Tony and Pepper's Greatest Hits - IIM volume 3 - part one
This is the first installment of a little thing I like to call Tony and Pepper's Greatest Hits, wherein I flip through various volumes of the comic looking for T/P moments, then cap and share them with you here. It's a dirty job, folks, but someone's gotta do it.
I decided to start with Invincible Iron Man Volume 3 because it's my favourite, and it's my journal, and so there. (The early days of Tony and Pepper are kind of a primer in comic book misogyny and manperms, actually, so I'm not sure how much of that I really want cluttering up my happy place. :P)
Here's a brief history of their relationship in the comics, and a more detailed version including some caps. It's important to note that Pepper was originally intended as a dowdy comic foil and not a love interest. Nowadays, Matt Fraction, the holder of the reigns of the current incarnation of Invincible Iron Man, calls Pepper and her alter-ego Rescue "Tony's vision for the future." Not bad, considering that at the start of the series, Tony couldn't (or couldn't be bothered to) remember her name!
At this point, I have capped up to and including Issue 57, at which point I got sleepy and went to bed. I will do a part 2 of this post at a later date.
Be warned: here be spoilers.
1. Various Headsets
In Invincible Iron Man Volume 3, Tony has just lost his company in a hostile takeover. So he does what any good innovator does: he reinvents himself. He starts a consulting business called "Stark Solutions," where he basically jetsets around the world taking on various engineering projects (which invariably lead him into crime-fighting adventures). Oh, and it's worth mentioning that the person who hires him is more often than not a beautiful woman that he's been involved with in the past, and who puts the moves on him at some point during the adventure. Frequently he wears a tux. It's very James Bond.
Tony hires Pepper to coordinate the boring administrative side of the business (which seems to involve spending a lot of time talking to Tony over various headsets) and Happy to do the grunt work (although he does eventually get a larger and more interesting role). The proceeds from Stark Solutions go directly to the Maria Stark Foundation, a charitable enterprise Tony has set up to try and give back to the community. Named after his mom. Awwww. It would be nice if we actually got some character detail about her in lieu of that, but beggars can't be choosers. (At one point we find out that Howard named a whole island after her, so maybe this is how comically rich industrialists express their feelings? Maybe Movieverse!Tony will name the new element he discovered after Pepper? Pottsium?)
Oh, and P.S., no one but the inner circle know that Tony is Iron Man. This is aided by the fact that Tony can control the suit remotely, so they can seem to be in the same place at once, thus solving the inevitable "Is that a supervillain? WHOOPS GOTTA GO CHANGE A TIRE LIKE A COWARDLY SHIT" dilemma you so often see with secret identity characters. (And eventually, Tony being Tony, he does blow his cover.)
A sampling of headset/monitor conversations:
Check out the last panel of that last one: "Don't worry, Pep--you know I always come back to my best girl, don't you?" OH TONY. This is why you are a bad friend. You see...
2. Worst. Marriage Counselor. EVER.
...meanwhile, back at the ranch, Happy and Pepper (who were married when last seen) have gotten divorced, due to an a ludicrously sad run of hard luck, spousal neglect, and subsequent revenge-fueled infidelity. (Which, come on, happens to the best of us, right?)
Yes, it seems that Pepper cheated on Happy, and so Happy is perhaps overly sensitive to their mutual boss's friendly flirting with his ex-wife. Happy is kind of like Eeyore a lot of the time, all with his sadface on.
Tony, well-meaning but oblivious, frequently tries to play marriage counselor:
Finally, Pepper has had quite enough of this and asks him to cut it the heck out already. (You will have to click on this because LJ will not let me paste the full-sized pic in here for some reason. Consider this a placeholder until I can figure out what the eff is going on here. I CURSE YOU RICH TEXT EDITOR.)
What struck me most about this conversation was that Tony says "Happy loves you" and Pepper's response is "and I love you." That... pretty much sums it up. But they repeat the word "friend" a number of times in this conversation, because of course they're just friends, and anything else is all in our imaginations.
However, as we all know, Tony Stark's own greatest foil is... yep. Tony Stark. So even as he is trying his level best to get those two crazy kids back together (because really, what's an occasional revenge lay among friends?) there are also moments like these:
When I worked as a receptionist, I once had a boss try to ferret out my sexual orientation (my partner at the time had an androgynous name) using a series of carefully-worded multiple-choice questions. This moment? MORE AWKWARD.
Haha, I love this. I'm going to start walking around my house in my bathrobe yelling about how I can't get a date and see whether some hotass falls from the sky. I will let you know the results of that experiment in a future post. Provided I'm not too tired from all the sex I'm bound to be having. Also, is that a giant T on Tony's chest right below his titanium nipples? Sure looks like.
Predictably, Pepper gets kitted out like sex on legs and Tony spends the evening thinking about a new girl he kinda likes (Rumiko) while simultaneously reminiscing about an old flame (Sunset) who fucked him over and stole from his parents.
