Just something I started wondering after poster my Marvel super-team thread. In Marvel comics, how many women have worn Iron Man armor? I mean suits designed/built by Stark, or so closely derived from them that they could pass for it.
Alternate universes and “What ifs” count, for thoroughness.
So far, I’ve got…Pepper Potts (recent comics); Bethany Cabe (over the years, and in at least one AU); Shiva Josephs (same AU); and I think Mary-Jane and Aunt May actually have ended up borrowing old armor once or twice (!). Not to mention this.
So, who am I missing? There have to be at least a few.
WHAT IF #3: the Avengers split up following their first couple of adventures, prompting Iron Man to hit the workshop and design some giant-sized armor for Giant-Man plus wasp-sized armor for the Wasp in hopes of getting everyone to really pull together as teammates. (It works out a lot better for Hank and Jan than for Tony.)
BethanyCabe, Stark’s hot redheaded bodyguard/girlfriend from the 70s who dumped him because he was less dysfunctional than she liked (he was only an alcoholic, while her ex-husband was a heroin addict, and she needed to feel needed), wore the armor on at least one occasion. He’d prepared specific armors for the people he trusted most to use in an emergency; I think that may have also included Pepper Potts.
This is really stretching it, but there’s Iron Maiden from Earth X. She wore a sort of liquid metal vibranium armor (that she couldn’t take off, I think, but I haven’t read the story in years). Not Iron Man armor, but visually clearly inspired by Iron Man’s first suit.
You’ve got all the major named female ones already. (From the main MU anyway)
Might be stretching even further, but for a time the the guards at The Vault were wearing armour based on iron man tech and designed by Tony himself. Presumably some of those guards were women.
They were wearing Guardsmen armor, which was, if I recall, less designed by Stark than it including propietary elements of his tech. So he stormed the Vault, attacked the government workers, injured a good number even though they had no knowledge of what they had done “wrong,” cravenly assaulted an old friend who had turned his back on him so that he could save a man’s life, and caused a jailbreak of several dozen super-villains.
I mention this 20-year-old story just to remind people that Tony’s been an asshole a long time.
Admittedly this jailbreak gave Cap the excuse to beat the crap out of Mister Hyde, and he’d be looking for an excuse to do that for a long time.
There’s the Antonia Stark who married Captain America in one panel about a year ago. What If the Civil War was different, or something. Or maybe an FF where Reed was trying to see if he did wrong.
I should point out that Iron Maiden is just a kung fu person in a weird plate and chain outfit. But she is Marvel.
It occurs to me that there is no obvious reason why a woman’s Iron Man armor has too look any different than a man’s, and, in particular, no reason why it needs to have boobs.
But has any artist ever drawn an Iron Woman’s armor without them?
I don’t recall Bethany Cabe’s armor having boobs, though it’s been years and I can’t find a picture. But it wasn’t designed for her; rather, adapted for her.
Which always struck me as improbable. So did Jim Rhodes just putting the suit on. If anything in the world is going to be custom-made and unlikely to fit anyone but the intended wearer, it’s Stark’s powered armor. It’s not like he ever meant to outfit an army with the suits.
I can maybe buy that Rhody and Stark just happened to have very similar builds. But it’s pretty uncommon, to say the least, for any woman and any man to have builds similar enough.
Personally, if I were making a power armor suit for a woman, I’d leave enough room in the chestpiece for her breasts (which, if she’s a comic book character, are probably very large). The armor would almost certainly leave her as recognizably female as a result. But I certainly wouldn’t make it with two separate independent breasts: Even if there were some good reason to have the breasts contained in two separate cups inside (I honestly don’t know if this would be better or not), I’d take advantage of the space between them to fit in the power supply or some extra weaponry or something.
It does occur to me that Tony may have designed the armor to breathe a little – that is, he might have allowed for him gaining or losing weight from time to time.
I have a vague memory of Cap wearing the armor once, but I might be imagining it. And that I simply don’t believe, as Steve Rogers is a big dude and Tony is much closer to average.
Bethany’s pretty much a Bronze Age character, though, when comic books were drawn by people who’d actually dated in high school and Power Girl was an aberration, not the rule.
Remember when Raven, Donna Troy, & Starfire all had clearly different bust sizes, and only Kory was unusually large?
From the New Universe, there was Spitfire and the Troubleshooters, later renamed Codename: Spitfire. “Spitfire” was Jenny Swensen, who wore power armor. Later events in the evolving New Universe caused her to bond with her armor to some extent, changing her into “Chrome”, a woman with actual metal skin.
on edit, I see that you were asking specifically for characters that wore Stark armor. I’m leaving this here as an example of my retardery.
Judging from those pictures you linked, though, she’d still be considered somewhat above average in our world (like, C or D, though not HHH or whatever Power Girl is), and large enough that I’d expect her armor to need accommodation for that.
I must be retardy too, because I was going to bring her up as well.
Instead of armor, Spitfire’s suit was called either a MAX (Man Amplified eXperiment) or MACS (Man Amplified Construction Suit), I forget which. Solicitations called it one, the actual comics called it the other.
