Hero or as much of a villain as a number of people he fights?
AXIS proposes that Tony Stark is and has always been a sociopath, even without the titular event throwing the morality of a good quarter of the characters off kilter. This viewpoint is pretty much untouched anywhere else bar where the 'Superior Iron Man' is present as a result of said event.
Tony himself also questions his motives when his memories get wiped, and his teammates help revive him from a coma. He reads about all he did during Civil War, since his backup memories only went up to a certain period of time and certainly not about the Pro-Registration side. While Tony asserts that he would have logically gone down the same path if he had all the facts then as he did now, he looks haunted while looking at the digital and print newspapers. He doesn't seem to know how to respond to the fact that Steve forgives him, telling him that Captain America's death is water under the bridge.
Civil War and the aftermath. Before Civil War, there was his Face–Heel Turn during the terrible "Crossing" storyline that led into Teen Tony and Heroes Reborn. Thankfully, much of that was retconned out in Avengers Forever.
The Iron Nose. It was hated so much that the comic had fans at a convention wearing armor replicas without the nose and telling Tony Stark how hideous it looked.
Riri Williams taking over as the lead character, under the moniker of Ironheart, while Tony is in a coma. Crosses into Broken Base as quite a few liked Riri, but it's hard not to argue it was an odd direction to take, not helped by the fact it was set-up by Civil War II, a story more infamously controversial as the first one, as its predecessor at least had the benefits of some good tie-ins.
Base-Breaking Character: Riri is an extremely polarizing character. To her detractors, she's a one-girl Spotlight-Stealing Squad that took over the Iron Man title despite not properly establishing herself as a hero and an abrasive character on top of that. To her fans, she's a smart and likable character who always faces her challenges with great bravery.
Kieron Gillen's run. The first arc was generally well liked, while the second arc, while mostly liked, irked some of the fans who sided with the Avengers during Avengers vs. X-Men due to the way it treats Tony's attack on the Phoenix. The arcs following, however, for retconning Tony's dad meeting aliens who may be responsible for Tony's intelligence, broke the base even further. One party found the story interesting, the other felt the idea robbed Tony of his independence by establishing he was predisposed from birth to make his armor. The ending and subsequent arc where its revealed that he wasn't the child 451 altered, and is instead Howard Stark's adopted son, and has a secret brother named Arno, is similarly split between those who're still enjoying the run, those who were unsure about the previous story arc but are happy about this revelation and subsequent possible stories, and those who just hate the changes going on and refuse to read.
Brian Michael Bendis' run, which is naturally the case due to Bendis' controversial reputation among Marvel fans. The fact it leads into a particularly controversial event that lead to a company-wideAudience-Alienating Era probably doesn't help, though some felt that Tony's book was one of the better parts. An especially major factor was introducing Riri Williams, not to mention expanding on the already-controversial Gillen plot point about Tony being adopted and the 'mystery' of who his birth parents are.
Tony/Janet is a minor one, as largely fans quite like the relationship because Tony and Janet had long had a very close friendship and had previously dated, not to mention they're Birds of a Feather and she provided a lot of needed levity. Others however disliked the fact it seemed to demote Janet to Tony's sidekick, and felt that Tony had too many similarities with her ex, Hank Pym, that it made the relationship possibly unhealthy.
Issue #8 of her solo series gives Riri's backstory. She expected her kindergarten teacher to brush off her ambitions only for the teacher to encourage Riri in her dream. In response, Riri stares at her teacher as if she was upset over not being discriminated against. The divide comes down to either finding this plotline a good subversion of the usual "you'll never amount to anything" bad guy trope and young Riri was just being confused about why said trope wasn't in play, or finding this scene ridiculous for making Riri come across like she actually wants to be discriminated against to prove a point, which isn't helped by a scene where she mocks a NASA secretary over the phone when they (rightfully) assume the random 12-year-old who called can't yet qualify for a position.
Tony Stark's best friend is James Rhodes, and his love interest is Pepper Potts, right? Sort of true. When Iron Man first got a supporting cast (Tales of Suspense #45), Pepper was his love interest, whilst his best friend was his chauffeur/bodyguard, Happy Hogan. There was a love triangle between the three for years before Happy and Pepper eventually got married and moved away. By the time Rhodey entered the scene, Tony had dated many other women, notably Madame Masque and Bethany Cabe. Whilst Happy died during Civil War, and it is certainly true that Rhodey and Pepper are Tony's two most prominent supporting characters, Pepper still hasn't been a romantic interest of Tony's for years - in fact, a plot point in Kieron Gillen's run hinged on the fact that she got engaged. Like many examples here, this perception is largely due to the movies, which had Pepper as the primary love interest and Rhodey as Tony's best friend from the beginning, with Happy taking on a much smaller role.
