Iron Man #17

[kojiro]

Maria gives birth, but the baby starts coughing. The doctor tells them the degeneration is halted, but he'll never be able to breathe without medical assistance. They decide they have to keep the baby a secret so 451 will never know.



Tony goes inside the room, where he meets Arno.


Tony says he also found out he was adopted.



 

Comments

[beyondthefringe]

On the one hand: . . . !!! o.0

On the other: . . .

But seriously. I truly hope that this storyline plays out in an interesting and logical manner, and that Arno doesn't follow the predictable route of being so enthusiastic and overeager to implement his ideas that he starts as a hero and becomes a villain whom Tony must stop in a heart-breaking climax somewhere about issue #25 or #30. I predict that they'll create an Iron Man type suit to give him freedom and mobility, and eventually they will fight, quite possibly with Arno turning out to be better at...

No, what if, just this once, he's a genuinely decent person who becomes a valuable member of the cast, who adds a new and interesting family dynamic to a character who's never had any decent family in his life.

If that fails, he can team up with Eobard Thawne and "Thomas Wayne" and create a team of "previously unknown secret brothers of superheroes." (Or keep it to the Marvel Universe and team with Grim Reaper and Parnival Plunder and Dog Logan.)

[obsidianwolf]

I don't see this ending well since they gave him the name Arno and the cover evokes the other Arno Stark the evil Ironman from an alternate future's armor.

So Well intentioned Extremist Tony has to put down will probably be the out come.

[starwolf_oakley]

Hmm.

This can be a little too much like TROUBLE, the Millar/Dodson miniseries that said Peter Parker is really Aunt May's son mixed with a homage/satire/parody of Dirty Dancing.

Or it can be like that SUPERMAN/BATMAN story that said Jor-El travelled to Earth and gave Thomas Wayne some technology that became the basis of Wayne Electronics.

[jlbarnett]

Jor-El sent probes to Earth, one of which found Thomas Wayne. And I don't think it was meant to be that important to Wayne Industries, it just made a big company bigger.

[halloweenjack]

Yeah, your basic too-clever-by-more-than-half retcon.

[icon_uk]

I liked the notion in the novel "Superman - Last Son of Krypton" that Jor-El sent a recording reached out to the smartest person he could identify on Earth, and so Alfred Einstein sneaked out of his nursing home and visited Smallville (Where the rocket was predicted to land by Jor-El) and identified that the Kents were just what he was looking for... he even bought them a new tractor as a thank you.

[silverzeo]

.... can't wait to see how this will get retcon. Like Judas Traveler, or that dude who told the eXiles where to go, or almost EVERYTHING that marvel tries to build up only to back out in a cheapest way...

[icon_uk]

So out of all the random children that mega-genius Howard Stark could possibly have chosen, he happened upon an even BIGGER mega-genius in Tony?

One also has to wonder how, after all the business shenanigans that Tony has been involved in, the fact he's adopted has never once been discovered by anyone?

[filthysize]

I think it's supposed to be the old nature-nurture thing. Is Tony Stark born a genius, or is it because he was raised as the legacy of a genius?

[coldfury]

Well, I bet if we dug hard enough we'd find something that would check Tony's DNA for a relation to his father, or something. This is such a late blooming retcon, I'm sure it could be picked apart pretty easily. (Teen Tony comes to mind.)

But for your later point, if you were hiding an adoption from a sentient robot capable of super science, you'd probably long have burnt any adoption records.

[jlbarnett]

Tony needs to be a flat out clone considering the family resemblance they'vr got there.

[silicondream]

Did Arno really type "I have period period period ideas" on his keyboard? SU-PER VILL-HAYNE GNAH HAH HAH HAH

[icon_uk]

I don't know, I use ellipsis in writing quite a lot... of course, given my attitude towards certain heroes, I'm possibly halfway towards supervillainy anyway.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Hmm, do we have any scans from #16? We kind of skipped ahead here.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

So super smart android never did a DNA test?

Wish writers would stop trying to leave 'ever lasting stories' ALL THE TIME and tried just to tell good stories.

[beyondthefringe]

Of course, now the next big question is... who are Tony's real parents?

I'm calling Wolverine as his secret true father. By way of um... Black Widow. She's been around since the '40s. Plenty of time to have a secret love child.

Either that, or he's another Summers brother.

[espanolbot]

I'd say he used his SHIELD connections, and somehow genetically engineered a Da Vinci/Tesla hybrid.

[razsolo]

Baby Arno is cute. I DEMAND THE ADVENTURES OF IRON TOT!

[agharta75]

Well. Someone at Marvel is doing too much mopee.

[junipepper]

Honestly, I find that baby kind of disturbing.

[spacebetween]

I really hate it when writers feel the need to mess with the family history of established characters. Had this been a newly introduced character with small bread crumbs leading to this I would be fine, but the fact that it is a character with almost 40 years worth of stories really bugs me.


There are so many plot holes in this that it isn't funny.

[jlbarnett]

Tony should be a Stark just because Franklin RIchards made him a Stark.

[spacebetween]

You raise a valid point there.

[dr_archeville]

So... Tony Stark isn't a Stark... he's John Snow?

[thanekos]

.. you know, Tony being Howard's out-of-wedlock kid he later adopted would be a pretty neat non-"that never happened, shut up" way to mitigate this later on.

[silverhammerman]

Wait, if 451 built in a death trigger to baby "Tony"/Arno that was supposed to trigger when he hit thirty, how old does that make Tony? It wouldn't make much sense for 451 to only pop by after his creation was supposed to have died, so either 451 missed the fact that his creation should have been dead, or Tony is barely into his thirties. Which.... Doesn't really conflict with any continuity, but between the movies and Tony's general status as a elder statesman in the superhero community, I'd always assumed he was in his 40's or so.

Arno Stark is interesting, and it might be a neat way to bring in a modern version of Iron Man 2020, since it's only 7 years away at this point there's not really time for Tony to have a grand nephew, but maybe an adoptive brother/successor would work. Plus I'd be pumped to see a modern version of the armor.

Not sure about making Tony adopted though. His genetic heritage has never been too big a part of the character, but there still might be some continuity problems. Worst case scenario is that this ends up like the time Captain America was revealed to have had a brother and a suburban upbringing, and then the next writer retconned it wholesale back to the old way.

[dragontail]

In the issue prior to this, Tony returns to Earth after his space adventures to a surprise birthday party thrown by Pepper and the Resilient team. It's implied it's a "big birthday", meaning (I'm guessing) either his 30th or 40th, deliberately left open to reader interpretation.

[espanolbot]

Interesting that the guy isn't all bitter and crazy, a la the alleged Thomas Wayne II from Court of Owls.

[icon_uk]

Provided he's not lying to Tony.

[jlroberson]

How very Venture Brothers.

[starwolf_oakley]

I've thought Dr. Venture and the Mighty Monarch are really first cousins, which isn't quite as "epic" as half-brothers.

Speaking of cousins, I wonder how Morgan Stark will react to all this?

[silverhammerman]

Is that first picture like, the third variation we've seen on that "baby wearing the Ironman helmet" cover? If so Marvel's looking pretty lazy right now.

[arysteia]

Didn't we see one of a baby wearing the Magneto helmet too, or was that just my fevered imagination?