This article appears in the Avengers Forever site :
http://www.avengersforever.org/articles/default.asp
This is my attempt to explore the character of Tony Stark.
Okay, maybe it will be difficult to find any regular Marvel comic reader who does not recognize the name ‘Tony Stark’ – but that would normally be because of his association with his more famous counterpart: Iron Man – also known as the Golden Avenger, who happened to be a founder and mainstay of the Avengers then, and remains to be a founder and mainstay of the New Avengers now. Some may even know of his history / origin – how he, while on a trip to Vietnam; so far, not retroactively connected (a.k.a. ‘retconed’) yet) and fell victim to an explosive which lodged a shrapnel to Tony’s heart, forcing him to don a specially-made chest-plate which became the centerpiece of his exoskeleton / suit of armor.
But specially conceived chest-plate aside, anyone can be Iron Man, right?. All it takes is to don the armor, get to know how the controls work and presto – instant Iron Man. James Rhodes proved this (and so did a few others), when Tony asked him to handle the mantle of Iron Man, this while he – Tony, that is, was not exactly thinking straight, thanks, in no small part to his condition then as an alcoholic.
And yet… can we really say that James Rhodes, or Rhodey as he was fondly called by his friends, was able to become Iron-man? For that matter, can anyone just be Iron Man? Can you or I just don the armor and, presto… instant Avenger? Well, the answer to Rhodes ably being Iron Man has to be yes… and no. As for us, I guess it’s ‘we’ll never know’. But back to the ‘yes and no’ thing.
Yes, because he did wear the armor – convincingly enough that when Clint Barton / Hawkeye approached him with an offer to be part of the newly formed West Coast Avengers, Rhodes was actually able to make Clint and the others think that they had the same Iron Man who’d been part of the Avengers for a long time – at least, until he revealed to everyone his identity, and told them that he was not the same veteran Iron Man the Avengers always had. And yes, because he did prove that he could handle the armor quite well – and to this date, Rhodes has a similarly designed ‘War Machine’ armor in his possession.
And No… because, being Iron Man was not just using and maintaining the armor – of which Rhodey, hands down, did really great. I’m sure his background at being both pilot and mechanic helped him out in the transition from pilot mechanic to flying armored hero. But long time readers knew that Iron Man was supposed to be the gestalt between high-tech gadgets and heroics, the ideal union between man and machine. Though Rhodes got the heroics down pat, he certainly had limitations with the high-tech bit.
But is that the only difference? Had we placed, say, Scott Lang in the armor – definitely someone supposedly with more brains than Rhodes, one who would arguably been able to put the armor’s technology to good use, would he have made a better replacement for Iron Man?
Maybe - then again, maybe not.
Maybe its time to revisit what makes Tony Stark unique, and to do that, we’ll have to look at Tony the man and his early years. Unfortunately, not much is mentioned about Tony’s formative days – we can only assume that it was, for all intents and purposes, one very ordinary life (or as ordinary as can be when you happen to be born amongst the elite).
Young Anthony Stark was gifted with intellect far above average, and though it may not reach Reed Richards-level genius, it was certainly enough to allow him to enter MIT when he was just fifteen – so you can imagine how many times he may have been accelerated in school.
This is the fist important aspect of Tony, he was a genius, even at the start – call it the Stark formative formula, but young Tony did not just come in as an undergraduate of MIT at a very young age – he topped his class, and we can only wonder how his family brought him up.
Granted that Howard and Maria Stark could afford to send him to the best schools that money can buy – it needed something else… a character trait, most likely discipline, to keep him on the learning and less on the partying path that many of today’s spoiled rich crowd seem to exemplify. It might likewise have been a passion to compete – to win in what he was doing, thus having to excel in his academics… a possible challenge in itself.