Iron Man is also known as the celebrity superhero, one without a Secret Identity and who is basically a rockstar who both fights bad guys and is renowned by the public. While that's true now, for most of his history, it wasn't. Iron Man's identity was as closely guarded as Spider-Man's. Notably, he founded the Avengers without any of the other heroes knowing who he is (Hank Pym wasn't pleased to learn he wasn't the lone super-genius of the founders, either). Many of his allies didn't know he was Iron Man, and Stark constructed a backstory that Iron Man was his personal bodyguard with many stories hinging on no one knowing that Tony Stark is Iron Man. Rhodes (aka War Machine) didn't know he was Iron Man until much later on. As for when he became public, that wasn't until 2002, where he revealed himself as Iron Man for the purpose of saving a dog when one was in danger of an incoming car, and he couldn't avoid it. Even then, he was actually able to back out and be secretive a while longer. It wasn't until the Civil War arc in 2006 where Tony Stark completely announced to the world he was Iron Man as a gesture of support for the Pro-Reg side he was leading, and has remained that way ever since. As such, the idea of him being public is Newer Than They Think. This perception is fueled by the MCU's portrayal, with the iconic "I am Iron Man" scene setting the stage for the rest of the franchise. It should be noted that they intended him to have a secret identity there as well, but as the movie was largely improvised, Robert Downey Jr. came up with that on the spot, they went with it, and the rest is history.
Creator's Pet: Riri herself was one of these for Bendis, though the degree to which is still hotly debated (some fans claim Riri was merely a character Bendis conceived and wrote for his daughters, while others claim he literally based her off one or both of his daughters).
Maria Hill gained a number of fans during the post Secret Invasion storylines, possibly due to Matt Fraction being the first writer to develop her outside of a role as a person to be an enemy for the Avengers.
The Stark Seven, a team Tony's dad formed to perform a heist on an alien-ran casino back before Tony was born, and featured in a single story arc in Kieron Gillen's run. Fans were asking for a miniseries about the group once they appeared, and some are still waiting.
One of them, the woman called "The Bear", did reappear in Al Ewing's run on Mighty Avengers, which explained her backstory... and how she could reappear in the modern day when the flashback showed her being blown up.
Amongst the Rogues Gallery there's Ghost, Blizzard, and Madame Masque.
Iron Monger/Obadiah Stane. He has been dead for decades now, but he was the centerpiece of such a major story arc that fans will always remember him as one of Tony's greatest foes.
Thanks to how much Tony's supporting cast changes with each new run and the importance of different figures within it, during the long-stints where they are not regular parts of his life James Rhodes and Pepper Potts qualify whenever they do show up.
Rhodey's dad in the recent Iron Patriot miniseries. Best.Dad. Ever.
His mom in the previous War Machine volume by Greg Pak is also pretty awesome in her appearances. Which is interesting as both were quite cruel to his girlfriend in their appearances in v1 of his series.
Epileptic Trees: Immediately following Civil War, Tony is fighting Mole Man creatures with his Avengers team when, all of a sudden, Ultron reveals it has invaded his biology and transforms Tony into a copy of the Wasp. Considering Tony's biggest crime during Civil War was building a cyborg with the power of Thor (as well as locking up heroes and building a giant ersatz Masters of Evil which Ultron used to lead), it's not so hard to just assume that a lot of Tony's immoral actions were the product of Ultron inside of him, influencing his actions.
Evil Is Cool:The Mandarin having stylish clothes,cunning strategist ,marital artist,and using the ten rings he cemented himself as Iron Man's greatest foe.
Fan Nickname: Tony's Abusive Boyfriend, for the armour in the arc in which the Iron Man armour became sentient.
Tales of Suspense #45. The first handful of issues were pure silver age, starring a Bruce Wayneexpy who battles such goofy threats as a Neanderthal robot caveman (sent by aliens, naturally) or casually uses magic to venture back in time and romance Cleopatra. But #45 turned the focus squarely towards Tony Stark as both a wounded man with a debilitating chest injury and a genius inventor during the Cold War who struggles to stop the misappropriation of his technology, as well as introduced major supporting characters Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts to give him more of a plotline when out of costume. The run of issues that follow would also introduce Marvel mainstays the Mandarin, Crimson Dynamo, Black Widow, and Hawkeye, as well as Iron Man's now-standard red-and-gold armor.
