>Ironman, Cap, Thor and the main avengers titles have a grand total 3 notable stories/runs between them
And only Iron Man is white, straight, young and headlining his solo book.
Unlike some other Avengers, eh Thor?
> Roger Stern Avengers
> Kree Skrull War by Roy Thomas
> Kurt Busiek Avengers
> Steve Englehart Captain America
> Mark Gruenwald Captain America
> Jack Kirby Captain America
> Ed Brubaker Captain America
> Lee/Kirby Thor
> Simonson Thor
> Demon in the Bottle and Armor wars by David Michelinie
>X-Fag
Keep telling yourself that lie
>>77737636
Ironman mans sells the least so better change that
>>77737650
>buying into the Marvel meme that Kree/Skrull war was good and significant
They're already doing it with Secret Invasion, give it 5 more years and people will start praising Bendis Avengers
Thor and Cap have a shit ton of good stories/runs.
...Tony not so much.
>>77737669
For real? Captain Falcon sells better?
>>77737690
Secret Wars was a goddamn masterpiece compared to some of the other events. At least it actually was important and changed things for a while.
>>77737707
Secret Invasion I meant, whoops.
>Korvac Saga
>Kree/Skrull War
>Under Siege
>Ultron Unlimited
>Kang Dynasty
>Red Zone
>>77737703
IM sells like absolute shit, always has
Thor/Cap Falcon sell above average better than regular Cap
>>77737736
All bad/forgettable stories, only significant RELATIVE to how shit the rest of the stories are
>>77737723
It was the worst considering the build, length and the fact it was just one long fight scene
>>77737854
I like how every month that passed, they found more and more ways to detect the completely undetectable Skrulls.
>>77738428
And kill
>>77737694
Tony's problem is that he needs a writer that's really good at coming up with cool tech but nobody in their right mind is gonna waste their best ideas on an Iron Man comic.
>>77738536
Carol killed at least one Skrull on every panel of her tie-in issues.
>>77738661
There's also a mandate relating to Marvel Studios characters so that limits what a writer can do so no decent one would work on IM
Problem extends to Marvel at large too, best cape writers aren't available to them
>>77737560
>Brubaker run
>Demon in a bottle
>Civil War
Well yeah cause up until the 90s the Xmen were Marvel's bread and butter
>>77739627
Spiderman always sold
>>77737814
How do you live with all of this shit taste?
Demon in a bottle fucking sucks, even O'Neil's alcoholism story was better.
>>77737669
They put Bendis on Iron Man specifically because they want him to be their flagship comic character the way he's their flagship movie character.
I don't think it'll ever work. Spider-Man sells. Star Wars sells. Some books sell if the moment is right (like Avengers was a top 10 book during the 3 years Busiek and Perez were doing it together).
And then there's Iron Man. Unless they give him a ton of artificial respiration through promotion, he just is a middling seller because he's a middling comic character. Not bad, not good.
Part of the problem with Iron Man is he's just a suit. He could be anyone in there. Iron Man has no inherent personality; only Tony Stark has a personality. It's why in the movies they keep cutting to Downey inside the armor. Downey is interesting. Iron Man is not.
>>77737690
Yeah, the Kree/Skrull war is not good.
Celestial Madonna/Krang War would be okay, but it has some really, really shitty art.
>>77740487
In the Bronze Age, Iron Man was one of the two titles they gave to young writers on their way up, because he was a character whose book always sold about the same no matter what. Steve Gerber said that's why they gave him Iron Man for a few months, and that's also why they gave him Daredevil - same kind of mid-tier book.
(Iron Man and Daredevil are the two characters where Stan Lee got the least input from Kirby/Ditko, and the comics show his weaknesses more clearly, though I think they're a lot of fun.)
Jim Shooter made Iron Man a more important book by firing Bill Mantlo (the ultimate mid-tier writer) and hiring David Michelinie and Bob Layton to revamp it, but it never really reached the top unless it was doing an easily-promotable storyline like Demon in a Bottle or Armor Wars.