Or… it might likewise be a passion for learning technology and engineering. Tony may have been a tinkerer by nature, maybe as a kid, he reveled in getting remote controlled gifts, so he could pull them apart and try to put them back together – seeing what makes them work. Maybe he’d fail the marshmallow (EQ) test as a real toddler because his curiosity would be too much to contain – and he’d rather be on the move, learning by doing as a kinesthetic kind of guy – definitely preferring action to waiting.
But another – I suspect, reason he wanted to know these, was his accepting them as tangible, physical and therefore understandable things. Sure, these are relatively complex words for a kid, but anything he could see and experiment with, anything that had rules or concepts that held on to consistency, thus adaptability and later, mastery – Tony would like and accept. This is also why he liked games / sports that he got exposed to in school. It would also give him a way to measure himself to either others and/or his previous accomplishments.
See – these things he could understand, these ‘rules of the game’ made sense to him, as – possibly, opposed to family matters. As a young boy, Tony was sent to boarding school where he did get the best education that would mold m=him into a proper, well bred gentleman befitting his family’s stature. This meant that he could focus on studies, but it also meant he saw less of his parents. It may even be rumored that this arrangement protected him from a sometimes harsh father who also had the tendency to imbibe a lot of alcohol.
Like most children, Tony wanted to please his parents – his mother, doted on him, so it was easy to see her pleased with him. His father, on the other hand, may have been something entirely different. In one instance, Tony came across Howard Stark in one of his drinking sessions, and the father gave the young boy a glass with Bourbon, instructing Tony to drink it. As Tony would recount this incident, he would state that Howard possibly felt that Tony’s ably drinking and finishing the glass would prove he was turning into a man – and Tony complied, hoping this would make his father proud of him.
Howard also had a memorable role in one more early life experience of Tony – this involving young love. At seventeen, Tony was going steady with Meredith Mc Call. Unfortunately, the Mc Calls were industrial competitors with the Starks, and the only thing that Howard and Meredith’s father ever saw eye to eye with, was when they both disapproved of the romance between Tony and Meredith, who was then sent to another country, never to see Tony again.
This may have profoundly affected Tony in two things – 1) his relationship with women, having been hurt, he would shield himself from said pain, and in the process – just play the field to avoid the same hurt; though we know this not to be true as his life will be filled with more hurt in the future – but this may have led to his playboy image; and 2) up to this point, Tony may have had an idyllic lifestyle, but this would give him a harsh reality check. This may have also started Tony on the path to seeing his father in a less loving manner and imbued in him a more competitive manner when dealing with his dad.
Tony took up engineering and electronics, and I suspect, because it offered him the chance to use both his hands and his mind. Needless to say, he excelled in these. Perhaps another trait would be his seeing things as a challenge or a mystery and wanting to solve them. He also loved to live and move fast – as his choice of cars would suggest.
Now, we come to the part where we consider the personality type Tony Stark. The man seemed responsible enough not to sow wild oats – possibly because he did not want getting tied down with love (once burned, twice shy syndrome?), and despite his playboy image (he did get to date real head-turners), he may have been responsible enough to know how far he could go, without further incurring the ire of his dad (which he may not have cared for), or more to the point, suffer his actions disappointing his mother (which he did not want to do). Tony’s successes in school proved he was a real genius graduating as the class valedictorian, and he then went on to college where he found MIT ‘rather light’.
Tony may have been in trend-setter magazine radars, not just for his looks, but for his style and impeccable taste in both engineering (cars) and natural (ladies) wonders – he may have been voted as one of the most eligible bachelors in town, and he may have been pleased with the attention. Tony could have easily been the fashion icon, if he wanted to and for a time, he was… still it seemed like he chose to work hard as well as on occasion, play hard.
Earlier I implied that his being a genius was a self-imposed challenge – part of a need to compete. He was definitely proving something. Who was he competing with? Was he still seeking approval back then? What drove him? Some psychologists might drum up a possible reason or two, but I don’t have one on retainer right now. A safe guess from me would be his passion to beat the accomplishments of his father.
