What if iron man sold out

The spectators get restless, calling the soldiers traitors and Cap a commie fake. Captain America almost hopes that they do storm the stage, so he can smack the taste out of all their mouths. Without its ideals and commitment to the freedom of all men, America is nothing and the flag is just a worthless piece of cloth. He tells the people that they are not too late to turn around and save America from its course.

Cap stops them and tells them not to appoint him as some kind of leader like they did with the fraud. Again, there is silence, other than the sound of war going on outside. Someone in the crowd begins to sing. Others around him join in. Sorry for the overly long write-up, but that story gets me pumped. I was wary when I originally read this story, but it comes together so damn well.

We start off with a would-be hero who fights purely enough, only to slowly hit a snare thanks to his beliefs. The build up steams and we return to our villain, who has reached almost complete insanity. And just as the fight comes to an end with a true victor, it goes directly into a strong conclusion.

They created Iron Man, a suit of armor with offensive weaponry installed. Tony survived the ordeal thanks to their ingenuity and returned to America. He made the decision to use his genius to save lives anonymously as Iron Man. No, he wondered if maybe he should have gone public with his technology so everyone can benefit.

To their dismay, four Iron Man-looking figures fly in to oppose them. They are the Iron Guard. Each one easily figures out a way to deal with these second-rate villains. These guys are getting stretched thin. These days there are just so many new badguys to keep track of. Across town, the Beetle goes on a rampage. Things have been escalating and now the bad guys are almost as powerful as the good guys.

He puts a paper bag over his head and takes him on as the Amazing Bag-Man. We see Jim Rhodes using some kind of Star Wars hologram phone to sit in on various meetings at the same time. One of which is Nick Fury with a cybernetic eye, making demands for more mandroids to take on his enemies. Once done, Rhodes gets out of his virtual reality hologram doohickey and thinks about how he got involved with all of this.

At first Tony just had him work for him as a pilot. Then he started getting involved with the business. Now it seems he is the business. For a while, this whole operation was running pretty smoothly to help the world reach a new plane of technology. But then came the copycats and the competition. According to Rhodes, Tony had become less and less involved with the public eye.

At the United Nations, several delegates discuss the threat of this rising arms race. The wall collapses and Magneto comes in. To prove his point, he twists and tears apart several Iron Guard soldiers. We see several reactions as this news spreads. Jameson laughs at how Spider-Man probably saw this coming and retired to avoid it. He turns around to see that Parker has already left the room.

Jim Rhodes ignores the news and focuses on tracking down Tony. And as for Tony Stark? He hears this news and with a disturbing glare, acts excited. Of course! How many dead ends did I run into chasing down a solution… that was staring me in the face all along?! All I need now is… Ah, but which one? But Tony refuses them. Looks like had a baby with. Peter tries to see Dr. Strange, but Wong insists that the Master of Mystic Arts has been gone for years. Strange appears, saying he knows exactly why Peter is here.

Peter knows that trouble is brewing and that the superheroes need to return. Using the Orb of Agamotto, the two see the whereabouts of their peers. But Strange finds they will be met with reluctance. Matt Murdock and his wife Elektra are enjoying their life in Greece. Hank Pym and Wasp have gone back to science, leaving their hero lives behind. He knows that Strange came back because he knows something bad is coming. If Strange can see the light, so can the rest.

This causes a riot to erupt between anti-Sentinel protesters and anti-mutant protesters. This is all interrupted once Magneto and his Acolytes appear before everyone. Magneto believes that if this is how humans react to his ultimatum, then they do not deserve to live.

His Acolytes easily destroy any and all Iron Guards in the area. This terrifies him. Shortly later, we see him putting on a highly-advanced and very spiky version of the War Machine armor. What remains of the X-Men, led by Cyclops, show themselves to confront Magneto.

Because of the technologically-advanced Sentinels in this reality, many of the X-Men have died, including Xavier. Magneto pulls the team together, then causes several planes to nose-dive onto them. He finishes off Maverick by impaling him with a steel beam.

Cyclops, dying, is brought in front of Magneto and promises that others will stop him. Magneto laughs. What others? Mjolnir smacks him right in the back of the helmet. Thor takes the fight straight to Magneto, who loses his patience in record time. Armor wars rage across the globe, urban chaos reigns. And Sentinels… Sentinels hunt down mutants for the simple crime of existing!

Sentinels… If I ever, truly, needed justification for what I am about to do — they are it! War Machine, able to see Overload Iron Man, flies in and tries to stop him. Iron Man is surprised, but smacks him away. For a second, he stops and watches Thor fight Magneto. Seeing this giant distracts him enough that Magneto forces tons upon tons of rubble onto him. Spider-Man webs up his face and strikes. Daredevil and Elektra also jump into the melee.

