Fixing Iron Man

Well, Sup Forums, Bendis has left, and the book will be getting another writer in a few months, plus, Ree-Ree will probably go the way of Alpha. And with RDJ leaving the MCU, I think we'll probably get the actual character back in the comics, instead of a poor MCU-imitation. With all of that said, what do you think is needed to fix Iron Man?

>consistent characterization
Drop the quips and him acting like an immature manchild. Bring back his classic self,where he was a flirt with the ladies and a bit more lax with his close friends, but was generally a stoic.

>bring back the supporting cast
Rhodey & Happy are dead. Beth is forgotten. Ty is now a Spider-Man guy. All we have leftis the shittiest IM character (Pepper) and OCs. So, bring back Rhodey & ressurect Happy (Secret Wars!11). With Reed gone, his closest Super-Hero friend is Strange (him and Cap haven't really been on rather good terms since what, the Kree-Skrull war?). Bring that back as well. Him being Carol's Sponsor should also be a thing once more. Heck, even keep Doom as a quasi-ally/frenemy.

>revamp and utilize the villains
He's got tons of villains, and nobody does anything with them. Start small by putting together the D-Listers and creating a Rogues type of team (like in the 80s, with the Hammer-hired folks). Revamp the lesser ones like the Chessmen or those 3 Samurai. Turn Ultimo into a real Cosmic Horror threat. Bring back the old characterization of the Mandarin and have him be an actual threat again. Go all Lovecraft with Fin Fang Foom.

>romance
He's in desperate need of a proper love interest at this point. Rumiko is dead, Pepper was always shit, & Amara is fucking awful.

>progress the story
They've been pushing the Transhumanist angle for so long, but never did anything with it. So just go all in. Have him set up some colonies. Have him turn Stark Industries into an Intergalactic Company. Just... something. And don't shy away from shady angles. Stark was never a clean cut hero. He always had good intentions, but always had that darker side in him. Don't downplay that in order for him to be a guy with no clear convictions or motivations.

I think his fights need to be more creative then pew pew lasers, with a slim suit that occasionally also has some gimmick.

And branch out with Villians. Someone as creative and handy at wet work creations as Stark is at machinery. Biological weaponry on a mass scale.

More natural powers, that might be harnessed with tech.

Less Guys in suits. Writers gave a tendency to never have them make progress, so Tony eventually surpasses them, making them chumps.

Magic of course.

>I think his fights need to be more creative then pew pew lasers, with a slim suit that occasionally also has some gimmick.
Agreed.

>And branch out with Villians. Someone as creative and handy at wet work creations as Stark is at machinery. Biological weaponry on a mass scale.
That's what they were doing with Extremis & Zeke, but they've abandoned it.

>More natural powers, that might be harnessed with tech.
Examples?

>Less Guys in suits. Writers gave a tendency to never have them make progress, so Tony eventually surpasses them, making them chumps.
It's weird because Tony has non-suit villains, but they're rarely used.

>Magic of course.
Yeah, that should be a consistent thing. I don't really want him to go full-on Occult like in that What If and Bendis' weird OC-U, but he should be more like a "Tech Wizard". Kinda like the Jedi/Sith, who have some paranormal powers, but they're dumbed down and are different from the Star Wars Occult stuff. Him being afraid of magic is a nice running gag, but he should learn a thing or two at this point. I mean, Newton did... Now that I mentioned that, it'd be nice to see some ties with Hickman's Shield.

All we need is someone who's actually a fan of Iron Man and has read a lot of his comics and who doesn't think he needs "fixing".

Agreed, but he NEEDS "fixing" to become normal again. At the moment he utterly ruined.

>his parents aren't his parents
>his mom is ROCCCCCCCKKKKKK momma
>his """"legacy"""" is a stupid fuckup who YAS KWEEENED a country
>his best friend is dead
>his bodyguard is dead
>his villains haven't been used in half a decade
>he might be having a baby with an OC poo-in-the-Loo

Iron Man comics are literally in the fucking gutter. He absolutely needs fixing to get back to his classic self.

Page 10 Bump I guess.

>Turn Ultimo into a real Cosmic Horror threat
That worked pretty well in War Machine. Ever read Blindsight? That would be the basis of Ultimo.

>Intergalactic Company.
Is a bit too much, but him leading a Interplanetary Corporation would be fitting.

>That worked pretty well in War Machine. Ever read Blindsight? That would be the basis of Ultimo.
Was that the one where he got some Alien Armor? I faintly remember it.

>Is a bit too much, but him leading a Interplanetary Corporation would be fitting.
Eh, he was building a Dyson Sphere 2 days ago. Starting with an Interplanetary Corporation would be ideal, but it could turn into an Intergalactic one.

I could imagine Stark employing some magician for security but he wouldn't do it personally.
A female sorceress may a potential for romance.

>A female sorceress may a potential for romance.
>Marvel Witch Mercy
...Do it...

Not necessarily lovecraftarian but Fing fang Foom having more dragonesque appearence is great.

...

>Have him set up some colonies. Have him turn Stark Industries into an Intergalactic Company.
>Tony Stark on Mars
>Tony Stark mining the Galilean moons for water
>Tony Stark expanding the sphere of inhabitation of mankind and therefore saving the human species from all future single-planet threats

I want it so fucking much.