We’ve the House of M stories with him and his father, to just consider the possibility, and the seeming frustration – remember, in House of M, you got what you wished for, and apparently one of Tony’s wish was to have his father still around, maybe because of some unresolved issues he had to deal with.
Assuming, on the other hand, that he was not seeking approval of any type, we can then surmise that Tony simply liked – and lived for the challenge – any challenge, whether it was science or sports related. He did not mind the risk, and he definitely liked the exhilaration he got from such extreme sports (as it was considered back then) as hang gliding, racing, skiing. This definitely imbued him with a competitive attitude. An attitude, I might add that may have even gotten him into trouble with peers – a possible reason why we hardly see any long standing friend of Tony, as some of us normally have.
Maybe his relationship with his father would have eventually been an open competition, had the more senior Howard Stark not been killed when Tony was still rather young. It could also have been possible that Tony was diligently being groomed coached and prepared by his father or his father’s people to handle S.I later - which could explain the reason why right after his parent’s death, Tony was able to steer Stark Industries through the loss of its majority stock-holder (Howard) and visionary leader.
Another possible clue for this hypothesis is the fact that had Tony indeed entered college at 15, then he’d have graduated by 19, (maybe 20 for a double degree) and this is if he followed a less accelerated pace. All this conjecture tells us that prior to his parent’s accident, Tony was possibly working with Stark Industries (S.I.) for at least a year, maybe two… either that or he’d be too busy on the society page news – dating the flavor of the month here, and partying there. Maybe he did – he sure could if he wanted to.
To say that Tony was definitely privileged, is stating the obvious. He was an only child from a very rich family, hence his needs were well cared for by his parents, and in case they were too busy with either work or the social circles, he could always depend on Jarvis – the family’s butler or other house help to get him through some situations.
This type of lifestyle, may have imbibed in Tony the thought of if he wanted something, he could get it by either buying it or – barring that possibility, just build a better version. On people, he would hire them, buy them off or befriend them. Doing most of the first part and guardedly doing the second. Tony was usually not one to wait up on others, while others would naturally wait up for him as their boss.
If he had friends, those who could match his family’s wealth and lifestyle, they were seemingly few and far between, thus furthering the theory of a cloistered life – or supporting another possible theory that young Tony had little friends because his personality and position intimidated others, or his personality did not lend itself to having too many friends… and why not, maybe he deemed friends as being a distraction to his other passions. Maybe to be his friend, you had to be worthy in his eyes. So what made one worthy?
At this young age – fresh out of college, Tony was still playing the field, so gentlemen may have been rivals to other women’s attention - and one of the ladies he found attentive happened to be Sunset Bain. Five years his senior, Tony probably marveled at what an older woman could teach him as they dated and hung out in several places, including the marina – unfortunately for Tony, Sunset was playing him; masterfully, using her feminine ways to get his affection.
When she deemed her influence on him significant enough, she asked him to show her what he knew about his father’s company – and Tony, still innocent to manipulations and corporate espionage, showed Sunset what he was capable of, by way of bragging to her what he could access in the company’s files, designs and plans.
It would be decades later before Tony would realize that Sunset indeed set him up, and through his actions, was able to get classified Stark technology designs, and shortly after his showing her these things, she would break up with him. It would also be coincidental that Stark Industries would experience a break-in and have many of their blueprints stolen – as if by an inside job.
Later still, Bain’s family business would somehow have designs similar to that of the Starks. Despite this, there would be no manner of proving that Bain had anything to do with the Stark attack – or maybe, and this is theory on my part, nothing Howard Stark could do without likewise involving Tony, as I’m sure there would have been more than enough eye-witnesses to say that Tony and Sunset were more than just dating.
To argue that life would have taken a different path, had his parents not died, would be on the realms of ‘What-ifs’, so we won’t go there. Instead, let’s look at what did happen. Tony lost them when he was 21, and in the ensuing legal arrangements, Stark Industries became his. Having been bequeathed his father’s company, he could have sold it and just said, “what the hey… life’s too short to not party”, or he could have taken the role with a serious demeanor – silently vowing to make the company grow even more to honor the name of his father – or, as I said earlier, to prove he was better.