Iron Man was not as big a hit early on as some of his contemporaries and started to really develop into a fully realized character when David Michelinie and Bob Layton took over writing duties with the character defining Demon in a Bottle arc. They'd do it again during their second run with Armor Wars.
Harsher in Hindsight: During the "Armor Wars" storyline (written in 1987), Tony is forced to "fire" Iron Man as Stark Enterprises' spokesman. Trying to find a new and trustworthy face, one employee asks "I wonder if Bill Cosby is available..."
Hilarious in Hindsight: In issue 9 of Marvel Team-Up, Spider-Man referred to Iron Man as Sherlock Holmes. Guess who plays both Iron Man and Sherlock Holmes in the movies?
Ho Yay: Piles, both with War Machine in the Iron Man books, and Steve Rogers in The Avengers.
Iron Woobie: War Machine / James "Rhodey" Rhodes. Was literally this when he was a cyborg, but even without the enhancements he counts as a straight example. As Tony's best friend, he's had to put up with a lot of Tony's more questionable decisions, all the while trying to live up to Tony's general reputation as Iron Man, constantly feeling like he didn't really deserve the power and trust he was given, made worse by the improperly calibrated brainwave controls causing him mental issues. At one point his sister was killed, a war buddy (who was also the husband of his childhood best friend) betrayed him and used his armour for villainy (AFTER he'd had to face two other such friends in their own villainous identities years before), then later he was caught in a terrorist attack that blew off his arms, legs, and half his face, and was Forced to Watch as a friend of his was executed by one of the terrorists who taunted him all the while. When rebuilt as a cyborg, his upgrades came with the downside of connecting him to a database that made him see every horrific war crime recorded in recent years (including the torture, beating, rape, and experimentation performed on the above mentioned childhood best friend), with a photographic memory causing him to be unable to stop seeing these images, turning him homicidal from the trauma. And then, there's his family being targeted by a Domestic Terrorist group who try to force him to kill the former president, resulting in his dad's death.
Jerkass Woobie: Stan Lee has stated that this was his original intention in the creation of Tony Stark. He wanted to create a character who was a bit of a bastard for his war-profiteering, womanizing, and fast lifestyle but was also pitied (especially by women) for his insecurities due to his injury and the knowledge that what he was making was killing people.
Madame Masque. She may be a supervillain, but she's legitimately mentally ill and keeps being evil mainly because she thinks everyone she cares about betrayed her.
Living Laser, though the Jerkass part far outweighs the Woobie part. Still, being a being of living energy that constantly risks dissipating into nothing can't be doing good for his mental state.
Magnificent Bastard: Iron Man's archenemy, The Mandarin, is his mental and physical superior, and one of the few people who Tony Stark genuinely fears. With looted alien technology at his disposal, and a worldwide network of agents prepared to do his bidding, Mandarin has nearly brought down both the American and Chinese governments, requiring Iron Man to ally with the Chinese Communist leadership and its super teams in order to stop him. Infiltrating SHIELD during the "Extermis" storyline and Iron Man's own mind during "The Long Way Down" and "The Future" Mandarin has a proven ability to turn up in places he should not, and deal incalculable damage while there.
Moral Event Horizon: A fair few readers are convinced Tony himself came precariously close to this line in the much-maligned Civil War: Front Line, in which it's revealed that one of the ideas he had for uniting the warring superhumans was to stage a False Flag Operation to bait Atlantis into going to war with the U.S., a threat which all the heroes would have to team up against. Stark is saved from the pit by the fact that the idea remains precisely that, an idea, but had he actually gone and done it, there's little doubt most fans and quite possibly many writers would've considered him an unrepentant villain. What's worse is that the writer, Paul Jenkins (who has since become one of the most despised men at Marvel) seemed to be arguing that this was a logical thing to do!
Tony and Reed cloning Thor. Particularly as Tony was close friends with Thor, and Tony was in possession of the hair used to clone Thor since they met.
Many fans believed Tony crossed it During Civil War when he Hired supervillains like The Green Goblin, Venom and (‘“)LADY DEATHSTRIKE to hunt down the Anti-Registration side.
