Iron Monger
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| Iron Monger | |
 Iron Monger |
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| Publication information | |
|---|---|
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
| First appearance | (Stane) Iron Man #163 (Oct. 1982) (Iron Monger) Iron Man #200 (Nov. 1985) |
| Created by | Denny O'Neil Luke McDonnell |
| In story information | |
| Alter ego | Obadiah Stane |
| Team affiliations | The Chessmen Stane International Stark Industries |
| Abilities | Genius-level intellect
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The Iron Monger is an identity used by several fictional characters in the Marvel Comics universe, most of whom have been supervillains. The first and most notable person to use that identity was billionaire industrialist Obadiah Stane. He is an enemy of Iron Man. In the 2008 film Iron Man, the Iron Monger is played by actor Jeff Bridges.
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[edit] Publication history
Obadiah Stane, who would become the first Iron Monger, debuted in Iron Man #163 (October 1982). He dons the Iron Monger armor in issue #200 (November 1985), and commits suicide in the same issue.
[edit] Fictional character biography
[edit] Obadiah Stane
[edit] Early years
Obadiah Stane was a ruthless individual who studied his adversaries to find weaknesses that he could exploit. Ever since he was a child, Stane enjoyed chess, and handled his life with the same kind of methodical logic that he used in the game. In addition, he was a strong believer in using psychological manipulation to his advantage. For instance, in a childhood chess match against another boy whose skill at least equaled his own, he killed the boy's dog so that his mind wasn't on the game. He won easily, and he continued to use similar forms of manipulation through his life. As a child he saw his father Zebediah, a degenerate gambler who at that time was on a "lucky streak", shoot himself in the head playing a game of Russian roulette. This event shaped Obadiah Stane for years to come.
[edit] Hostile takeover
In adulthood, as a wealthy financier, Obadiah Stane became the president and CEO of his own company, Stane International, as a munitions dealer. He also had a business partnership with the late Howard Stark, before Stark and his wife died in a car accident. Stane turned his sights on acquiring control of Stark International, the industrial corporation he had worked with, now owned by Stark's son, Tony (Iron Man). Stane had his agents, the Chessmen, attack Stark Industries and assault Stark's confidant, James Rhodes.[1] He also confronted Tony Stark in person.[2] Stane also set up Indries Moomji as Stark's lover without Stark knowing that Moomji was actually the Chessmen's Queen. While all of this was occurring, Stane and his associates conspired to lock Stark International out of various business deals. Stark eventually learned that Stane was the mastermind behind these attacks, but was unable to confront him. The assaults on Stark, his business, and his friend pushed Stark to the edge, and when Stark was scorned by Stane and then spurned by Moomji, he catastrophically relapsed into alcoholism.[3] With the help of S.H.I.E.L.D., Stane succeeded in buying out Stark International, which he then renamed to Stane International. Stark, having fallen off the wagon, relinquished his armor to Jim Rhodes and disappeared to be a homeless vagrant. Rhodes became the new Iron Man while ignoring Stane's demands to relinquish the armor. Stane was thwarted by Rhodes, as the new Iron Man, in his attempt to take over the Iron Man battle-suits.[4]
Stane proceeded in manufacturing and supplying munitions and weapons to S.H.I.E.L.D. and others who could pay for them. But, when Tony Stark left, he left behind notes and information on the Iron Man armor. These notes were far from complete and without Stark's mind, they were hard to analyze, but Stane assigned a team of scientists to these notes and working from this, they created the Iron Monger armor which, according to Stane, was "far superior to Stark's Iron Man armor". He even thought of either selling them to the highest bidder or creating an army of them and using them to "take over any country he wanted". He said that this last idea was particularly interesting.
Stane assigned the Termite to sabotage another business rival.[5] He also formed an alliance with Madame Masque.[6]
[edit] Retaliation
While a vagrant, Stark befriended a pregnant homeless woman. She died in childbirth, but Stark promised to protect the child. This vow helped pull Stark out of his alcoholic state. When Stark recovered, he built a new suit of Iron Man armor, creating what was then the pinnacle of armor design, the Silver Centurion armor; he also founded a new, successful computer company, Circuits Maximus. Stane ordered the abduction of Bethany Cabe, and was revealed as Madame Masque's lover. He sent the Circuits Breaker to attack Circuits Maximus, and realized that the "new" Iron Man was really Tony Stark. Upon learning of his rival's recovery, Stane decided to attack Stark continually again. Stane exchanged the minds of Madame Masque and Bethany Cabe. He also had Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts, and Bambi Arbogast kidnapped, and then killed Morley Erwin by blowing up Circuits Maximus[7]. Stane believed that these losses would drive Stark back into alcoholism, but a confrontation with Erwin's sister at the hospital instead inspired Stark to use the new 'Silver Centurion' armor and take the fight to Stane once again.
