Addiction as a concept has always been something that’s been associated with Tony Stark.
He’s struggled with alcoholism for years, it’s even been stated to be his greatest
enemy, so when that concept is flipped on its head, and Tony becomes the addiction,
in a manner of speaking, things get pretty intense. Time for a really stupid segue -- let’s
get superior!
Hello and welcome to the Show With Issues, I’m Auram, and with the short-lived series
Superior Iron Man written by Tom Taylor, Tony takes his whole struggle with addiction to
an entirely new level, essentially becoming the demon in the bottle itself. Before we
get into that though, let’s go over what makes Iron Man “superior” in the first
place. Origin time!
After the Red Skull gained the powers of Charles Xavier, he went a little insane and turned
into a new version of Onslaught during the AXIS event. He turned Genosha, the secluded
island paradise for Mutants, into a concentration camp and began spreading a message of hate
across the planet, starting his “World War Hate.” In an attempt to stop Red Onslaught,
Doctor Strange, Scarlet Witch, and Doctor Doom casted a spell that would invert the
Skull’s mind effectively bringing forward Xavier while pushing Skull back. This semi-backfired
though as everyone on Genosha was also affected by the spell, turning bad guys good and good
guys bad.
So why am I telling you this? Well, one of the heroes that had their morality inverted
was Iron Man himself! Now, of course, at the end of the event, the spell was cast again,
putting everything back to normal, but Tony avoided this. See, he was having way too much
fun in his new skin and shielded himself, along with a handful of others, from the reinversion
spell.
This is where the Superior Iron Man series kicks off. Tony moves to San Francisco and
is pretty much a complete dick. He started his campaign by poisoning the water supply
with a new homebrewed version of the Extremis virus that could be activated by an app downloaded
to any smartphone. The app, called Extremis 3.0, was a free download and essentially made
you a gorgeous, perfect human. There’s a catch though, after a month of using the app,
it was immediately locked behind a paywall of $100 a day. In fact, once your free month
is over, it instantly saps all traces of it out of you. People were immediately clamoring
for it because of the virus being in the water supply, they were unwillingly addicted before
they even knew it.
Pepper put a stop to Tony’s antics after a while and the series ended in the fires
of Secret Wars. It’s a fantastic book and honestly was way too short-lived. A nice change
of pace and interesting look at the Iron Man character that I felt was needed before getting
back to the status quo. The Superior Iron Man story raises kind of a scary question
about addiction, though. And interestingly enough, it’s framed around the apps that
we’re downloading on our smartphones, which are purposefully manufactured to addict us
as well!
Okay, I know what you’re thinking, this is a super preachy subject that never holds
any merit because of the way it’s presented in the media; “video games turn your brain
to mush!,” but hear me out here. Have you ever played that game, or used that app, that’s
totally free to download, but has some special features locked behind some small kind of
paywall or even shuts you out of using it for a specified period of time unless you
pay to keep going? I just described pretty much every modern mobile game and Superior
Stark’s Extremis 3.0 app. This is known as a “freemium” model and is widely used
today.
I’m actually somewhat victim to this model myself. Awhile back I was super into Spider-Man
Unlimited which is a mobile runner app released on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone and it’s
honestly one of the best runners I’ve ever played. I even reviewed it on a VERY old episode
of the Show back in Season 1, but please don’t watch it. Everything about is just -- ugh.
I digress, the point is, Spider-Man Unlimited is a game that follows that same formula of
hooking you early with some cool, free content while still making that content accessible
forever, while slowly introducing you to the idea of either buying cooler, more aesthetically-pleasing
content or just having the game be more accessible.
The game starts with its “story mode,” and it uses that term very loosely, seeing
as it’s just the normal game with added objectives. After you beat the story mode,
which you will very quickly if you’re playing it at all regularly, you’ll be faced with
a problem; what do you do now? This is where the game kind of opens up and, like most mobile
games, starts to become the game that you want it to be.
When I was into the game back in December of 2014, I decided to try and collect all
of the Spider-Men in the game. This decision led me down kind of a dark road, at least
as far as my wallet is concerned. See, Spider-Man Unlimited uses two currencies, vials and ISO-8.
Vials are the normal currency that can be collected ingame, but ISO-8, and this is where
things get murky, can be bought for actual money. These crystals are Spider-Man Unlimited’s
version of microtransactions, small, almost insignificant, payments that give you immediate
satisfaction and reward in a game.
This could become a vicious cycle, especially because of the way these charges are presented.
Because of the microtransactions being presented in such small increments, you don’t feel
bad about buying one little pack here and there, but that stuff starts to add up. Eventually
it becomes a lot easier to buy more and more at higher prices, with sales everywhere and
constant advertisements for them and slowly, you seem to have become addicted.
Just like Tony poisoned the water supply, these game developers are conditioning us
to treat these microtransaction schemes as a new normal! Y’know what? Down with video
games! They’re the devil! No, but really, let’s actually look at this objectively,
what actually can, biologically speaking, addict us?
