Despite his tragic disappearance from the MCU after the events ofAvengers: Endgame, Iron Man remains one of the favorite characters of the fans, who continue to hope for his return. But what if this return was more of a danger than a blessing for other superheroes and the rest of humanity? Tony Stark has indeed already switched to the dark side, and it is better that this does not happen again!
Iron Man, popular but dangerous
Despite the many series of comics released about him, Iron Man is first and foremost a superhero known as Robert Downey Jr. thanks to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, in which he played a central role for over a decade, so references to him are still made regularly. Let us recall that it is with the first Iron Man that the superheroic saga began in 2008 and that the character is at the heart of probably the most significant scene inEndgame (2019), in which he puts on the gauntlet of Infinity.
It is therefore the image of a (super) heroic and courageous individual that we have of Tony Stark, despite his few flaws and his demons which make him more ambiguous than it seems. But we would never imagine him turning against the planet he has constantly protected for years. And yet, as recently mentioned ScreenRantthis is what he did in the comic book series Superior Iron Man, published in 2015.
When Tony Stark uses his technologies to do evil
In Superior Iron Man #8written by Tom Taylor and illustrated by Yildiray Cinar, Iron Man has, by a combination of circumstances, become an evil version of himself. It was done in the context of the comics AXIS, which start from the original concept that all the superheroes we know have their morality reversed. In the case of Iron Man, this translates to the use ofa technology implemented nearly a decade earlier: called Bio-Mark-One, it allows individuals to be controlled through the use of electrical impulses. A technology that could lead to serious abuses and that Tony Stark had therefore decided never to use… Until it became bad.
He then uses this technology to control the entire population of San Francisco, thanks to a virus, Extremis 3.0, which he spreads across the city. Its goal ? To use all these individuals as a personal army and as a giant “human shield” in order to fight against a digital version of his consciousness, embodied in a symbiotic armor: another technology put in place by Tony Stark when he was still on the good side, and which his secretary and future wife, Pepper, manages to activate.
If the evil Iron Man ends up being defeated and Pepper reunites with the Tony Stark she knows, this misadventure is the proof that the genius of the famous billionaire is as much a blessing as a danger for the planet, even for the whole universe. Because if the enormous financial means and the scientific knowledge of Tony allow him to develop incredible technologies likely to help him in his fight against the evil, these can also be extremely dangerous if they fall into the wrong hands, or if Iron Man goes wrong.