Iron Man #25 - "Rings of the Mandarin, Chapter III"

[arbre_rieur]

'Clearly there's some "you've ruined it," but you get some "you've ruined it" from changing how a character changes the way they comb their hair. It's probably been about the amount I've expected -- including that the people who are most angry haven't actually read the book, and aren't even comic readers generally. The only ugly aspect was being exposed to some people's interesting bigotry about adopted people. That made me gladder we did it, even.' -- Kieron Gillen, on making Tony Stark adopted

Comments

[icon_uk]

Okay, this was fun.... and the ending with "The Fascist Man Alive" actually made me groan out loud... I appreciate a genuinely rotten pun as much as the next person, but that one's a doozy.

[beyondthefringe]

I felt physical pain over that one.

And Endotherm. Wow. Guy goes what, 34 years without a return appearance, and then he pops up in Fatal Frontier and then here? That's a pretty impressive amount of time to stay off-grid.

[doodleboy]

Apparently Kieron Gillen waited 3 years to put that in a comic.

[ablackraptor]

Its weird how people have over-reacted to the adoption retcon. I could get the negative reception when it appeared 451 was responsible for Tony's genius, but I've seen people declare that Gillen and his editor should have been fired simply for making Tony adopted; not the 451 stuff, but the adoption retcon itself is what they hate.

[nyadnar17]

I had no clue hating adoption was even a thing.....

[crinos]

My Mole Man is in a fur coat and a crown. Your argument is invalid.

[daningram.insanejournal.com]

While I'm sure there's no shortage of pointless and offensive reasons expressed for hating the adoption retcon, I honestly think there are decent reasons not to like it in and of itself.

First and foremost, it adds a needlessly stupid and complex dynamic to Tony's origin, in that he was adopted to act as a stalking horse to protect a brother he never who was born with defects but saved by a rogue Recorder who wanted him to guide a space robot, but first he had shrapnel lodged in his heart, etc, etc.

Honestly, any origin that make's Cable's look simple is a bad one. And while yes it's not an origin per say, it is a big part of Tony's character now.

Second, I dislike it because the retcon feels as if to me Gillen is attempting to make his mark on Iron Man *without* leaving one. You know all those stories where writers say 'Nothing is ever the same' and then go back to business as usual?

That's what this plot/storyline feels like to me. Tony's relationship with his parents is rarely, if ever, touched upon. He's not Bruce Wayne in that he's trying to honor his father's memory. He's in the family business, and a hero on the side.

I'm not saying 'Go big or go home', but if you're going to go big, GO BIG. Don't wimp out.

Really, having Stark be adopted reminds me of the clone saga, wherein they declared Peter the clone and Ben the real deal. It changed exactly zero in regards to every story we've read up until that point. But at the same time, it was a blatant attempt to give legitimacy to a new character by taking something from a popular, pre-existing character. Per Gillen, Stark's...not a real Stark. Something he's been for 30 years. It's not that he was adopted ala Nightwing (who's damn popular), it's that he was apparently snuck in the backdoor. And it's done for the sake of the writer's new pet character. It's a pointless distinction, but it's easy to see why it grates.

That Stark's entire life was meant to be little more than a stalking horse for some brother he never knew? Honestly, Stark's calm reaction is utterly baffling. He should be *furious*. It's interesting that Gillen talks about bigotry against the adopted, when his basic story line was/is 'Tony is a target so my real son isn't' and there's an impressive lack of outrage on anyone's part in story.

Lastly, the fact that super genius Howard Stark manages to adopt a super genius just like himself? Yeah, even in comics that strains credibility.

I think Brubaker showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that in comics, anyone can take the most implausible story, even for comics, and make it work amazingly with the right amount of care and forethought. But to date, Gillen's Iron Man has been the anti-Winter Soldier.

Honestly, I like the idea of Stark having a (hopefully) evil brother, a man as smart as himself but evil and physically broken, and Stark being faced with the fact that he can't fix his brother.

But the path so far, space robots who don't do DNA tests...?

Yeah...

[nyadnar17]

Erno being evil would be the least interesting option possible to me. I like my brothers as rivals with conflicting but overlapping worldviews.

[ablackraptor]

He's still a 'real' Stark, being that he was adopted and raised by Howard and Maria, and as far as we can tell, done so legally. I admit, the story itself is rather convoluted, but it doesn't ultimately change anything about Tony, at least not in the long run.