To get to the bottom of that, we should clearly define the two types of addiction, physical
and psychological. Physical addiction is something that your body has actually physically changed
to account for, like if you’re addicted to drugs or alcohol. Your body has gotten
used to acting in this altered state and if you don’t continue to supply whatever it
needs to achieve that state, you’ll likely get sick until everything resets. This is
exactly what Stark achieved with Extremis 3.0 by infecting San Francisco’s water supply.
A psychological addiction, on the other hand, is the one you’re probably more familiar
with when people say that “video games are addicting us.” This is simply when you’re
so reliant on something that it becomes destructive to your life. For example, if you play Dark
Souls for 26 hours straight and miss an entire week of work because of this, you might be
considered addicted to that game. Totally no relation, by the way. I DON’T HAVE A
PROBLEM!
The issue here is that psychological addictions can be applied to anything, it’s just that
gaming is the newest scapegoat and poster boy for “addiction.” And, honestly, when
you really think about it, Tony’s plan for Extremis 3.0 is brilliant, superior even.
He created the app and let people download and use it of their own volition, but little
did they know they were already addicted. As an outsider looking in, Stark is pretty
much totally innocent, if not morally an asshole. Without knowing about the whole poisoned water
supply deal, it just looks like a bunch of people got super into a new mobile app and
now they can’t afford it, so they’ve gone a bit crazy. Again, morally wrong on all fronts,
but not much illegal going on here at face value.
Thinking about it now, what if Tony was able to execute such a brilliantly devious plan
of slowly addicting an entire city is because he himself is an addict and has learned from
those experiences?
Stark has gone through phases with his own personal addiction, alcohol, and it’s really
become quite synonymous with the Iron Man’s origin. What’s interesting here though,
is that it’s not really tied into the initial kick for Stark becoming the superhero we all
know today, no, that title goes to his war profiteering and being captured by some enemy
of the US in whatever given war that’s relevant at the time. After escaping capture, Stark
quits selling weapons and goes head-on into Iron Manning!
In the case of the alcoholism, it serves as a kind of “secondary origin.” For example,
in Iron Man 2, Stark is shown drunk for most of the first act. He gets to the point where
his friends are being hurt because of it and is given a wakeup call by Nick Fury and Black
Widow who are basically telling him to wake the hell up! So, he does. Just like he triumphed
over his captors and decided to stop selling weapons, Tony quit drinking and, because of
this, went on to do a whole plethora of great things! He invented a new element, took down
Whiplash, formed the Avengers, saved the world from the Extremis virus, created a world-conquering
artificial intelligence -- ok, maybe that last one wasn’t the best, but you see my
point!
It’s obvious that Iron Man is much more productive without his drinking problem, but
with it being such a big part of his character and origin, writers have to worry about losing
the actual character and just making him synonymous with his problem. They have to wonder, does
Stark’s addiction define him? We have to remember that one of the most famous Iron
Man stories, Demon in a Bottle, completely revolves around Stark’s alcoholism and how
it’s affecting his relationships.
It’s considered by some to be the quintessential Iron Man story, the one that influenced the
character for years to come. The issue here is that having a dark problem such as alcoholism
define your character could be a very bad thing. If the character of Iron Man was pitched
to you as a “war-profiteering drunk who flies around in a metal suit and saves people,”
you’d probably think he wasn’t much of a hero, let alone a superhero. In my opinion,
I don’t think Tony’s alcoholism is what defines him, it’s simply another villain
that he had to conquer that day.
In fact, the creator of Demon in a Bottle, Bob Layton, said this about the creation of
the book; “We were paid to, basically, do the next episode of Iron Man. [It's] just
[that in] that particular issue, alcoholism was the bad guy. Instead of Doctor Doom or
somebody like that, it was the bottle. That was our villain of the month. And that's really
the way we treated it.” They weren’t trying to be edgy or relevant for the time, they
just wanted to show that Tony could overcome this personal demon just like he could any
other outside force. Tony Stark may be an addict, but he challenged adversity and overcame
his problem, making him a stronger hero in the end.
What do you all think? Do you think that Stark’s alcoholism defines him? I can say myself that
I don’t think it defines him at all. One of the reasons I like Iron Man so much as
a character is because I can somewhat relate to his struggle and seeing him overcome it
is really empowering.
By the way, my friend Scott, over at NerdSync is doing a video this week about Iron Man’s
Nose; that one suit with the weird nose. So go check it out! It's a great video! I don't
actually know that yet since I haven't edited it, but trust me, it's great.
And one last thing, I kinda changed the set around because those comics that were there
kept falling down and breaking everything. Like, literally, this Ant-Man right here?
He’s broken, you can’t tell, but his head fell off. So, shh, don’t tell nobody. And,
also, the lighting has changed, so let me know in the comments what you think about
the kinda revamped set. It’s not really changed all that much, I just moved this.
Um, and the new lighting. So, yeah, let me know about that.
And before you head out be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss out on anything that I
upload every other Wednesday and every Saturday! That all being said, thank you so much for
watching! Next time I play more Dark Souls because -- shut up, I don’t have a problem!
I can stop whenever I want, okay?