"I wish I had a woman in my life who could support me through this! Just not, you know, the one who is SUPPORTING ME RIGHT NOW. SADFACE." Oh Tony.
Pepper also doesn't like Tony's off-again, off-again girlfriend Rumiko Fujikawa very much at all. (Incidentally, Rumiko doesn't know Tony is Iron Man. I'm sure that won't backfire on him very much AT ALL.)
Still, Tony and Pepper are just friends, right?
Okay, before we read too much into this, I should point out that Tony tends to put the moves on Pepper any time he hits the peak of an emotional extreme--high or low. But they're still just friends, right?
Um, right...?
...huh.
I don't really make out with my friends quite this much. (Maybe I need better friends? Maybe they just don't find me attractive?? MAYBE THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH ME, I DON'T KNOW.)
Poor, poor Eeyore Happy. The guy can't catch a break. (Also, is it just me, or does Pepper totally have one normal hand and one giant man-hand in the above? Maybe it's just the perspective, but seriously, it looks like she could crack his skull like a walnut.)
So after all of this friendly face-sucking, now comes the candid admissions of love:
Haha, nope! Gotcha! JUST FRIENDS.
Also, I repeat: WORST. MARRIAGE COUNSELOR. EVER.
Also, I don't usually fantasize about having one of my (regular, non-makeouty) friends wash me in a sensual manner in a hot tub. I won't say that it's never happened, mind you.
(The big reveal is that we thought he was getting into the hot tub with Rumiko. And subsequently we thought this was not a dream sequence. We are SUCKERS for thinking that. Sweet, delicious, slightly sticky suckers.)
Yeah, you'll have to click on that one too, I'm afraid. WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM LJ. WHAT.
3. Ow, my most of me!
Tony has a bum ticker--I think he has, what, six heart attacks in volume 3 alone? He also gets beaten up, like, a shit ton. I am not kidding. The guy can't even walk after some of his crime-fighting engagements. And it turns out the armour is doing all kinds of radiation damage to his sperm count insides and I don't even know what all the hell, but the point is, it ain't good.
So we get to see Pepper presiding over his various recoveries, thusly. (Also, LOL HOVERCHAIR. Comics, amirite?)
I don't know, Happy, it looked to me like Pepper was doing the lion's share of the groping in that little encounter. I'm pretty sure there was an ass-grab in there. I wouldn't blame her. (Remind me to post the caps from Issue 28 where Tony is in nothing but his boxer briefs for like ten pages. It knocks those tighty-spideys right out of the park, trust me.)
HAHA, NO MOUNTAINS. Tony, your cavalier attitude towards your own failing health and multiple heart attacks is side-splittingly hilarious! Also, apparently Pepper likes the Backstreet Boys (which I confess is the only reason for that cap's existence). I dare someone to work that into a fanfic. (Happy also likes music, but no one listens to him anyhow, SADFACE.)
(Is it just me, or is Tony wearing a Livestrong bracelet?)
At one point in the series, the tables are turned and Tony has to visit Pepper in the hospital:
Yes, Pepper was pregnant--somehow, in spite of Tony's stellar marriage counseling efforts, she and Happy did manage to, er, reconnect.
How did this happen? Let's rewind a bit...
4. Immaculate Perception
Now we come to what is, for me, one of the most confusing and depressing parts of the Tony/Pepper storyline in Volume 3.
It all starts one night when Pepper is at the office late:
(I can't tell if Tony is stretching or Hulking out. Either way, I would like to see RDJ re-enact this scene in the next Iron Man movie. Preferrably shirtless. I'm drafting a memo to Marvel right after this.)
(Just friends JUST FRIENDS JUST--)
So Pepper heads home, and Tony has a bust-up with an adversary who is trying to talk Tony into mercy-killing her (it's a long story). She tries to force his hand by attacking Pepper, having witnessed the above tender scene in the parking lot:
So Pepper loses the baby. Honestly, this is probably my least favourite moment in IIM volume 3. I wish they could have found another way to go with this. I hate that female characters always have to either lose a baby or get raped in order for their pain to be seen as equivalent to the male heroes' pain.
Even more bewildering is the fact that Tony seems to think the baby was his. If there is any possibility of that being the case, all I can say is, it didn't happen "on-screen," whereas Happy and Pepper actually do have a sex scene in the comic (which I did not cap, you can thank me later :P).
I get that the baby metaphorically could have been his, as in the baby that he and Pepper could have had if they had chosen to be together, which once again makes everything all about Tony's manpain and completely negates (a) Pepper and even more so, (b) Happy, whose baby it actually was. I think.
Whatever, decide for yourselves:
It really seems like they went to a lot of trouble to recap the fact that they did NOT have sex that night in the parking lot, and ergo probably not at any other time either, although honestly, I couldn't say for sure.
And that's all I got for now. Next time: naked dream zombie Pepper, time travel, and much, much more! Stay tuned!