Tony Stark is infamous due to the fact that he seems to have a suit of armor for every
occasion.
I mean heck, if he was just going to the store, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw him donning
some Storebuster armor.
So today, let’s take a look at Iron Man’s “buster” suits.
They are any suit of armor that is specifically designed to take down a certain person.
Let’s start with the first and most well known of these suits, Iron Man Armor Model
14, the Hulkbuster suit!
As the name implies, Stark made this suit to take on Bruce Banner, the Incredible Hulk.
This suit is a JUGGERNAUT and lets Iron Man lift up to one hundred and seventy five tons!
What’s really neat though is that the Hulkbuster isn’t a suit of armor in and of itself.
In fact, it’s an exoskeleton that Tony can fly any suit of armor into.
Now what’s crazy is that there have been many incarnations of this suit including Model
32, the Hulkbuster Argonaut.
The Argonauts were five suits that Tony made as a peacekeeping force that were commanded
via remote control, but they were hijacked and unleashed on the world, but they were
running on Stark’s subconsciousness.
ALL OF THE AVENGERS tried to take down the Hulkbuster Argonaut, but failed.
Heck, the only way that Iron Man was able to defeat it AT ALL was to electrocute himself
to shut down their subconscious link!
Hulkbuster number three, Model 37, the Hulkbuster Mark II.
Well… that doesn’t really make a lot of sense...
The Mark II was used in the World War Hulk storyline where the Hulk tried to take over
the entire world!
This bad boy had rocket powered gauntlets that could punch the Hulk so hard that he
flew back MILES and could even inject him with nanotechnology that was specifically
designed to suppress his power.
Even with all of that technology and raw strength, this Hulkbuster was swiftly destroyed by the
Hulk… when he slammed Iron Man all the way through Stark Tower...
Then there’s Model 44, the Heavy Duty Armor.
While Tony claims that this suit could do battle against the Hulk, it was instead used
against thirteen superpowered women enhanced by the Extremis virus.
The Model 44 has enough weapons and firepower to put War Machine to shame, but even has
a forcefield for good measure!
Finally, we have the latest Hulkbuster known as the Model 50 which was used against the
Hulk during the Original Sin storyline.
This suit comes equipped with ultrasonic repulsor beams and gamma blades that produce radiation
that is so intense that they can actually cut through the Hulk’s skin!
Now, let’s move onto something that ISN’T a Hulkbuster, Model 22, the Plastic Ghost!
This is an advanced stealth armor made out of ceramics which…
doesn’t make it plastic at all…
Then again, Ceramic Ghost would sound pretty lame.
The Plastic Ghost is immune to Black Panther’s claws and can turn invisible to all of his
means of detection at the time including night vision, infrared, and even the Panther’s
enhanced senses.
This armor even has noise reduction technology so that Stark was as quiet as a mime.
It even stores carbon dioxide so that you can’t hear Tony breathe.
As far as stealth suits go, this one is pretty damn awesome.
Next up is Model 23, the Thorbuster.
As the name implies, this suit was designed to take on the god of thunder himself, Thor.
See, some people in the country of Slokovia formed a religious cult around Thor, but then
their military discovered one of their churches and killed everyone inside.
This prompts the United States to send in Iron Man in hope of being able to take down
Thor.
Enter the Thorbuster.
The suit is powered by an Asgardian gem that Thor himself gave to Tony!
Man, that must be embarrassing.
To further add insult to injury, the Thorbuster Armor is modeled after the Destroyer which
is one of the most powerful Asgardian weapons ever created!
With the gem at its core, the Thorbuster is able to absorb and channel Thor’s energy.
Yet even with all of this power, Thor was able to rip the suit to shreds.
In fact, he might have killed Tony if Captain America wasn’t there to say.
“Hey guys.
Can you like… not fight?”
Moving on, we have Model 39, the Phoenix Killer Armor.
This was used in the Avengers vs. X-Men event to take on the Phoenix Force ITSELF, but Tony
accidentally powered up some of the X-Men with the Phoenix Force and turned them into
the Phoenix Five.
No, that is not a disco band.
Even that’s a pretty big deal, the Phoenix Killer barely existed for even half of an
issue…
So let’s wrap things up!
The last Buster Suit on the docket is Model 41 which was used against the Mandarin.
See, the Mandarin enslaved Tony Stark as well as a bunch of his villains and forced them
to create killer Titanomech robots.
However, the Mandarin seems to not know what Wikipedia is since everybody and their mom
knows that Tony Stark LITERALLY became Iron Man by tricking somebody who enslaved him
in a cave to build weapons.
“Gee, if I put Tony Stark in a cave and force him to build weapons, I wonder if he’ll
turn those weapons into a suit of armor in order to attack me just like he did for that
one guy?”
You’re an idiot, Mandarin.
You’re an idiot.
So yeah, Tony ends up building the suit of armor, rebels against the Mandarin, and the
day is saved.
By the by, you could consider the modifications that Tony made to his armor in Avengers vs.
X-Men the “Anti Magneto Armor” because obviously you would think that a battle between
a guy in a metal suit and a dude that is essentially a giant magnet would be pretty one sided.
To prevent this, Tony merely replaced the Bleeding Edge Armor’s primary metal with
carbon nanotubes, but that was a modification, not an entirely new suit.
Now as for a couple of special non-canon honorable mentions, we’ve got the Galactus Buster
which was seen in an ending of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and the promo art for the current
Secret Wars event, but who knows if that ever going to actually be a thing.
Oh, and let’s not forget about the Anti-Transformer armor which was featured in the New Avengers/Transformers
crossover.
It’s… just as ridiculous as it sounds.
But as always, now it’s time for a vote.
If you’d like to see a video on ALL of Iron Man’s suits then, click on Iron Man!
However, if you’d like to see a video on the second Ant-Man then, click on Scott Lang!
You can click on this video right here to learn more about the Vision or you can go
ahead and click on this one to learn more about Ultron!