This was not to say that Tony would become an overbearing and overly demanding boss – okay, at least, not impossibly demanding. If anything else, those employed by the Starks, showed great loyalty to them; which indicates that they were highly satisfied with how they were treated to warrant such loyalty. This is another trait that Tony may have learned – how to better treat and care for people who work for you, so that they will reciprocate with both respect and loyalty. A trait he probably learned from his mother, Maria – and a relationship he obviously nurtured with Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts and later, to a less tenured extent, James Rhodes and Mrs. Arbogast.
When Tony gained control of Stark Industries, the company was doing very well, having negotiated juicy government contracts geared towards weapons-development. We could postulate that he inherited these contracts, thus did not have to work for it – but then, if this were strictly the case, Stark Industries would have long been taken over by raiders like Justin Hammer looking for a company with a lame duck for its Chief Executive Officer.
Tony also had a vision – he wanted to make things better for his country and for society, so he probably found social events more a waste of time in a ‘been there, done that’ manner. Here was a patriot – but more importantly, a man that cared. Consider this - his first action upon hearing how his parents died was to buy the car manufacturer’s business and make repairs on its faulty brakes design, so others need not share such fate.
He wanted to succeed and become as good – if not surpass his father’s achievements, and the venue for doing this would be how well he could steer Stark Industries under his capable hands. His life, one could say, was even getting better and was geared towards that path. Just prior to his Vietnam trip, he had seemingly been seriously going steady with a lady named Joanna Nivena, and the two were engaged to be married. He had the business, and he was now thinking of family.
Tony, the young idealist, was willing to make sure his inventions helped win the war. But one could say that this was a rather limited viewpoint, as Tony was oblivious to the repercussions his inventions were doing to other people’s lives. He even decided to do some site inspections to see how he could further his designs optimization.
His trip to Vietnam would change that.
Next: Iron Man is born . . .
http://www.avengersforever.org/articles/default.asp
This is my attempt to explore the character of Tony Stark.
Okay, maybe it will be difficult to find any regular Marvel comic reader who does not recognize the name ‘Tony Stark’ – but that would normally be because of his association with his more famous counterpart: Iron Man – also known as the Golden Avenger, who happened to be a founder and mainstay of the Avengers then, and remains to be a founder and mainstay of the New Avengers now. Some may even know of his history / origin – how he, while on a trip to Vietnam; so far, not retroactively connected (a.k.a. ‘retconed’) yet) and fell victim to an explosive which lodged a shrapnel to Tony’s heart, forcing him to don a specially-made chest-plate which became the centerpiece of his exoskeleton / suit of armor.
But specially conceived chest-plate aside, anyone can be Iron Man, right?. All it takes is to don the armor, get to know how the controls work and presto – instant Iron Man. James Rhodes proved this (and so did a few others), when Tony asked him to handle the mantle of Iron Man, this while he – Tony, that is, was not exactly thinking straight, thanks, in no small part to his condition then as an alcoholic.
And yet… can we really say that James Rhodes, or Rhodey as he was fondly called by his friends, was able to become Iron-man? For that matter, can anyone just be Iron Man? Can you or I just don the armor and, presto… instant Avenger? Well, the answer to Rhodes ably being Iron Man has to be yes… and no. As for us, I guess it’s ‘we’ll never know’. But back to the ‘yes and no’ thing.
Yes, because he did wear the armor – convincingly enough that when Clint Barton / Hawkeye approached him with an offer to be part of the newly formed West Coast Avengers, Rhodes was actually able to make Clint and the others think that they had the same Iron Man who’d been part of the Avengers for a long time – at least, until he revealed to everyone his identity, and told them that he was not the same veteran Iron Man the Avengers always had. And yes, because he did prove that he could handle the armor quite well – and to this date, Rhodes has a similarly designed ‘War Machine’ armor in his possession.
