp.

>his death may have increased his popularity

I don't think anyone outside of comics is even aware he died.

>You know him whether or not you watch movies or read comics.

But that's because of the movies and TV shows and other pushes over the course of decades. These things didn't simply exist in a vacuum.

What? No, he was always a big deal. The difference is he was always perceived as a secondary character to Captain America, where the post movie dichotemy even had situations setting him up as a leader or equal partner to cap

Pre Movies, Captain America was unequivocally the headliner, Thor and Hulk and Ironmen were his support.

The sales are comparatively in the shitter to even 3 years ago. They used to be Marvel's best seller even over Spidey and the biggest Cape book. There was a joke that XFags were the most battered of housewives and would never give up the ghost on the title. Now they ride in the middle of the pack. Tossing Bendis off of the book gave it a bit of a bump but it still failed to outsell Justice League, Flash or Superman (and obviously Batman) outside of a #1.
Yes they are successful outside of comics, but Marvel has literally no control over that, in fact their crashing in comics is directly related to that fact.

>Plus they have two TV shows, two of the most successful recent movies, and more on the horizon

Because they have nothing to do with Marvel you cretin. Shit that is the exact reason why they tried to push Inhumans so hard

Oh is that the old 'Marvel is making the comics suck to try to hurt the movies' theory?

So basically popularity is an arbitrary metric only you are allowed to measure and sales in comics or movies have nothing to do with it? Got it. Fucking kill yourself faggot, if you didn't want to entertain any kind of argument you should have just jerked yourself off in front of a mirror rather than doing this retard dance.

eh, I have a "wolverine fan' co-worker who has never read a comic in his life and heard about it. He flipped out
maybe initially, but people now just hear about these superheroes from other people talking. You can never have watched a superman movie or read a comic and know all about him just from talking to people or reading something online
Hulk and Thor were always bigger than Captain America

>Was Iron Man really a no name before the movie?
No. The general public knew that Iron Man existed. And he was key throughout numerous big plots in the 80s and 90s. He just wasn't a cultural icon. Pretty much the definition of a B-lister, but within the confines of the comic world he was always borderline an A because he was involved in a ton of the important stuff and is such a crucial legacy character.

He kinda had the same level of spotlight that Macho Man Randy Savage had, when compared to Hulk Hogan in the heyday of 80s wrestling. If you showed someone a picture of Macho Man, or said the name "Macho Man," people would say they know him, but if you asked what matches they had seen him in you'd not get a lot of responses or they'd say non-wrestling shit like Slim Jim commercials.

If you deny the Inhumans push you're pretty goddamn retarded. It's over now but it was fucking undeniable when they went as far as saying "it's fine for the Inhumans to literally gas mutants out of existence :^)"
Though I just looked up last month's sales and I'll have to ammend a bit of the X Thing, Astonishing weirdly had a 5k bump from issue 2-3 which pushed it above Flash and JL again, X Fags must like that Bendis is gone. Gold and Blue are still selling below X Standard though.

We all knew about his infinite well before 2008.

Inhumans getting a push doesn't also mean X-men were being purposely ruined.

Inhumans needed a push because they were trying to use them as their 'mutants' for their cinematic universe stuff. That's obvious, and that makes sense. They just royally screwed it up. Maybe if they just did it how they did Ms. Marvel, instead of going full retard, it would have worked.

But anything beyond that is conspiracy theory.

At that point we could say Mutants were getting a push over Black Panther, after the Phoenix Five tried to drown Wakanda.

>Gold and Blue are still selling below X Standard though.
cause they suck. The only decent X-book is Astonishing.

I don't think they were getting purposely ruined but they were clearly sinking under Bendis and Marvel did nothing to stop it. They killed the two most popular then-living X Characters in Cyclops and Wolverine, that seems pretty tanky to me.
Also you're giving a complete false equivalence, X-Men are a company tentpole, BP is an on again off again ongoing. For fuck's sake you're even referencing an X Centric Event! A really shitty one that did some serious damage to the line.

My point is that X books used to top the charts regardless of quality, Marvel has destroyed that good will.

What does Marvel gain from putting one of their top guys like Bendis on a book to make it not sell as well?

That's a paycheck that could go somewhere else, and money that could be going into their pocket if it sold well. Even if they hated the X-men, wouldn't it be easier to print like one book and put someone cheap on it?

The theory just doesn't work. Marvel want X-men to do well, because when X-men is a top book, they make money. Like, that seems pretty direct.

RDJ was the perfect Iron Man. Marvel got really really lucky when they cast him for the part.

As I said, I don't know if it was intentional (I'm sorry I phrased it poorly in my original post, I guess I meant that some people believe it was intentional, I personally am in the middle I think Cyclops and Wolverine's deaths were fuck yous from Perlmutter, but Bendis' run and the comics surrounding it were just incompetence) but they made no attempt to save the line, very clearly.
Also you clearly don't know much about Marvel, Bendis has a fat exclusive contract that mandates he write a certain number of books a month and he clearly has control of what some of those books are.

>Decent rogue gallery

i dont know about that user

>maybe initially, but people now just hear about these superheroes from other people talking. You can never have watched a superman movie or read a comic and know all about him just from talking to people or reading something online

And that's all because of the stuff that came before. The kids who grew up in the 40's with Fleischer Superman and Kirk Alyn Superman serials and the kids who grew up in the 50's with George Reeves Superman TV show would've been adults in the 70's and taken their kids (who would've watched Super Friends cartoons) to go see the Christopher Reeve Superman films. And then their grandkids would've watched DCAU or Smallville or whatever. Superman and Batman also benefited from longevity and having a shitload of stuff that could be rerun on a regular basis, back when TV stations could rerun that stuff, back when there used to be Saturday Morning Cartoons.

Wonder Woman may have a fraction of the exposure that Superman and Batman have but she still has a lead over X-Men in terms of exposure because 1. She's a superheroine who's been around for decades long than the X-Men have been around, so that's added exposure, 2. She had her own TV show in the 70's that ran in syndication for a while after it got canceled, 3. Marvel's trying really hard not to give Fox's projects much exposure.

In the 90's I would've thought that X-Men and Wolverine would've overtaken Wonder Woman in public awareness but they lost momentum by the 00's.

Ah sorry I took your argument wrong then.

I also don't hate Bendis books automatically, like a lot of Sup Forums. He has written some good books, so I still give him a shot.

That said, I haven't read anything of his recently so maybe he is getting worse and worse.

>Spymaster
>Ghost
>Dynamo
>Madam Masque
>Not good
Fuck off mate. While not originally his enemies Dr. Doom and Norman Osborn have also become solid foils for Tony as well.

The Characters are decent and have potential, it’s just that nobody wants to do anything with them, and would rather do “Demon in a Bottle #4162” or “Stark fucks up #5775352827”.

His X-Men is really bad from concept to dialogue. It had some okay art though. I will give him some props for trying to do another space story with the X-Men since there hasn't been an attempt at a big one in a while but it sucked serious dick.
I actually only even read it because I was working as a Marvel intern at the time and needed to do recap pages for the books.

And the faggots clearly have never actually read DioB because Masque and Spymaster are huge players into why Tony was so fucked up at the time.

>Only read it out of employment obligation
Dang, that is a pretty strong review.

lol, no. Wonder Woman had a barely watched tv show, where as everyone watched an X-men cartoon growing up, if that is Evolution or 90s or now the movies, it depended on your generation. Linda Carter is looked back as a big deal cause she's the one feminists latch onto when they are tired of Buffy and Xena.