Today, Iron Man is known as one of the biggest heroes in the Marvel Universe, thanks in no small part to the tremendous performance of Robert Downey Jr. that helped ground the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Yet for years, Iron Man was seen as a B-list character to general audiences, particularly when compared to the likes of Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, and even the Punisher.
Oftentimes, in the comics, to shake up Iron Man’s importance, the creators would kill him off, and following his newfound popularity, they have also cashed in on the immediate shock value of seeing a major Marvel hero bite the dust.
For the mainstream audience, this is relatively new, as the death of Tony Stark in Avengers: Endgame was a truly shocking moment. Now, in the Multiverse Saga, the MCU has had fun killing off many variants of Tony Stark on What If…?, making him somewhat of a Kenny figure from South Park, having a lot of fun killing him off and imagining new realities from that. The comics have been klling Iron Man for years. Here is every major time Iron Man died in the pages of Marvel Comics.
Iron Man’s first “death” in the comics came in 1987’s Armor Wars, 25 years after the character debuted in Marvel Comics back in 1962. Yet this was not a true death for Tony Stark; instead, it was one he had faked to protect his identity. During the “Armor Wars” storyline, Iron Man’s technology gets into the hands of various villains, and Tony Stark himself becomes a target of the United States government.
Tony Stark fakes his own death after sending a remote drone Iron Man armor out into battle, being destroyed by the villain Firepower. The world assumes that Iron Man is, in fact, dead, but Tony Stark is active as, at this point in the comics, the world did not know Stark was Iron Man.
It is fitting that the comic that featured the first “death” of Iron Man would form the foundation for the MCU storyline following the character’s death in the live-action franchise.
Originally developed as a Disney+ series, Armor Wars is now set to be a feature film with Don Chedeal’s character, James “Rhodey” Rhodes/War Machine, dealing with the aftermath of Tony Stark’s technology falling into the hands of various criminals. It will be interesting to see if Armor Wars sees Rhodey fake his own death the same way that Tony Stark did in the comics.
Thanks to Avengers: Infinity War, audiences know the devastating impact of Thanos’s snap. Audiences around the world were shocked to see beloved heroes like Spider-Man, Black Panther, Doctor Strange, and many more be turned to dust and waited a whole year for a resolution on how those characters would return.
One character who survived the snap was Iron Man, and he would later play a key role in bringing the fallen heroes back. Tony Stark even gave his life at the end of Avengers: Endgame to defeat Thanos and his army. Yet, in the comics, things played out a bit differently.
Although the conclusion to the fight with Thanos in the MCU ended with Iron Man’s death, he actually meets his end much sooner in the comics. Iron Man is beheaded by Terraxia, a partner Thanos created using the powers of the Infinity Stones that was just like him to make death jealous. It was certainly weird, but so was the decision to decapitate Iron Man, who was only brought back when the events of Infinity Gauntlet were undone in the comics.
The idea of featuring a decapitated Avenger almost made it into Avengers: Endgame as the 2014 version of Thanos would show the chopped-off head of a Captain America variant to the main MCU counterpart before the battle, but ultimately was cut from the film.
Just two years after Iron Man faked his death during Armor Wars, Tony Stark would have another brush with death. It started when Tony Stark began dating Kathleen Dare, but Tony Stark’s playboy antic and inability to commit, combined with Dare’s own fragile psyche, led her to break into his home after she mistook a woman who answered Tony’s phone as someone he was hooking up with when in fact it was an ally on a mission.
She shoots him in the chest in Iron Man #242, which leaves him paralyzed, which was a status quo in the comics for about two years before Tony faked his own death and froze his body in cryogenic stasis in Iron Man #284, where Rhodey dons the War Machine armor for the first time.
The fallout from Tony Stark’s “death” is a complicated one. During the funeral held for Tony Stark, as the world believes him to be dead, Dare does show up to attend the wake, much to Rhodey’s disgust, as he blames her for Tony’s death.
She tells him that she was on Prozac and other drug therapies at the time. It is clear the writers wanted to draw a parallel to Dare and Tony Stark’s substance abuse problems, which are a major factor of “Demon in the Bottle,” but there is a big difference between Tony Stark’s self-medication on alcohol and Dare’s supposed treatment from an actual doctor. It does have the unintended side effect of villainizing those who take anti-depressants and is very much a relic of the 1990s.