And No… because, being Iron Man was not just using and maintaining the armor – of which Rhodey, hands down, did really great. I’m sure his background at being both pilot and mechanic helped him out in the transition from pilot mechanic to flying armored hero. But long time readers knew that Iron Man was supposed to be the gestalt between high-tech gadgets and heroics, the ideal union between man and machine. Though Rhodes got the heroics down pat, he certainly had limitations with the high-tech bit.
But is that the only difference? Had we placed, say, Scott Lang in the armor – definitely someone supposedly with more brains than Rhodes, one who would arguably been able to put the armor’s technology to good use, would he have made a better replacement for Iron Man?
Maybe - then again, maybe not.
Maybe its time to revisit what makes Tony Stark unique, and to do that, we’ll have to look at Tony the man and his early years. Unfortunately, not much is mentioned about Tony’s formative days – we can only assume that it was, for all intents and purposes, one very ordinary life (or as ordinary as can be when you happen to be born amongst the elite).
Young Anthony Stark was gifted with intellect far above average, and though it may not reach Reed Richards-level genius, it was certainly enough to allow him to enter MIT when he was just fifteen – so you can imagine how many times he may have been accelerated in school.
This is the fist important aspect of Tony, he was a genius, even at the start – call it the Stark formative formula, but young Tony did not just come in as an undergraduate of MIT at a very young age – he topped his class, and we can only wonder how his family brought him up.
Granted that Howard and Maria Stark could afford to send him to the best schools that money can buy – it needed something else… a character trait, most likely discipline, to keep him on the learning and less on the partying path that many of today’s spoiled rich crowd seem to exemplify. It might likewise have been a passion to compete – to win in what he was doing, thus having to excel in his academics… a possible challenge in itself.
Or… it might likewise be a passion for learning technology and engineering. Tony may have been a tinkerer by nature, maybe as a kid, he reveled in getting remote controlled gifts, so he could pull them apart and try to put them back together – seeing what makes them work. Maybe he’d fail the marshmallow (EQ) test as a real toddler because his curiosity would be too much to contain – and he’d rather be on the move, learning by doing as a kinesthetic kind of guy – definitely preferring action to waiting.
But another – I suspect, reason he wanted to know these, was his accepting them as tangible, physical and therefore understandable things. Sure, these are relatively complex words for a kid, but anything he could see and experiment with, anything that had rules or concepts that held on to consistency, thus adaptability and later, mastery – Tony would like and accept. This is also why he liked games / sports that he got exposed to in school. It would also give him a way to measure himself to either others and/or his previous accomplishments.
See – these things he could understand, these ‘rules of the game’ made sense to him, as – possibly, opposed to family matters. As a young boy, Tony was sent to boarding school where he did get the best education that would mold m=him into a proper, well bred gentleman befitting his family’s stature. This meant that he could focus on studies, but it also meant he saw less of his parents. It may even be rumored that this arrangement protected him from a sometimes harsh father who also had the tendency to imbibe a lot of alcohol.
Like most children, Tony wanted to please his parents – his mother, doted on him, so it was easy to see her pleased with him. His father, on the other hand, may have been something entirely different. In one instance, Tony came across Howard Stark in one of his drinking sessions, and the father gave the young boy a glass with Bourbon, instructing Tony to drink it. As Tony would recount this incident, he would state that Howard possibly felt that Tony’s ably drinking and finishing the glass would prove he was turning into a man – and Tony complied, hoping this would make his father proud of him.
Howard also had a memorable role in one more early life experience of Tony – this involving young love. At seventeen, Tony was going steady with Meredith Mc Call. Unfortunately, the Mc Calls were industrial competitors with the Starks, and the only thing that Howard and Meredith’s father ever saw eye to eye with, was when they both disapproved of the romance between Tony and Meredith, who was then sent to another country, never to see Tony again.
