Iron Man is a 2012 comic by Marvel Comics, written by Kieron Gillen with art by Greg Land.
Iron Man (2012) provides examples of:
- Auction of Evil: In issue #1, Iron Man crashes an auction where kits of the Extremis enhancer are sold.
- Badass Normal: Tony Stark faces trial by unarmed combat on an alien world. The martial artists he's facing are certainly competent, but not that good compared to his Avengers colleagues and foes. He flattens them.
- Canon Immigrant: Arno Stark was originally introduced as Iron Man 2020, Tony Stark's descendant from an alternate future. Kieron Gillen brought Arno into the official Earth-616 canon as Tony's long-lost older brother. He eventually became Iron Man in comics published in the year 2020.
- Clarke's Third Law: Played with in one issue. Malekith of The Fair Folk (one of Thor's usual enemies) refers to one of the Mandarin's rings as magic. When the ring protests that it is science, Malekith ignores this."Insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology."
- The Fair Folk: Malekith the Accursed calls The Wild Hunt on Tony Stark entirely because he calls himself "Iron Man" and elves hate anything associated with iron since it's one of their few weaknesses. It should be noted one of the Mandarin's Rings wanted him to go after Tony as part of the rings' scheme and was set to mentally manipulate him into doing so, as the other rings had been doing to other wielders (It backfired horribly), but Malekith went along with it anyway, apparently for the hell of it. Gillen has stated that he wants the elves to come across as alien in mindset as anything Tony has encountered in outer space. Malekith also unwisely provokes Tony with a changeling crack or two (Tony has recently discovered that he was adopted at this point), and gloats about the sort of things the Elves did with the stolen infants. He wants to make Tony angry. It works, and Tony singlehandedly carves a bloody trail through Svartalfheim without once raising his voice, using a suit armed with Cold Iron weapons, hunting down Malekith personally. Malekith, who it should be noted is someone who enjoys pissing off Thor (as in, he once cut off his arm and burned it to ash in front of him, and at the end of War of the Realms told him to Bring It while holding his parents hostage), admits that Tony on the rampage genuinely frightened him, and even years later, during War of the Realms, he takes the trouble to manipulate someone else (a dragon) into going after Tony rather than facing him himself.
- Immortals Fear Death: Malekith offers to briefly join forces with Tony because his life is in danger, which he outright says is a much bigger deal for him than some short-lived mortal.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Kieron Gillen introduces a left-wing journalist; an internet activist named Abigail Beryl Burns (with the online identity Red Peril) who is a Composite Character of Abigail Brady and Laurie Penny/Penny Red.
- Post-Modern Magik: This was a running theme. At one point, Tony fights an Apocalypse Cult using genetic engineering technology to modify women into being able to withstand being impregnated by the Eldritch Abomination they worship.
- Science Is Useless: As demonstrated in issues #23-26, when Tony travels to the realm of the Dark Elves to recover four of the Mandarin's rings, then in the possession of Malekith the Accursed; the vicious hordes of the Dark Elves set out to hunt him in their forests... He escapes with the rings after eventually giving them a beatdown exploiting their weakness to iron... and from then on, Dark Elf children who are misbehaving to their elders are chided with "You better behave, or the Iron Man will come to get you!"
- Shout-Out: A former mentor of Tony's named Eli Warren is introduced. In case the name is too subtle, he also looks and talks just like Warren Ellis.
- Your Normal Is Our Taboo: Tony Stark saves a planet from an alien invasion and gets invited back to bed by one of the planet's many princesses. However, once he removes his mask, she almost vomits in disgust at the abominably disgusting growth on his face: His beard. When she hears that he grew it intentionally, he ends up getting kicked out of the palace, with him sheepishly offering to shave.