What’s even worse is that in her talk with Rhodey, Dare takes her own life as she blames herself for Tony Stark’s death and leaves Rhodey with the troubling thought that his words drove her to do so.
The Crossing is one of Marvel’s most controversial comics ever published. The 1995 comic revealed that Tony Stark had actually been working for the villain Kang the Conqueror for years. Ultimately, the Avengers travel back in time to recruit a teenage version of Tony Stark to battle his older self, eventually getting him to turn on Kang the Conqueror and sacrifice himself.
Yet even that self-sacrifice was not enough to redeem Tony Stark to the fans or even make up for what might be Marvel’s worst retcon. Even though the series revealed that Tony Stark was an unwilling and unknowing mole for Kang, fans were angry.
The decision to make Iron Man’s previous thirty years of comics all a lie, having been secretly a villain working for Kang the Conqueror, obviously annoyed many fans as it felt like it ruined years of stories and Tony Stark’s character. In addition, fans were not happy with the idea of time-displaced teenage Tony Stark being the new Iron Man, although Marvel would revisit this idea to greater success in 2009’s animated series Iron Man: Armored Adventures.
This attempt to shake up the Iron Man foundation was a major misfire, and it is unlikely that the MCU will adapt this storyline for the Multiverse Saga, as nobody wants to find out that Tony Stark was working for Kang all along and undo so much of the Infinity Saga. This decision was so bad that it forced Marvel to reset Iron Man just one year later, with another death.
1996’s “Onslaught” was an attempt at a clean slate, allowing popular artists Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld to reimagine some of Marvel’s struggling titles like The Fantastic Four and The Avengers by putting them in their separate universes with new origins. To do this and place the heroes in a new pocket universe, the “Onslaught” storyline was created.
This story starts with Professor X’s creation of the being called Onslaught, which was created after Professor X destroyed Magneto’s mind. The X-Men, Fantastic Four, and The Avengers join forces to fight the powerful villain. The Avengers and Fantastic Four give their lives to defeat Onslaught but are instead reborn in a new reality under the publication line Heroes Reborn.
Marvel used “Onslaught” and “Heroes Reborn” as a chance to not only revamp many of their characters but also undo controversial comics, the most obvious being The Crossing. The teenage Iron Man was no more, and in the new “Heroes Reborn” reality, he was the classic adult version of Tony Stark.
This meant that when Tony Stark, the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four returned to the main Marvel Universe after the “Heroes Reborn” initiative ended, Iron Man was reborn in the Marvel Universe as the classic version of himself without the traitor plot twist. All of this is to undo one comic.
Starting around 2005, Marvel Comics started to put Iron Man into a bigger role in the Marvel Universe (likely motivated by the fact that they had the Iron Man film in development), and following 2006’s Civil War, he became the director of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Yet shortly after, Norman Osborn, aka The Green Goblin, started to rise through the ranks of the superhero community, leading the Thunderbolts, and following the events of Secret Invasion, he dismantled S.H.I.E.L.D. and became the director of a new organization, H.A.M.M.E.R., This put Tony Stark on the top of the Most Wanted List.
Due to being the former director of S.H.I.E.L.D. and a major figure in the Superhero Registration Act, Tony Stark knew the names and identities of many heroes that he did not want to fall into the hands of Norman Osborn, so he decided to delete the information from his brain.
In the midst of deleting valuable information, Tony ends up falling into a coma. His brain is physically dead. But Iron Man fans should not freak out just yet. A backup is uploaded onto a new body. This would not be the first time Iron Man pulled this trick.
In 2013, Jonathan Hickman began building up to his most epic Marvel event, Secret Wars, in a storyline titled “Time Runs Out.” The Illuminati (consisting of heroes like Iron Man, Mister Fantastic, Black Panther, and Doctor Strange) try to stop the destruction of the multiverse but are unable to stop the inevitable. This eventually leads to only two different realities: Earth 616 (the main Marvel Universe) and Earth 1610 (The Ultimate Comics universe).