This may have profoundly affected Tony in two things – 1) his relationship with women, having been hurt, he would shield himself from said pain, and in the process – just play the field to avoid the same hurt; though we know this not to be true as his life will be filled with more hurt in the future – but this may have led to his playboy image; and 2) up to this point, Tony may have had an idyllic lifestyle, but this would give him a harsh reality check. This may have also started Tony on the path to seeing his father in a less loving manner and imbued in him a more competitive manner when dealing with his dad.
Tony took up engineering and electronics, and I suspect, because it offered him the chance to use both his hands and his mind. Needless to say, he excelled in these. Perhaps another trait would be his seeing things as a challenge or a mystery and wanting to solve them. He also loved to live and move fast – as his choice of cars would suggest.
Now, we come to the part where we consider the personality type Tony Stark. The man seemed responsible enough not to sow wild oats – possibly because he did not want getting tied down with love (once burned, twice shy syndrome?), and despite his playboy image (he did get to date real head-turners), he may have been responsible enough to know how far he could go, without further incurring the ire of his dad (which he may not have cared for), or more to the point, suffer his actions disappointing his mother (which he did not want to do). Tony’s successes in school proved he was a real genius graduating as the class valedictorian, and he then went on to college where he found MIT ‘rather light’.
Tony may have been in trend-setter magazine radars, not just for his looks, but for his style and impeccable taste in both engineering (cars) and natural (ladies) wonders – he may have been voted as one of the most eligible bachelors in town, and he may have been pleased with the attention. Tony could have easily been the fashion icon, if he wanted to and for a time, he was… still it seemed like he chose to work hard as well as on occasion, play hard.
Earlier I implied that his being a genius was a self-imposed challenge – part of a need to compete. He was definitely proving something. Who was he competing with? Was he still seeking approval back then? What drove him? Some psychologists might drum up a possible reason or two, but I don’t have one on retainer right now. A safe guess from me would be his passion to beat the accomplishments of his father.
We’ve the House of M stories with him and his father, to just consider the possibility, and the seeming frustration – remember, in House of M, you got what you wished for, and apparently one of Tony’s wish was to have his father still around, maybe because of some unresolved issues he had to deal with.
Assuming, on the other hand, that he was not seeking approval of any type, we can then surmise that Tony simply liked – and lived for the challenge – any challenge, whether it was science or sports related. He did not mind the risk, and he definitely liked the exhilaration he got from such extreme sports (as it was considered back then) as hang gliding, racing, skiing. This definitely imbued him with a competitive attitude. An attitude, I might add that may have even gotten him into trouble with peers – a possible reason why we hardly see any long standing friend of Tony, as some of us normally have.
Maybe his relationship with his father would have eventually been an open competition, had the more senior Howard Stark not been killed when Tony was still rather young. It could also have been possible that Tony was diligently being groomed coached and prepared by his father or his father’s people to handle S.I later - which could explain the reason why right after his parent’s death, Tony was able to steer Stark Industries through the loss of its majority stock-holder (Howard) and visionary leader.
Another possible clue for this hypothesis is the fact that had Tony indeed entered college at 15, then he’d have graduated by 19, (maybe 20 for a double degree) and this is if he followed a less accelerated pace. All this conjecture tells us that prior to his parent’s accident, Tony was possibly working with Stark Industries (S.I.) for at least a year, maybe two… either that or he’d be too busy on the society page news – dating the flavor of the month here, and partying there. Maybe he did – he sure could if he wanted to.
To say that Tony was definitely privileged, is stating the obvious. He was an only child from a very rich family, hence his needs were well cared for by his parents, and in case they were too busy with either work or the social circles, he could always depend on Jarvis – the family’s butler or other house help to get him through some situations.
This type of lifestyle, may have imbibed in Tony the thought of if he wanted something, he could get it by either buying it or – barring that possibility, just build a better version. On people, he would hire them, buy them off or befriend them. Doing most of the first part and guardedly doing the second. Tony was usually not one to wait up on others, while others would naturally wait up for him as their boss.
