I would say starting with Straczynski for Thor is a good place. It is the beginning of the modern version of Thor, after all, and that run, plus the following issues by Gieron Gillen, are all fantastic, IMO. Unfortunately, it goes downhill incredibly fast when Fraction takes over.
I don't really see the need to be intimately knowledgeable with Thor's history to really "get" the modern story. It helps to know the basic background (the gods all died in a final Ragnarok; also, knowing who the main players like the Warriors Three, Sif, Balder, Loki, Heimdall, etc). You might want to wiki Don Blake to see what the old history with Thor's alter-ego is (convoluted, to say the least; I think it took Marvel 30 years to sort that mess out). But I think Straczynski does a pretty good job setting everything up for new readers (but then, I do have a good working knowledge of Thor's history, so it may have just been really easy for me anyway).
I'm not a big Iron Man buff. I have read both Demon in a Bottle and Armor Wars. DiaB is good, and still worth reading, IMO, because it has probably the most profound and longest lasting piece of character development Tony Stark has received. It is still very much relevant to his character. Armor Wars... eh. I read it because I had always heard about it. It was okay, but didn't feel that special. I thought Tony was actually pretty far out of line in that series. Again, maybe I'm not a big enough Iron Man fan to know him better, but what he was doing throughout that series was blatantly criminal, and he seemed to make minimal efforts to look for alternate solutions. Personally, I think you could get by with a good synopsis of Armor Wars.
Extremis was okay. I didn't personally care much for the plot actually, but it is important in understanding the kind of bio-mechanical alterations Tony has made to himself in relatively recent history (e.g. it is the start of Tony actually carrying the suit inside him and becoming almost like a nanite infested cyborg).
Most of my reading of Iron Man is somewhat dated at this point. The stuff from around the Civil War arc was interesting and important to his character, IMO, even if the Civil War itself was more than a little contrived (mainly Captain America's position, IMO). Matt Fraction also had a run on Iron Man a few years ago that I thought was great (in contrast to his Thor arc which, again, was terrible).
Hope this helps.
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