The Ultimate universe version of Iron Man leads an invasion of the main 616 Earth but finds that this reality has a greater population of superhuman individuals. As both universes are destroyed, both the Ultimate Iron Man and the main Marvel Iron Man die alongside their two universes..to be reborn into a new universe.
During Secret Wars, Doctor Doom took various pieces of the Marvel Multiverse and created a new reality, Battleworld. This patchwork world took elements from various comics, including the Age of Apocalypse, Marvel 1602, Marvel Zombies, and many more. In this reality, both the Ultimate Iron Man and the 616 Iron Man co-existed in this reality for a short time.
When the universe was restored, the main 616 Iron Man returned (jettisoning the Superior Iron Man storyline that saw Tony Stark become a more villainous character). The Ultimate Iron Man did not return. However, in the new Ultimate Comics initiative being overseen by Jonathan Hickman, Tony Stark operates as Iron Lad and is assembling a team of heroes to correct the mistakes that the villain, The Maker, made in this new universe.
To tie into the release of Captain America: Civil War in 2016, Marvel released a comic event titled Civil War II. This comic featured Iron Man and Captain Marvel on opposing ends of a conflict regarding an Inhuman named Ulysses, who has the ability to predict the future and whether it is ethically right to use it to stop a crime before it happens.
This draws various heroes into conflict over how to approach this, with both Iron Man and Captain Marvel going to extreme limits. during the final fight, Captain Marvel delivers a fatal blow to Iron Man. While it appears Iron Man might be dead, leave it to Tony Stark to have a backup plan.
While Civil War II was happening, Marvel introduced Riri Williams/Ironheart, a young woman who made her own Iron Man armor suit. Following Tony Stark’s death in Civil War II, Pepper Potts gave Riri Williams an A.I. copy of Tony Stark’s consciousness to act as a guide for her.
Tony Stark’s consciousness is later uploaded into a clone body. This storyline of Tony Stark being out of commission and needing a new armored superhero is being loosely adapted for the MCU with the upcoming Ironheart series. However, don’t expect to see a hologram of Tony Stark as Riri Williams’s guide, as Marvel Studios likely won’t bring Robert Downey Jr. for that type of role.
In 1984, Marvel introduced the character of Arno Stark as a counterpoint in the (then) future year of 2020 with the stories set in the multiverse world of Earth-8410. However, as the year 2020 did approach, Marvel decided to finally deliver on Iron Man 2020 by bringing him into the main Marvel Universe, revealing Arno Stark was, in fact, Iron Man’s long-lost half-brother of Tony Stark.
Arno Stark became convinced the Earth was now in danger from the looming threat of an alien A.I. aberration called the Extinction Entity. Arno looked to unite the world, but in doing so would enslave it.
Tony Stark confronted his brother, knowing that Arno’s fears were only a delusion, and knew he would not be able to talk his brother down. He was able to confine Arno in a virtual armor that acted as a life support system, as Arno had a disease that was killing him; that also put him in a fantasy world where Arno defeated the Extinction Entity and could be the hero he’d always wanted to be.
Tony, though, had to give up his physical body (the clone one following Civil War II) to fight Arno, but later returned with a new artificial body, marking another time that you can destroy the physical body of Tony Stark, but as long as he has his mind he can be eternal.
In this most recent comic, as it just concluded on May 29, 2024, Avengers: Twilight portrays an alternate reality for the Marvel Universe where the Avengers have disassembled and the country has fallen into a dystopian future. It has a lot in common with the X-Men story “Days of Future Past” or the DC Comic Kingdom Come.
In it, Captain America assembles a team of heroes to come out of retirement and save the day once more from the Red Skull, with the likes of Ms. Marvel, Thor, and even Iron Man.
In this alternate reality, Tony Stark had a son with Janet Van Dyne/Wasp. Their son Jonathan originally was a villain before turning on his mentor, Red Skull. To save his son from sacrificing himself, Tony gives his life to send the Red Skull’s body, which is about to self-destruct into the atmosphere.
While Jonathan takes up his father’s legacy as Iron Man on Earth, Tony Stark, alongside the fallen Bruce Banner/Hulk, is allowed access into Valhalla, the Asgardian realm of the dead. While this is an alternate future, it is the most recent case of Iron Man dying but once again having his legacy reborn in more ways than one.
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