If he had friends, those who could match his family’s wealth and lifestyle, they were seemingly few and far between, thus furthering the theory of a cloistered life – or supporting another possible theory that young Tony had little friends because his personality and position intimidated others, or his personality did not lend itself to having too many friends… and why not, maybe he deemed friends as being a distraction to his other passions. Maybe to be his friend, you had to be worthy in his eyes. So what made one worthy?
At this young age – fresh out of college, Tony was still playing the field, so gentlemen may have been rivals to other women’s attention - and one of the ladies he found attentive happened to be Sunset Bain. Five years his senior, Tony probably marveled at what an older woman could teach him as they dated and hung out in several places, including the marina – unfortunately for Tony, Sunset was playing him; masterfully, using her feminine ways to get his affection.
When she deemed her influence on him significant enough, she asked him to show her what he knew about his father’s company – and Tony, still innocent to manipulations and corporate espionage, showed Sunset what he was capable of, by way of bragging to her what he could access in the company’s files, designs and plans.
It would be decades later before Tony would realize that Sunset indeed set him up, and through his actions, was able to get classified Stark technology designs, and shortly after his showing her these things, she would break up with him. It would also be coincidental that Stark Industries would experience a break-in and have many of their blueprints stolen – as if by an inside job.
Later still, Bain’s family business would somehow have designs similar to that of the Starks. Despite this, there would be no manner of proving that Bain had anything to do with the Stark attack – or maybe, and this is theory on my part, nothing Howard Stark could do without likewise involving Tony, as I’m sure there would have been more than enough eye-witnesses to say that Tony and Sunset were more than just dating.
To argue that life would have taken a different path, had his parents not died, would be on the realms of ‘What-ifs’, so we won’t go there. Instead, let’s look at what did happen. Tony lost them when he was 21, and in the ensuing legal arrangements, Stark Industries became his. Having been bequeathed his father’s company, he could have sold it and just said, “what the hey… life’s too short to not party”, or he could have taken the role with a serious demeanor – silently vowing to make the company grow even more to honor the name of his father – or, as I said earlier, to prove he was better.
This was not to say that Tony would become an overbearing and overly demanding boss – okay, at least, not impossibly demanding. If anything else, those employed by the Starks, showed great loyalty to them; which indicates that they were highly satisfied with how they were treated to warrant such loyalty. This is another trait that Tony may have learned – how to better treat and care for people who work for you, so that they will reciprocate with both respect and loyalty. A trait he probably learned from his mother, Maria – and a relationship he obviously nurtured with Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts and later, to a less tenured extent, James Rhodes and Mrs. Arbogast.
When Tony gained control of Stark Industries, the company was doing very well, having negotiated juicy government contracts geared towards weapons-development. We could postulate that he inherited these contracts, thus did not have to work for it – but then, if this were strictly the case, Stark Industries would have long been taken over by raiders like Justin Hammer looking for a company with a lame duck for its Chief Executive Officer.
Tony also had a vision – he wanted to make things better for his country and for society, so he probably found social events more a waste of time in a ‘been there, done that’ manner. Here was a patriot – but more importantly, a man that cared. Consider this - his first action upon hearing how his parents died was to buy the car manufacturer’s business and make repairs on its faulty brakes design, so others need not share such fate.
He wanted to succeed and become as good – if not surpass his father’s achievements, and the venue for doing this would be how well he could steer Stark Industries under his capable hands. His life, one could say, was even getting better and was geared towards that path. Just prior to his Vietnam trip, he had seemingly been seriously going steady with a lady named Joanna Nivena, and the two were engaged to be married. He had the business, and he was now thinking of family.
Tony, the young idealist, was willing to make sure his inventions helped win the war. But one could say that this was a rather limited viewpoint, as Tony was oblivious to the repercussions his inventions were doing to other people’s lives. He even decided to do some site inspections to see how he could further his designs optimization.
His trip to Vietnam would change that.
Next: Iron Man is born . . .
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