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There are some great, classic Iron Man runs—Armor Wars by David Micheline and Bob Layton immediately springs to mind, as well as Demon In A Bottle. After the Micheline/Layton team left Iron Man—the first time, around issue #150 or so—Denny O’Neil became the full time writer. O’Neil’s run lasted from Iron Man #160 to #208, 48 issues, and most of them pretty lame. I didn’t think that O’Neil was well suited to writing Iron Man. He was better at writing comics that were more based on character/mood (like Batman or the Question) rather than high tech adventure. The preceding creative team had developed an incredible amount of new armor and gadgets for ol’ Shellhead. There was no way that O’Neil could match them on that score, and he didn’t even try. The one thing he did know how to do was to expand on Stark’s alcoholism.
O’Neil had Stark hit the bottle again—this time harder than ever before. He lost his company to Obadiah Stane—a character that O’Neil created and is played in the Iron Man film by Jeff Bridges. Stark lost everything else as well—his homes, his cars, his money, and probably even his porn collection. He became homeless for a while, eventually hit rock bottom and joined AA. I have a feeling this was a personal story for O’Neil to tell, but he dragged it out way too long—it took up about 2 years of Iron Man to move this plot along. In the meantime, Jim Rhodes (Rhodey) got the keys to Stark’s private lab and took over as Iron Man. This allowed O’Neil to show a neophyte using the armor and learning the capabilites.
But there was a problem: somehow the classic Iron Man armor was designed only for Stark’s brain patterns. The longer Rhodey wore the armor, the more paranoid he became. When Stark rejoined Rhodey and his crew, he had no intention of becoming the Armored Avenger once again. He blamed his superhero alter ego for driving him to drink. Rhodey was convinced that Stark had come back to take everything away from him—leading to this classic bitch-slap moment. I wish the sound effect said “bitch!” instead of “blatch!”.
This forced Tony Stark to recreate his prototype I armor, the classic grey suit. When Rhodey started going really out of control, Stark overcame his fears and donned the armor to take down Rhodey. While this prototype lacked the bells and whistles of the red and gold suit, Stark used his knowledge of Rhodey’s armor to shut it down completely.
Now we get to my favorite scene of O’Neil’s entire run. Tony Stark has been forced to fight his friend, what does he do next? Does he pummel Rhodey senselessly? Does he try to imprison Rhodey in the Negative Zone? No, he simply talks and tries to understand the nature of the problem. And this was years ahead of Dr. Phil!
This is the greatest scene—I cry everytime I think about it. To prove his point, Stark removes his armor and restores Rhodey’s suit to full operational capacity. Then he stands back, utterly helpless and waits to see what Rhodey will do next. Fortunately, they shake hands and are friends once again. Stark improves Rhodey’s helmet so it doesn’t scramble his brain anymore. True to his word, Stark never uses Rhodey’s armor again—but it does not prevent him from developing a new/improved armor which he will use to whomp Obadiah Stane’s ass in issue 200.
Even though O’Neil’s run is often overlooked, he contributed some major elements to Iron Man. One, he developed the idea that there could be more than one Iron Man. Tony Stark and Rhodey fought side by side on many occasions after this story. Two, he created Obadiah Stane and Iron Monger—Stark’s corporate raider nemesis—something for which he will probably receive no compensation in terms of the movie. Three, by dragging out Stark’s alcoholism into a 2–3 year story arc, O’Neil insured that no future Iron Man writer would feel the need to revisit Stark’s drinking problem. Nuff said.
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