Tony Stark was the arrogant son of wealthy, weapon manufacturer Howard Stark. Tony cared only about himself, but he would have a change of heart after he was kidnapped by terrorists and gravely injured. Pressured to create a weapon of mass destruction, Stark instead created a suit of armor powerful enough for him to escape. Tony used his vast resources and intellect to make the world a better place as The Invincible Iron Man. Stark's super hero identity led him to become a founding member of the Avengers.
@longbowhunter: Yup! That was the best part of that issue "Fing Fang Foom has felt the burning need to procreate since 1956. Fing Fang Foom has no genitals whatsoever. You have no idea how annoyed he is"
@RATZGobbler: Yeah, I googled it and saw that it was from the game. I played that game so much I should of remembered it. Thanks. Do you happen to know who drew The Mandarin's character page picture?
great list, I always felt they could easily reform Fin Fang Foom. He could shrink and maybe become a regular superhero or detective somewhere. Fin Fang Manhunter nE1?
He nvr did anything atrocious, except 4 that Asian-kid-in-the-sewer-resurrection. He's good at heart -he hasnt tried 2 take over anything in years, -current Pet Avengers shows he related 2 Lockheed. Team Ups? -remember Fin Fang Four??
Alcoholism was a two issue storyline blown waaay out of proportion after the fact. It's not like it was Marvel's first PSA-in-superhero-book-form, either. By then Harry Osborn had been a junkie and then conveniently forgotten all about it. I wonder if Mephisto deleted that, too or he still goes to meetings...
Actually, come to think of it, he's been terminally ill way more than he's been drunk. He's had heart disease, been a tetraplegic, had his entire nervous system replaced by machines, had those get infected with a virus, been in a coma, been frozen up like Walt Disney, more heart disease and eventually been taken over by some nanomachine crap (although that gave him powers, so I guess it doesn't count). If you include the weird-ass Ultimate Iron-Man Orson Scott Card came up with, he's been a "bubble child", the other Ultimate Iron Man had cancer, but I guess he forgot about it and got better and if you count the movies it's more heart and another techno-organic poisoning thing.
Yeah, that's comics for you. The guy is a cyborg on the brink of death but everybody latches on to his drunken armor flying that one time.
" Mandarin is the quintessential Iron Man villain. In his inception Iron Man was very much the hero of the Cold War, a cocky capitalist using American ingenuity and technology to take down the Red Menace and few foes were as Red Menacing or more Yellow Perilous than the Mandarin. He even set up another great contrast with Tony as well, originally his rings were supposed to be magic in origin setting up a nice little science vs. magic dichotomy. "
Some people don't know but Iron man has some pretty cool villains like titanium man crimson dynamo ultimo fing fan foom the controller the mandarin ezekiel stane sasha hammer justine hammer madame masque spymaster ghost is that enough?
The Mandarin is his greatest foe because he embodies all the evils Stark both fights against, and is himself tainted by. Even his name, Mandarin, sounds a little like Man of Iron, Iron Man inverted.
The Mandarin began life as an aristocrat. He squandered all the money he should have been spending making his people's lives better. He spent all of his fiefdom's money training himself into a sort of super-soldier. That makes him both the embodiment of aristocrat evil and of military industrial complex evil.
What hero can you think of who once embodied both aristocrat evil and military industrial complex evil? That would be Iron Man himself. The Mandarin is someone who started out even worse than Stark, and never had his redemption moment.
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