Not very. Of course, I don’t know what changes they’ve made
to the comics since the movies so Tony Stark in print may be closer now to Tony
Stark on film.
I always thought Tony was kind of bland in the comics. He
certainly did not have the same level of arrogance as his film counterpart
does. Stark was a rich playboy but always did have a generous spirit and a
conscience, which he showed years ago when his company stopped manufacturing
war weapons.
The big development through the decades for Iron Man was his
alcoholism. The movies haven’t touched on this except to show a close up of
Robert Downey Jr. taking a drink. “Demon in a Bottle” was a good story but in
retrospect, it’s hilarious to watch Tony spend just one issue 12-stepping his
way out of addiction. Maybe that was the state of understanding of alcoholism
in 1979. It was realistic when he relapsed in 1983, as recovering alcoholics
do, this time drinking so much that he had to give the Iron Man armor over to
Jim Rhodes. Tony was sober for a long time but I’m hearing he may have relapsed
again.
The other shakeup to Stark’s personality was that in the
mid-‘90s, there was a story in the Avengers
that revealed that Iron Man had always been a pawn of the time-traveling
villain Kang. Iron Man then betrayed the team and severely injured the Wasp to
the point where she had to be mutated into an actual wasp creature to save her
life. Then they decided to bring teen Tony in from the past before the point
where Kang corrupted him so the world could have a still-heroic Iron Man. Thank
God everyone now ignores this horrible story. Let us never speak of it again.
In the last decade, a few developments have made Tony Stark
more cold-hearted and arrogant. He advocated the registration of superheroes in
the misguided Civil War series. This
raised serious questions of civil liberties, since the heroes were drafted into
working for the government, and brought Iron Man into direct conflict with
Captain America. And do not get into
a moral battle with Captain America. Iron Man has also done a number of shady
things over the last few years, particularly by associating with the
Illuminati, a group of heroes who take morally dubious actions to save the
world — actions that years ago would have been unthinkable in comics.
In contrast, movie Tony Stark is arrogant and obnoxious.
Downey’s performance has been charming but I’m starting to find him
insufferable. Nobody else around Stark can speak a full sentence because he’ll
just interrupt them with a smartass comment that graces everyone else with his
shining ego. Just once, I’d like one of the other Avengers tell him to shut up.
Iron Man in the movies has a personality that is closer to
Hawkeye’s. In the comic, Hawkeye is a loudmouth. He’s a very competent,
longtime Avenger but can be sort of uncouth and arrogant. I’m guessing that’s
why they toned him down in the movie to be personality-free while possessed.
Having two Tony Starks running around would have been really aggravating.
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