All Stark tech will become useless. This also means that all technology will be useless and the world will be in a new dark age. So you can see why Rhodes opposes this. But what about the rest of it? What about the good stuff? Artificial hearts that beat in place of old, used up ones, emergency field units that sustain life for critical hours… life support pods for premature babies. I could go on, but you get the idea!

Overload Iron Man marches towards Magneto and removes all of its invisibility. Overload Iron Man smacks the hell out of him, extremely angering the villain. During this, Tony narrates about how Rhodes was right. He has to see this through the right way. So when I see Overload Iron Man popping out about 20 different laser guns and firing them directly onto Magneto, I start getting hopeful. But nothing beats this page. For a while after that, Tony Stark has no plans to leave his armor.

He and Jim Rhodes force the government to halt Sentinel production and use their funds for more helpful technology. The rest of the world soon follows suit. Jim Rhodes is noticeably missing, probably because he was such a jerk to the Living Laser. Neither are in continuity. Both involve a billionaire turning away from destiny, only to come back and make things right.

But what really pushes it to me is the climax. Superman vs. Batman is a joke to most people because of the gigantic power gap. I knew little about Iron Man when I read this, but then I became a fan. The idea of Magneto vs. Seeing him toss Magneto around like a ragdoll while ultimately redeeming himself for stuff that is barely even his fault was huge to me. It still is. Just about everything in this issue is off the scale. The writing is top-notch. The What If diversion and its effects over the world hit just the right notes.

There are plenty of extra character appearances without taking away the fact that this is a story about Iron Man. The art is a bit harsh at times, but I still enjoy the overall product. I absolutely love this comic. I took a class on comics history, and I like the canon explanation they have here for Captain America: Commie Smasher. The real world downfall of superheroes in the s mirrored in the comics themselves is something I enjoy about the JSA related books.

Not that this second one was bad. Any alternate universe where the Amazing Bag-Man shows up has my vote. The Juggernaut one would have been one of my top fives as well. It was a great though downbeat ending that still remained in my memory even without rereading the book. Hey, got linked here from BSS a couple days ago and have been reading the countdown since then.

It was great, thanks for taking the time. Great write-ups on this page, especially. Do you realize the fact that I know both of them automatically makes me a geek? It was an awesome story, one of the few What Ifs I owned as a kid, and had great art. It hit all […]. Heroes do not do that. Atleast there is one universe where Tony Stark is a hero. I couldnt remember for the life of me what the actual plot of the book was, but it stuck with me for years. I just googled afew of those words and found this page.

Really great under appreciated book. All posts and comments are copyright their authors. Marvel Comics: Adorable ». Community Reviews. Showing Rating details. All Languages. More filters. Sort order. Percy Bell marked it as to-read Mar 30, Klemann marked it as to-read Apr 07, There are no discussion topics on this book yet. Be the first to start one ». About Simon Furman. Simon Furman. Books by Simon Furman. The entire series ended with the death of Iron Man, which left fans angry.

Not to be outdone by its own work, Marvel then kicked off the Onslaught storyline, and the rest is bad comic history. Back problems are not uncommon, but most people don't fake their own deaths to cover up the ailment. That's precisely what Stark did in "The Death of Anthony Stark," when he decided to kick the can and fool all of his friends and enemies into thinking he'd gone to that giant Arc Reactor in the sky. Even the fearsome and terrifying Doctor Doom was moved and paid tribute to his opponent with a toast.

Stark ended up passing all of his Iron Man technology to Ben Rhodes to continue the legacy, while he remained in cryo-stasis while a scientist worked diligently to fix his spine, which had been injured by a gunshot wound. It was only a matter of time before Iron Man went up against another metallic villain, only this one had too many syllables in the name for readers to take him seriously. Titanium Man appeared in Tales of Suspense Vol. A rather simplistic and shallow motivation for any villain, but that was typical Tales of Suspense at the time.

Eventually, Iron Man got the upper hand and managed to take down his foe after uncovering a set of hidden landmines planted there beforehand. Titanium Man is robbed of his chance for some good old-fashioned Communist propaganda. Not only is the premise absurd on its face, but the ending revelation makes Stark look like a complete and utter jerk.

It all starts when Tony licenses his Extremis technology to the general public, which can be controlled via a smartphone app.

If that wasn't odd enough, Stark seems oblivious to the inherent mayhem that would follow in its wake. Tales of Suspense 42 continued its long line of weird and puzzling stories with this one featuring the Actor, a third-rate excuse for the iconic Chameleon , who could impersonate anyone with little more than a quick makeup job.

After ripping off Stark tech on behalf of the Red Army, the Actor gets one-upped by Tony, who plays a weird game of bait and switch on him. He pretends to be the Actor in order to retrieve his own tech, which ends up getting the real villain killed by the Red Barbarian who believed he was trying to steal Stark's blueprints and take all the credit for himself.

It's definitely a take, but it'll go down in history as one of the most bizarre Iron Man stories.