His confidence and resolution renewed, Stark confronted Stane on the property of Stane International and defeated Stane's agents, including the Chessmen, who had proven a match for his previous armor. Stane donned the Iron Monger armor and confronted Stark personally. The Iron Monger was more powerful than the previous Iron Man armor, but not the Silver Centurion model, which included such features as the ability to absorb the heat from the Iron Monger's thermal rays and channel it into the armor's own energy supplies. Stane tried to defeat Stark by tricking him into entering a room where Happy, Pepper, and Bambi were being held in suspended animation tanks that could sustain them for months; the walls of the room were covered with photo-electric cells that would trigger a circuit sending two hundred thousand volts into their bodies if Stark moved, leaving him with no choice but to stand in the room and starve to death to keep them alive. Fortunately, however, the room's power source was located directly opposite where Stark was standing, allowing him to use the weapons in his chest-plate to destroy the power source.
Having freed his friends, Stark then confronted Stane again, who was holding his last card: the baby of the woman who Stark had befriended while on skid row. Stane told Stark to remove his helmet or he would crush the homeless woman's baby between his palms. Stark, having detected interfering frequencies in his armor's systems throughout the battle, deduced that Stane wasn't experienced enough to pilot the armor without some help in the form of an external computer. He used his armor's pulse bolts to destroy the nearby building that contained that computer, causing Stane's Iron Monger armor to seize up and fall to the ground as Stark swooped in to catch the baby; since Stane based the armor on Stark's old designs, Stark knew that the armor would freeze if it lost the control of an outside source. Stane then removed his helmet and confronted Stark. When Stark told Stane that it was all over and he was defeated, Stane said that he had one thing left; the ability to deprive Stark of the enjoyment he'd receive in his enemy's humiliation and defeat. Refusing to be arrested and humiliated, he then raised his hand to the side of his head and, using the repulsor ray beam, disintegrated his skull.[8] Stark was later able to obtain complete control over his own company, which he renamed Stark Enterprises.
[edit] Ezekiel Stane
Obadiah's son, Ezekiel, was introduced in The Order #8, as the brains and financial backing of a secret conspiracy to destroy the titular group, which has close ties to Stark, and Ezekiel Stane would return in The Invincible Iron Man #1 to continue his vendetta against Stark in his fathers name.[9]
[edit] Other Iron Mongers
Another Iron Monger armor was built by industrialist Simon Steele, who had an employee of his wear it in battle against Dominic Fortune.[10]
After Stane's death, the original Iron Monger armor was obtained by the United States government. General Lewis Haywerth had one of the Guardsmen use it to test the combat skills of the U.S. Agent.[11]
A third was built by Stark's former college classmate Joey Cosmatos, who was working from Stane's plans. This suit was worn by the criminal Slagmire, an operative of underworld boss Mr. Desmond.[12]
The Red Skull later had one of his own agents use a suit of Iron Monger armor in an assassination attempt against the Viper, but the suit's wearer was apparently killed by the Viper's men.[13]
Stane's technology was also used for commercial purposes, as a group of renegade New York City Police Department officers calling themselves 'the Cabal' commissoned Stane International to design a suit of combat armor that they would use to hunt down and kill criminals as their own personal Punisher agent. Various members of the Cabal wore the resulting Savage Steel armor at different times, coming into conflict with Iron Man and Darkhawk.
[edit] Powers and abilities
The Iron Monger armor, manufactured by Stane International and code-named I-M Mark One, is an armored battle-suit of "omnium steel" (a fictional alloy), containing various offensive weaponry including a powered exoskeleton that amplified the user's strength, repulsor rays fired from the gauntlets, and an intense laser beam housed in the battle-suit's chest unit. The suit provides the user with the ability of subsonic flight, thanks to magnetically powered turbine boot jets. Since the Iron Monger armor was based on a modified version of Tony Stark's Iron Man design, the armor's abilities are very similar to the original red and gold armor, but with increased power. The repulsors were more powerful and the armor was also larger than the armor of Iron Man. It was presumably proportionally stronger as well. The armor was also partially computer controlled, a vulnerability Stark immediately exploited to disable the suit.
