The sad fact of life is that even superheroes die.
Of course, unlike the rest of us, they always come back to life.
But while a lot of superheroes have pretty straightforward deaths, Tony Stark's trips
to the hereafter are downright weird.
1987's "Armor Wars" told the story of Tony Stark finding out that villains were using
his designs to power their own armored costumes and then doing everything he could to take
that technology back.
It also featured the first time that Iron Man "died."
Sort of.
The thing is, the armored Avenger didn't go down swinging while battling to save the world,
he mainly died because it was the best PR move.
While it might seem like a good idea to take his inventions back from the bad guys, Tony's
quest also meant taking on S.H.I.E.L.D. and beating up Stingray, a third-string Avenger.
Even worse, Tony then took a trip to Russia, where he caused an international incident
and accidentally killed an old rival, the Titanium Man.
With a growing list of international crimes stacking up, Tony realized that there was
only one thing left to do in order to keep both his personal reputation and his company's
from being completely destroyed.
He made a full confession and explained he was doing it for the greater good.
"You want my property - you can't have it!
But I did you a big favor.
I have successfully privatized world peace."
Nah, just kidding!
Instead he created a false identity named "Randall Pierce," claimed that Pierce been
the one wearing the armor all this time, then faked Randall's death.
The next month, there was a brand new Iron Man in brand new armor who just happened to
sound like, act like, and know all the same things as the dearly departed Mr. Pierce.
Faking your death is like eating a potato chip.
You can't stop at just one.
This time, it started when Tony was shot by an ex-girlfriend in 1989, which left him unable
to walk without his armor.
Since using technologies to deal with injuries had worked so well before, Tony decided to
implant some microchips in his back, and accidentally created other physical problems that started
to kill him anyhow.
Oops.
After Tony spent some time heroically threatening to murder Justin Hammer unless he sold him
his company for one dollar, Stark contacted his lawyer, made his final arrangements, and
apparently died.
In reality, he went into cryogenic stasis until another scientist could sort out his
spinal software problems, all while letting even close friends like Rhodey think he was
dead.
This one gets complicated.
Back in 1995, Marvel published The Crossing, a storyline that revealed that Tony Stark
had secretly been murdering people behind the scenes for years, including killing a
fellow Avenger called Yellowjacket on the doorstep of Avengers Mansion.
It wasn't entirely his fault, though.
It turned out that Tony had been manipulated by a time-traveling supervillain named Immortus.
When it was all revealed, Tony completely lost it, and wound up fighting the Avengers
and a younger version of himself before finally sacrificing his life to stop the plot he'd
been an unwilling part of.
With that, Tony Stark was dead, going out in one of the most ignoble deaths a superhero
has ever experienced.
The good news, though, is that all of this happened when, and because, very few people
were actually reading Iron Man comics, so nobody really cared.
So about that younger version.
When Tony Stark was revealed to have gone bad like a carton of year-old milk, the Avengers
had to take action and decided that what they really needed to do was go to another dimension
and get a teenage version of Tony, and then make him fight his own murderous adult self.
Really, guys?
You couldn't have sent Thor and the Hulk to take care of him instead?
"Uh, what?"
It might surprise you to find out that this plan did not work out very well!
Fortunately, after the old Tony died, the new version survived… for about ten months.
Then came Onslaught, a crossover in which a mingling of minds between Professor X and
Magneto produced an all-powerful third entity.
Onslaught initially appeared as a hulking, armored figure that looked like someone had
tried to make Magneto entirely out of knives, but when the heroes teamed up to stop him,
they discovered that this wasn't even his final form.
Instead, he evolved into a being of pure intangible psychic energy, and unless they could contain
Onslaught in some kind of physical body, they'd never be able to destroy him.
The catch was that Onslaught fed on "mutant energy," so if any of the X-Men tried to finish
what their boss started, Onslaught would only get stronger.
Thanks to that little catch, the Avengers and Fantastic Four jumped into Onslaught's
brain-tornado and broke him to manageable bite-size chunks that all the mutants could
zap into dust.
With that, Teen Tony had heroically sacrificed himself to save the world… only to be reborn
as an adult Tony on an imaginary Earth created by Reed Richards' son, and then reborn once
again back on regular Marvel Earth a year later.
In short, 1996 was a hell of a year for Iron Man fans.
Once Tony had returned to Earth and adulthood, he created a new suit that he nicknamed the
"Safe Armor."
True to its name, it was a little bulkier and more defensive than some of the other
suits, and even had an advanced artificial intelligence that was designed to keep its
occupant from being harmed.
Needless to say, that advanced AI did what every advanced AI in comics does: it became
sentient and immediately went evil, something that no one could've predicted when Tony used
pieces of Ultron in order to create it.
You know, Ultron?
The genocidal robot that once massacred an entire country?
Yeah, nobody could have possibly seen this coming.
"You're unbearably naive."
The story played out with the armor acting like an obsessive ex-lover, a bit of subtext
that was only made less subtle once the armor went full Fifty Shades and tied Tony up while
shouting things like "Get inside me, Tony."
The whole time, however, it was creating an advanced nervous system that would allow it
to feel the full range of human emotion, and while it had apparently saved things like
"not killing people" for last, they showed up just in time.
When Tony had a heart attack while they were fighting, the armor tore its own "heart" out
and used it to save his life.
After that, Tony buried the armor, complete with a grave marker that read "Here lies Iron
Man: Avenger."
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