Marvel's Earth has all this ridiculous technology being bandied about by superheroes, it's time for one of those heroes to address the standing threat of humans being confined to one planet, and use that technology to make a real goddamn difference.

Lovecraftian might've been the wrong word. I was thinking more about "super ancient alien dragon with weird plots".

Shame they never finished that.

Iron Man has always been shit

The only exceptions are the two Michelinie/Layton runs and Extremis.

That's more or less what I was thinking about, but I think it'd make for a more interesting story if he went all Rapture/Columbia on it, at least in the beginning.

Daniel Knauf's run was good and Fraction and Aaron first 6 ssues were good as well.

Only if some other intergalactic company fights over Mars too and Tony loses.

I seriously don’t care which direction they take Tony as long as they kill off Riri. She is the worst thing in any MRvel book currently.

These are all great ideas. Only thing I'd add is to make it so that his villains are all people ALSO advancing their tech as well. Have Crimson Dynamo and The Living Laser and The Unicorn also be stark-level engineers who are stealing tech to improve their weapons.

they should reboot it as a robot who becomes sentient and start fabricating more bodies for its quest in aiding mankind, defeat bigots, and punch Nazis

Plus kill off Amara and drop the baby plot. plus retcon the adoption thing.

Yeah, that'd be nice as well. Hell, it's necessary at this point. And honestly, just bring back MODOK Superior and make him and AIM a legitimate threat. Instead of taking Tony to the edge with BE/Extremis and then downgrading him, just keep upping the ante.

Well that's... that's an awful idea. But have a (you) for your low quality b8.

Get rid of that adoption shit.
Bring back his villains.

Resurrect Rhodey (I'd personally have Rhodey brought back with machine parts like Robocop, Universal Soldier, Deathlok or Cyborg causing a rift between he and Tony.)

Cyborg Rhodey was always awesome.

Cyborg Rhodey was pretty awesome at the time, but it'd be a retread. Although this time,since he'd be brought back from the dead,you'd have to deal with the whole "am I clone or the original/what about souls" bit, which would be interesting.

Why would you want him to lose? No new stories would come outof that outcome.

And here we have Iron Man fighting the fearsome Red-Eyes Black Dragon

One villain that was always capable of keeping up with Stark was The Ghost. His powers of intangibility pose a threat no repulser blast can stop. Updating his other rogues would be easier than one think -
I would also like a story that would reintroduce The Ghost as a Iron Man villain. Ghost is hunting down supposed members of a global conspiracy. Problem is: Ghost has paranoid schizophrenia, in his mind he creates imaginative enemies.
So are group of buisnessmen ask Stark for assistance because he has the most experience dealing with Ghost.

Elsa Bloodstone appeared in that story. She may be a candidate. Both cold work pretty well.

Twas a great redesign, though.

That's actually pretty nice. The twist I'd have is that Tony would end up helping Ghost take down the evil businessmen, but his reasons for doing so would partially be to take out the competition and absorb their assets. A heroic deed, with a hint of self-serving greed.

Yeah, I remember that. She still had her blonde Lara Croft look. But as a girlfriend, dunno, I like the idea of a Mercy-like character from Overwatch. They'd go well together.

Wait what’s wrong with Comics Pepper?

Has Tony ever hit a creative roadblock before?

That might be an interesting concept. Especially if his villains start to catch up to him on a technological level.

She's an awful cunt that does nothing but lust after Tony for the entirety of the 60s while being rude to Happy, then turns to wallpaper, marries Happy, divorces him, acts like an entitled bitch, guilt-trips Tony into pulling the plug on Happy, and then acts like hot shit after Tony gave her one of his companies. She's literally a roastie that got lucky her boss is sentimental and threw her a bone. I fucking hate her.

Not really. He's always full of ideas. What he needs to do is actually act on them. But that'd also make a good story.

>Ree-Ree will probably go the way of Alpha

Make Riri into a villain

No, she should be forgotten.

>Zeke Stane x Ree-Ree as Marvel's Bonnie & Clyde
I like it.

On the other hand, this could lead to a redemption story, and I really hate her guts, so... Best to kill her off.

Tony has been replacing his organs and bones over the years as his age begins to catch up to him. Everything is fine until someone literally hacks into him and begins to control his actions and thoughts. Before he completely loses control he loads a back up of his brain waves from his twenties into a Ironman armor. Now the Ironman must save Tony from himself and the rest of the world.

Whitney is going to come crawling back and beg to be his secretary because she is a loser of a villain and doesn't have any important thematic relationship to Iron Man compared to enemy armored guys/ anti-capitalists/ rich guys.

So Teen Tony mixed with the Son of Yinsen story from the Knauf run?

I actually liked Bendis version of her meddling with demons. Imagine having a demon posessed crazy lady who wants to rape you, hunting you down.

has Tony ever fought a technopath or technomorph?

In Age of X the Jeffries brother kinda fucked him up

I remember him having carbon fiber suits to fight Magneto in AvX, that would save them from characters who can control metal

Controller could count, I guess. Or MODOK. Bendis created a purely Technopath villain, but did nothing with the character.

Kieron Gillan absolutely ruined the character's back story with that alien test tube shit, all that shit along with International Iron Man needs to be expunged.

bring him back as a ghost who can only interact with the material world by supernaturally possessing his armors.

But he wasn't the tube baby. It was a ruse trip.