Tony himself questions if he did the right thing after he wiped his memories to stop Green Goblin and regains them following a recovery period. He noticeably looks haunted when he reads that he got Captain America killed as a result of their conflict.
Sasha Hammer hits this during Iron Man's Fear Itself tie-in: not only she blows off the main pilot of her Detroit Steel fleet be turned to stone by Mokk (Grey Gargoyle), she also goes on to leave Rescue (Pepper) to fight him alone while trying to make herself look good. And when he's got Pepper in his clutches and is ready to deal the killing blow, she simply... retreats.
David Michelinie and Bob Layton in the early 1980s transformed the character with such innovations such as his specialized armors and his drinking problem.
Of course, in The New '10s, many consider the Marvel Cinematic Universe incarnation of the character as directed and portrayed by Jon Favreau and Robert Downey Jr. respectively to be his latest parents. Downey's humorous Eccentric Millionaire big kid approach to the character brought a great deal of levity to a character who had usually been on the serious side, and likewise elevated Tony's profile with the mainstream to be one of Marvel's flagship characters alongside icons like Spider-Man and the X-Men, with Tony's later comic versions being based on Downey's appearance.
Tony's alcoholism, although his actions in Civil War are catching up in their effect on his reputation.
While plenty of Affirmative-Action Legacy characters have had bumpy starts (see Miles Morales and Kamala Khan for starters), Riri made an especially bad first impression among readers. This was magnified after Issue #8 showed her as a kid in kindergarten came out, it became a common half-joking critique among Riri detractors to present her as a "spiteful sociopath" who would come across much better as a character if she became a tragic hero-turned-villain. For context, the comic showed Riri telling her teacher that she wants to be a scientist and the teacher encouraging her. Riri expected to be told that she couldn't be one because of her gender and race because that's how the first female astronaut started out. After being told that the times have changed and she could be whatever she wanted in her life, Riri seemed disappointed rather than happy. She proceeded to stare at the teacher◊ until she seemingly realized what Riri wanted to hear and randomly told Riri "Okay, you'll never be... Tony Stark" just to get her to stop and Riri then immediately became determined to prove her wrong. While the scene was intended to be a funny subversion of the trope often used in many minority upliftment narratives, some suggest that Riri became a hero not out of the goodness of her heart but out of spite for some comment a teacher made a decade ago (and one said teacher didn't even actually believe), and that she wouldn't have become a superhero if her teacher mentioned anyone else.
Nightmare Fuel: Near the conclusion of the Extremis story arc, Tony battled the bio-super-soldier Mallen for the second time... and this time, he won. Unfortunately, Mallen made it abundantly clear that only death would stop him... and after Iron Man has blasted a fist-sized hole through his chest and he just keeps trying to choke Tony through the armor, he repulsors Mallen's head off. And then, for a moment, Mallen's decapitated body tries to get up again.
During Fear Itself, Iron Man deployed to Paris, France, to take on the Grey Gargoyle, who was possessed by the spirit of Mokk, one of the generals of the Big Bad. There, he discovers that all people in the city have been turned to stone. During his battle with Mokk, he gets knocked out, and comes to in a giant pile of broken statues - oops, make that a giant pile of petrified corpses.
Issue 255 - Freak Quincy, after accidentally swapping Iron Man's and Crimson Dynamo's minds, getting his arms blasted off by Iron Man's pulse bolts, due to Dynamo's unfamiliarity with Iron Man's weapons systems. Quincy somehow managed to survive long enough to facilitate a reversal of the swap.
Nightmare Retardant: In Tony Stark: Iron Man, Tony struggles with the idea that, since he cheated death by growing a clone of his body and downloading his consciousness into it, there's a distinct possibility that he isn't the true Tony Stark, just a copy. After all, he doesn't share a single cell with the pre-death Tony. This would be somewhat compelling... except the human body does the same thing naturally. Because of constant cell death and replication, your present-day body does not share a single cell with the you from, say, five or ten years ago. Fantastical, roundabout way of it aside, Tony is absolutely the original and is kind of being an idiot.
This is further solidified when Tony begins angsting about relapsing after being brainwashed into drinking...in a VR game. Granted, exactly how advanced the VR system Tony designed is does run far beyond what's currently realistically possible, but no alcohol actually entered his system, so while he had an artificial taste and possibly a recreation of the electrical impulses it causes, there's nothing that should physically cause him to crave more. Relapsing is genuinely scary for alcoholics with as bad an experience as Tony, but it does come off as him grossly over-reacting.