Stane also used the Circuits Breaker, a flying robotic weapon that fires air-to-surface missiles. He also used a device created by Dr. Theron Atlanta for exchanging the consciousness of two human subjects.
Obadiah Stane was a genius, with an M.B.A. He was a master of psychological warfare, a cunning business strategist, and a champion chess player. However, he had a classic narcissistic complex; his ego was his greatest vulnerability. Unable to ever accept that an adversary could better him he instead chose suicide.
[edit] Other versions
[edit] Spider-Man: Venom's Wrath
In the novel Spider-Man: Venom's Wrath, an early scene features Spider-Man confronting a teenager named Daniel in a "cheesy exoskeleton" who calls himself the Iron Monger, and attempts to rob a movie theater (a police officer told Spider-Man that this was the third time he had attempted something like this). Spider-Man explains that "an ironmonger is someone who sells iron, not someone who wears it. Last guy to use the name was an industrialist, so it fit him." Daniel's suit includes a laser weapon he calls a "hydrogel blast", despite Spider-Man realizing that term makes no sense.
[edit] Ultimate Obadiah Stane
in Ultimate Iron Man, Obadiah is the son of industrialist Zebadiah Stane, a foe of Howard Stark. After Zebadiah is imprisoned in jail,trying to ruin Howard, young Obadiah and his mother move away and sell his companies to Stark. Stark's son Tony and Rhodey befriend "Obi" at a boarding school. The rivalry between Tony and Obadiah starts when Obadiah kills a couple of students, and later murders his own father. In the second volume, it's revealed that Obadiah planned the wrongful imprisonment of Howard Stark, as payback to Tony.
[edit] Other media
[edit] Film
Jeff Bridges plays Obadiah Stane in the 2008 film Iron Man. John Malkovich auditioned for the role, but due to filming of his other movies, he backed out. Stane was chosen as the primary villain over the Mandarin and Crimson Dynamo, as director Jon Favreau wanted Iron Man to battle an enemy who dwarfed him (à la RoboCop 2).[14] This version of the Iron Monger armor is based on stolen designs for the Iron Man Mark I. Though he is never referred to by his code name in the movie, a nod to the name is made when he tells Stark that, being in the weapons manufacturing business, they are "iron mongers."
Stane is a businessman who heads Stark Industries after the death of Stark's father and became the firm's second-in-command when the younger Stark came of age. Following Stark's return from Afghanistan, he appears to assist Stark's attempt to refocus the company away from arms manufacturing. As the story unravels, it is revealed that Stane had cooperated with the Ten Rings terrorists in Afghanistan to kill Stark, with the terrorists keeping Stark alive because they felt they hadn't been paid enough. After Ten Rings finds the remnants of the prototype armor, he makes a new deal with them to deliver the prototype to him, but ultimately betrays the group and has them killed, stealing the designs. He later steals Stark's miniature arc reactor embedded in his chest to provide a power source for the suit. Despite Stark being forced to rely on an earlier miniature arc reactor, which was never designed to accommodate the new suit, he faces Stane in a final battle over the Stark Industries building. In the final moments of the battle, with Stark's power supply running low, he has Pepper Potts overload the prototype large-scale arc reactor found at the complex. Stane is knocked unconscious by the blast, and he with his top-heavy suit tumble into the generator, causing an explosion in which he and the armor disappear. A S.H.I.E.L.D. agent working with Stark covers up Stane's involvement by saying he disappeared in a private plane while on vacation, but since Stark decided not to use a cover-up for his own identity, it is unknown if Stane's fate was made public as well.
[edit] Action figures
Two Iron Monger figures are featured in the initial Iron Man film toy line by Hasbro, one of which features removable armor that reveals Jeff Bridges' character.[1][2]
[edit] Video games
Iron Monger is featured in the 2008 Iron Man video game.
[edit] References
- ^ Iron Man #163-165
- ^ Iron Man #166
- ^ Iron Man #167
- ^ Iron Man #173-174
- ^ Iron Man #189
- ^ Iron Man #190
- ^ Iron Man #195-197-199
- ^ Iron Man #200
- ^ Matt Brady. "Fraction, Larocca helm new Iron Man series in May", Newsarama, 2008-02-11. Retrieved on 2008-02-11.
- ^ Iron Man #212
- ^ Captain America #354
- ^ Iron Man #253
- ^ Captain America #419
- ^ Chris Hewitt. "Super Fly Guy", Empire, April 2008, pp. 72.
[edit] External links
- Iron Monger at Marvel.com
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