I have a few questions about the Iron Man comic book canon, mostly brought about by things I’ve seen in the movies. So, I’m asking this separately from the Iron Man 3 thread, particularly since it involves all three movies and the comic books. So, spoilers for some things (either the movies or the comics) will likely abound.
I stopped reading comics a while back and I realize there’s been a few decades of development & rebooting, but the movies seem to have introduced a few things, most likely in the interest of story-telling, time, and visual effects, that seem out of place to me, and I’m wondering if I’m just mis-remembering things, or has the Iron Man canon changed since I stopped reading (back in the 80’s).
Is the Iron Man suit in the comic books this ablative these days? I remember the suit being pretty freakin’ invulnerable to pretty much anything, and now, it seems like if somebody sneezes especially hard, they start to fly apart.
I don’t remember the thing in his chest being a super-duper-powerful point source reactor–just a big battery to power the electromagnet to keep the shrapnel out of his chest. Am I misremembering that?
That said, the suits he wore in the comics had these big, disk-shaped emergency battery packs on the hips, in case his “main power supply” ran out of juice., that he could chuck at people and detonate, or leave behind as mines. Does the suit still have that? There had to be something powering the suits at the end of IM3, so I figured they all had their own arc reactor.
I haven’t read the comics in a long time but AFAIK, the comic book iron man never had a “thing” implanted in his chest. He had a chest plate that he needed to keep his heart working, then he went to an artificial heart and I think he went back and forth and then had a heart transplant and shit, who can keep up with comic book continuity?
IIRC his armor was never powered by anything in his body.
The comic armor tends to stand up to punishment better than those in the movies. That said, it wasn’t unheard of for the armor to get busted up. Here’s an issue from the 70’s that shows the Iron Man armor getting busted up by a similarly armored foe.
It’s been there for a while, though infrequently used. It’s called a Uni-Beam. I found an instance of its use as early as #183, but I think it could have been around for even longer.
His current armor (a custom-number for his current adventures IN SPAAAACE!) don’t have that form factor per se, but I’d be surprised if he doesn’t have equal or better power stores and some manner of explosive armaments. The comics have gone through many many iterations of armor. Some armors have had similar hip-mounted power pods and others haven’t. In general, the capabilities of the armors tend to be a bit vague, allowing artists and writers to whip out whatever dues ex machina they need to move the story forward.
On my first several viewings of the movies, I thought the mini arc reactor visible on the chest of the suit was the same arc reactor in his actual chest (the suit having an opening around his chest arc reactor). And I thought that the suit was set up to “plug in” to his chest arc reactor when he put the suit on.
I still think this is the case for the first movie (the troubles in his battle with Obadiah are due to powering the suit using the original arc reactor- which is clearly in his chest since it replaces the improved version Obadiah took out of his chest).
Starting with the second movie, however, I’m pretty sure his chest arc reator is solely on heart duty. The suits each have their own arc reactor.
I dunno… In the second movie, when he upgrades his chestpiece to use the triangular bit of magic metal, suddenly the glowy bit on the front of his suit is triangular, too.
Then again, the second movie also has Rhody “stealing” the Mk. 2 (which did use the implanted reactor in the first movie) and it working for him, even though Rhody doesn’t have an arc reactor implanted in his chest.
He’s had a few suits along the way. The basic redesign following the original iron suit stayed as a template for the different artists along the way. The disk things varied in function at times, but we were supposed to assume Tony was always fiddling with the suit. One version had large rocket boots that could put him in space. I can’t remember all the little changes that he implemented or just seemed to appear with changing artists though. But there was no chest plate thing or connection to his artificial heart when he had one. And Rhody could use all the suits also, sometimes doing so to prove Tony Stark wasn’t Ironman, a concept they gave up on eventually. I’d stopped following Marvel comics by the 90s so I have no idea what’s happened in the mean time.
ETA: And the movies are just movies. They have actors portraying the super heros, not like the comics which are about the real guys.