Thor has had a lot of shitty runs, but it's always an "important" book because Kirby and later Simonson did some of their best work on it. And Cap is good whenever a writer manages to make him fit the times, like Englehart or Brubaker did. But Iron Man is usually just kind of there.
>>77740579
This is the stuff movie-fags never understand. Iron Man was C-list at best. Thor had looong stretches of crap that was boring at best and utterly horrid at worst.
Avengers solo books historically just tread water which is why the late 90s relaunches were so impressive. All the Avengers books were good, acclaimed even, for a little while.
I think Iron Man's greatest problem is that he never really struggles unless somebody else is using a mech suit or the avengers are facing some cosmic threat. He can pull any bullshit he wants out of his ass and say it is suit tech because hey, he's a genius and he can make anything. This is the same reason F4 got boring, reed can just whip some random invention out of his ass and save the day. Personally, I think iron man would have sold more if they retconned him to have started out at street level, but occasionally fight with he avengers like Spider-Man. Tony is just too powerful for a perosn without superpowers, so the whole appeal of him being an ordinary human loses its charm (does he still have the extremis superpowers that allow him to talk to machines or some bullshit?).
I haven't read any pre-9/11 IM, but it really seems like writers like to focus on the fact that the suit can do whatever the fuck Tony wants, not that Tony has the ability to make his own power.
>>77740754
The biggest problem is that Iron Man is rarely treated like a sci-fi series. Most of his 80s-early 90s stories are typical superhero soap opera stuff with a thick veneer of corporate espionage. Not all that interesting honestly.
The Heroes Return era gave us some actual sci-fi, cyber-punk type stuff even that petered out pretty quickly and it was really until Extremis that the book got entertaining again (for a little while).
>>77737666
>My X-Fag boogeyman
Yeah, because these characters have sooo many legendary stories
>>77740754
Tony also used to suffer from the most awkward secret identity in superherodom. It's one thing for Bruce Wayne to be Batman, or even Clark Kent to report on Superman's antics, but Iron Man is just a guy in a suit that Tony Stark created - everyone knew Stark created Iron Man and that he funded the Avengers, so he never really did have a double life. It just seemed like he was protecting his secret identity for no reason, which is why they threw it out in the movies.
>>77741254
I may be getting different universes and characters confused, but which universe as iron man as Stark's "body guard" with it on auto pilot around him and stuff
>>77741254
The comics always struggled with the secret identity part. It constantly flips back and forth between Tony pretending Iron is someone else or not. He'll reveal himself, then have a press conference saying he's quitting only to be outed again...only to later have a press conference to announce he's quitting...
>>77741308
616 pulled that shit more than once. That was actually the starting point for the character. Happy and Pepper didn't even know Iron Man was Tony and for a long time just thought Iron Man was an employee.
>>77741308
That was the original secret identity in the mainstream comics, which lasted well into the early '00s.
Busiek and Waid even did a story in 1998 where Tony erased his secret identity from the memories of everyone who found it out (and then Cap was all pissed when he found out and they had a whole Cap/Tony homoerotic morality battle).
The official story was that Iron Man was just Tony Stark's bodyguard in a suit that Stark created, though even the writers would sometimes lampshade how thin a cover story that was.
>>77740754
that's a problem with powers and abilities that don't have a clear set of limits, like magic or SCIENCE or willpower.
Writers will come up with whatever special ability they need for their characer to win, or fail to do so for the plot to advance.
>>77741655
Willpower makes sense though
>>77739785
Notable not great stories
>>77740487
>Without Bendis Ironman sales aren't far above the cancellation zone
>>77740487
Iron Man has a personality, they just reduced it to "I'm a futurist" and "doesn't drink any more" because characterisation is hard when you're decompressing everything to tell a story.
>>77741345
>>77741254
The Avengers didn't even know who was in the suit until sometime in the 80s or something.