I will concede the other points, though, I don't think Howard was ever really meant to be a super genius. He was smart, and worked on some big things, but he's never been a leading mind like Tony is, or any smarter than any other comic book scientist.

[halloweenjack]

Well-put. And, you know, if, say, Chris Claremont were put back on the X-books and immediately declared that all of them had a secret, heretofor-unmentioned sibling (in addition to the ones that are already in continuity), I wouldn't blink, but I would have hoped that Gillen was better than that, and the straw men that he puts up in defense of his retcon is likewise dismaying.

[q99]

-
Lastly, the fact that super genius Howard Stark manages to adopt a super genius just like himself? Yeah, even in comics that strains credibility.
-

Nurture over nature, I'd say.

Gregory Stark

[7dialsmystery]

Tony Stark had an older brother in Ultimates/1610, that they ret-conned as a twin. His name was Greg and he was a medical doctor who manufactured medical devices. Howard Stark was also boinking Loni Stane and Obie Stane was hinted at being his illegitimate son.

They had to make Tony adopted. It no longer made sense that he was Howard and Maria's biological son. They would have been well into their 60's when he was born if they were contemporaries of Captain America.

[superboyprime]

He's not at all reacting calmly and coolly to being adopted, though. Everyone time someone tries to talk to him about it, he evades. The arc after the revelation, "Iron Metropolitan," was based around him diving into a huge, intensive project to avoid thinking about it. He even explicitly says at one point it's either start the project or start drinking again.

Then, after that, we have this arc where Malekith taunting him about being adopted drives him into an unreasoning rage. When he talks about how the elves "are incapable of understanding any of the pain they've caused" by stealing and replacing babies, he's not really talking about elves, y'know?

That's why I don't agree with people saying the retcon's pointless and doesn't contribute to the stories: The emotional fallout of finding out he's adopted has been the undercurrent of every issue since, from a characterization standpoint. Taking it out would change the texture of the stories immensely. And I like that it's not going the typical pat route of "It doesn't matter because my real parents are the people who raised me, whether I'm genetically related to them or not," which is inspiring and even logical (and I've liked a lot of stories that went that way, so I'm not saying it's necessarily bad) but often not how emotional humans react.

[sadoeuphemist]

"Per Gillen, Stark's...not a real Stark. Something he's been for 30 years. It's not that he was adopted ala Nightwing (who's damn popular), it's that he was apparently snuck in the backdoor. And it's done for the sake of the writer's new pet character. It's a pointless distinction, but it's easy to see why it grates.

That Stark's entire life was meant to be little more than a stalking horse for some brother he never knew? Honestly, Stark's calm reaction is utterly baffling. He should be *furious*. It's interesting that Gillen talks about bigotry against the adopted, when his basic story line was/is 'Tony is a target so my real son isn't' and there's an impressive lack of outrage on anyone's part in story.

Lastly, the fact that super genius Howard Stark manages to adopt a super genius just like himself? Yeah, even in comics that strains credibility."

Wooow this is the anti-adoption bigotry Gillen was talking about right here. Tony doesn't stop being a real Stark because it's revealed he was adopted!

Your characterization of what happened is way off. If anything Arno got the worse end of the deal. He had to grow up completely isolated and hidden from the world, while Tony got all the privileges of being the Starks' only child. They weren't positioning Tony as a target, as they had no idea that 451 planned to abduct their kid 30 years later to pilot his giant mech. They were trying to hide the fact they tampered with Arno's genetics from 451, for fear that he would take revenge on everyone. Granted, that's not a great reason to adopt a child, but it's not devaluing Tony for Arno's sake.

Also, I've said this in an earlier post, but I think it's equally unlikely that a super genius' biological children will be super geniuses themselves. Intelligence isn't strictly genetic. Einstein raised some smart kids, but they were no Einsteins, if you get what I'm saying.

[bizarrohulk]

It always strikes me as being a weird mixture of egotism and cowardice whenever a writer starts messing with the backstory of a long-established character, like he really wants to leave a permanent mark on the character but at the same time knows he doesn't have the skill to write a story that people will remember.

And Gillen's "defence" is just pathetic. He constructs an entire army of straw men (his critics don't actually read comics! They're bigots!) to avoid having to answer legitimate criticism.