Older Than They Think: The often-criticized "Queen of Latveria" story echoes an arc (Authoritative Action) from Mark Waid's Fantastic Four run where the FF took over Latveria. The Fantastic Four ran Latveria for a longer period of time than Riri did. Like Riri, their motive was to improve the lives of Latverian citizens, and like Riri they ran into disapproval from SHIELD. (But not from fans, oddly enough).
One criticism of Riri is that she has not been properly established in Iron Man comics before taking the mantle. In reality, she got the same amount of set-up as several well-known legacy characters in superhero comic books like Eric Masterson, Kyle Rayner, Conner Kent and John Henry Irons, Jaime Reyes or Cassandra Cain, all of whom has either been introduced in the stories ending with them taking the mantle or while they're already replacing their predecessor.
Even the criticisms that she got into heroics for less-than-noble intentions (which is a creative interpretation of her character) seem to ignore how many other superheroes, including successors, had less-than-heroic origins. Tony Stark himself was intentionally a prick when first introduced, Eric O'Grady's Ant-Man was a genuine sociopath who only used the Ant-Man suit for selfish gains, Booster Gold was a glory hound only seeking fame, Stargirl was a teenaged brat trying to spite her step-dad, Wally West spent his early days as The Flash charging people for saving them, etc. Like, in comparison, her abrasive personality is pretty tame.
Portmanteau Couple Name: Vivheart for Riri/Viv Vision in Champions and Shuriri for Riri/Shuri. The latter, amusingly enough, has been coined in-universe by Silhouette and Okoye to knock Shuri down a peg.
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Riri was an extremely polarizing character upon her introduction, with the main criticisms being her often abrasive personality and inadequate set-up as a decent hero. Under the direction of other writers (including the aforementioned Jim Zub and Eve Ewing), opinions toward her softened considerably, with some former detractors stating Brian Michael Bendis just didn't do the best job with setting her up.
Riri tends to be victim to this, largely concerning the "Invading Latveria" story arc. It's often pointed out that in her intent to both arrest and embarrass Lucia von Bardas, she conquered a sovereign nation without thinking anything of the potential ramifications. Naturally, fanfiction interprets her as some iron-fisted ruler.
Also notable are how a number of her flaws are often viewed; as written, she's an awkward and somewhat abrasive kid who's too smart for her own good but not mature enough to use said smarts. If you were to base your opinion on her on what her detractors think of her, you'd think she was an outright sociopath.
Tony is capable of doing questionable things trying to help people, and a lot of his Civil War appearances have him doing this (the cloned Thor and Negative Zone camps being the most notable of them), but some fanworks really like to play up Tony as a reprehensible dictator who would cross more lines than the Punisher to enforce what he calls justice, even after it all came to an end.
Civil War had the potential to do interesting plot in which Tony is forced to go to more and more extreme measures to enforce an act that would - depending on who was writing - govern and hold responsibility over the entire superhero community. Rather than attempting to properly address the nuance of the situation, most writers (intentionally or otherwise) wrote Tony - and by extension the rest of the Pro-Registration camp - as the outright bad guys in the conflict.
Crosses into They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character, but the general concept of Riri Williams is not a bad idea, Tony having a teenage protege who ends up becoming something of a Legacy Character for him when he's taken out of action. However, Riri was introduced rather awkwardly mere issues before it was announced she was going to take over, before she even met Tony, which naturally created an Audience-Alienating Premise, so there was really no way to develop and explore the idea of her as Tony's protege and successor in a convincing, acceptable manner. When Tony came back, Riri was Put on the Bus from his book, getting her own and appearing in some teen team books, but otherwise severing her connection with Tony, thus robbing her of the opportunity to develop as his protege, something that could have Rescued from the Scrappy Heap her for much of her hatedom.
Too Cool to Live: A lot of Tony's armors, especially in the '90s to present day, rarely gets fair shakes, some of them lasting no more than a year or two before they're unceremoniously cast aside for the newest-designed armor. For instance, the famous "Modular Armor", while well known for being in the 1994 cartoon and being used throughout the early Marvel vs. Capcom era, actually only lasted a year and a half in the comics.
. It was hated so much that the comic had fans at a convention wearing armor replicas without the nose and telling Tony Stark how hideous it looked.