>>77739579
Armor Wars is also an important Tony story. It shows how far Tony is willing to go to do what he thinks is right, and how far he's willing to push his personal code of ethics to protect what he sees as his rights. He's every bit as pig-headed as he later acts during Civil War, but for some reason Tonyfags like to claim he's being retarded for no reason there. He kind of is - it's a stupidly overblown premise - but he's also acting true to form.
>>77740754
>>77741655
It's something that can be done amusingly well - as long as you're aware that every technology has limits, asspulls don't become "my invincible powerfield protects me from everything". Coming up with something that works very well, but in a very specific way and then overusing it to the point that someone else counters it spectacularly because they've figured it out is a great story. The best magic/soft scifi is like that. The worst is just "I maed a thing".
>>77744188
Not really. Once you get into "it's powered by feelings" you're going well beyond thermodynamics. In theory, for every hero who has a power that works through willpower, you could design a drug or device that mimics and amplifies that signal (be it a chemical change detected in the user's mind, or some kind of woo-energy emission) to overwhelm it and control their powers for them, very, very easily; it would be basically impossible for them to resist or defeat that ploy.
>>77744404
>I'm a futurist
That's some new bullshit pushed in the last decade
His original character is long dead
>>77737560
And of the Avengers Prime, Tony is the only one who hasn't been sidelined for the sake of "progressiveness".
>>77744229
The numbers for October 2015 showed retailers ordered 279,000 copies of issue 1 (putting it #1) but only 66,000 of issue 2 that same month (putting it #28). Marvel must have really pulled out all the stops to inflate the numbers for #1.
>>77744449
That already happened in the '80s though. Tony Stark, ahead of his time in everything, including being replaced by minority sidekicks.
>>77744485
Finally proof that Bendis doesn't sell, just the hot titles he got to work on did by themselves
>>77744404
What I mean by personality is that when he has the suit on and is flying around, there doesn't seem to be anything in particular that's interesting about him. Batman has a personality just based on the fact that he dresses this way to scare criminals. Spider-Man has a personality in costume that's different from what he's like out of costume. But Iron Man...? He's basically just a hunk of flying metal.
It's like when Captain America shows up in someone else's comic, everyone is awestruck because it's Captain America. Thor shows up, everyone steps back because he's a god. Spider-Man shows up, we know it's going to be a fun team-up with wisecracking. But Iron Man, I don't know. What does it mean to see that suit?
>>77744587
I'd go as far as to say Tony, Ironman, Thor, Steve and Cap have little personality between them, less combine than say Peter or Spiderman
>>77744500
>>77744449
He was a useless drunk, someone had to take over.
The only time he was sidelined solely for progressiveness was when Teen Tony happened.
>>77740579
Huh, I never thought about it but it occurs to me Stan must have liked his heroes to be disabled. Thor's alter ego needs a walking stick, Matt Murdock is blind, Tony has the bad heart.
And they all got their share of "oh woe is me I cannot ask her to fuck me for I am a cripple" speeches. Even Professor X had one about Jean Grey.
>>77745026
A hero with no problems of his own to overcome is not compelling. Even Achilles had an Achilles heel.
>>77745081
Hercules is way more popular than Achilles and none of his problems are physical.
>>77745081
Why did they remove Donald Blake from the movie?
>>77745616
Simonson dumped the Donald Blake secret identity and it had been downplayed since the Kirby days, when he revealed that Blake didn't really exist and was just made up by Odin.
Blake has come back now and then in the comics but they can never get around the fact that he doesn't really exist the way Clark Kent or even Billy Batson exists. Thor is based on Billy/Captain Marvel, but CapMarv is clearly a kid in a man's body, while Thor is nothing like Don.
>>77745616
They didn't, they just made him Jane's ex. Thor even wears his clothes when he first comes to Midgard, and they do this whole bit where they pass him off as Don Blake to SHIELD at the hammer crater. Don Blake is legit his cover identity.
Did you see the movie? I mean, I saw it one time and I remember that.