[drtechnobabel]

True. And the bizarre thing is that I'll probably never forget the stories he's written so far regardless, for better or worse. I'm almost certain I'll never forget that one time Tony Stark became a moon governor/sheriff, or when the Mandarin Rings started creating their own supervillain team, or the time he built elf-hunting armor to stop Malekith from chopping off the hands of the aforementioned supervillain team. Absolutely none of those storylines required the adoption storyline to work, which wasn't even really a storyline so much as a last-minute plot twist at the end of another story that would've been pretty memorable on its own. While I am curious to see if he's enough of a hack to make Arno evil in the end, I highly doubt that Gillen ever needed to create Arno in the first place, which makes his decision to do so even more baffling. It comes off as a pure 'shock-value' stunt rather than actual character development.

[ablackraptor]

He does specify that its only the 'angriest' of his critics who are like that, not everyone who dislikes it for whatever reason. Its no different than saying the people most angry at DoFP or ASM2 are people who haven't seen either, which I can say isn't off the mark, given how many times I came across people on Deviant Art harassing anyone for liking or looking forward to either film before they had even came out in the US. There are people who hold insane levels of hatred for certain works and creators for the strangest and smallest things, he's just acknowledging that they exist.
He has talked about other, more legitimate criticism elsewhere, in fact I'm pretty sure he does in the same interview that this quote came from, so its not like he acts like they don't exist.

[drtechnobabel]

Hey, guess we'll get that 'Ten Mandarin beatdown' after all, only against Malekith rather than Tony. Though I am curious as to how Endotherm can even use his ring given that he apparently encased it in a block of ice on his chest. Also, I admit I'm not really familiar with Iron Man outside of the movies and what I've seen here on scans_daily other than what my brother tells me, but since when was Mole Man an Iron Man villain? I thought he mostly stuck to fighting the Fantastic Four.

[bizarrohulk]

Well, Malekith himself is a Thor villain.

[silicondream]

How did Malekith transmute Tony's decoy hologram into gold? Or did Tony just bet that that would be his next move, and set the hologram to match? He is good at elf psychology.

[thezmage]

Well, magic. More than likely the spell was dependent on what Malekith perceives, rather than what's actually there. I've always felt that "proper" magic should work more on perception and semantics than the laws of physics as we know them.

[thanekos]

" You are Mandarin-Three. Save yourself from- "
" That damned song? "
" .. "
" .. Tony Stark, right. "

[burkeonthesly]

Someone's been reading their Mercedes Lackey, I see.

[grazzt]

Huh. I consider myself a fan (not just Valdemar, but the Five Hundred Kingdoms and the Elemental Masters, too) but I don't get the reference.

[althechi]

I'm not sure if I like Mole Man with a crown and sceptre or not...

[icon_uk]

He's visiting, so probably wanted to get dolled up.

[cypherfdp]

Weird. Yeah, I remember when Avengers came out, I saw someone criticize Thor's line about Loki being adopted. At the time I thought it was just a joke they were looking too deep into, but now I'm curious about this anti-adopted thing.

[icon_uk]

Thing is, once you start with that approach in comics that's LOT of characters to be anti=adoption about, starting with Superman, Supergirl, Nighwing/Robin(s), Wonder Girl (Donna), and most sidekicks in one form or another.

[burkeonthesly]

Just noticed this on a re-read, but I'm liking that when Tony grabs Malekith, he starts to yell "Unhand me!", thinks better of it halfway through, and settles on "let me go!"

[espanolbot]

The thing that I think is funny about Malekith and the other Dark Elves? Well in Norse mythology, the Dark Elves weren't technically elves in the manner shown here, which is the form of Fair Folk from British etc. folklore.

No, the Dark Elves were actually more akin to Dwarves from what I read. More Gimli than the Queen from the Discworld novels.

[donnblake]

Right, and Loki was Odin's blood-brother, not his adopted son. And Thor was a lot more liable to solve his problems by bashing their brains out with Mjolnir. Oh, and Loki was imprisoned until Ragnarok, when the world was going to end. Except maybe not, because our best sources on Norse Mythology were written post Christianization. Oh, and Thor had a beard. And red hair.

Edit: I guess what I'm trying to say is, I don't get too worked up about mythological accuracy in Marvel. It's already clearly different enough from the myths of our world, that it works best as saying one inspired the other, but not much more (which way depends on whether you're talking from an in-universe or out-of-universe perspective).