(no subject)
In Extremis and later in Execute Program Tony Stark asks "Could the Iron Man suit end war?" At the close of Execute Program Tony concludes that the suit is 'just another gun'. Execute Program is followed by Civil War, where Tony leads the pro-government faction of the superhero community, in a series of skirmishes against the anti-government faction lead by Captain America. In The Confession, a CW epilogue, Tony relates a rambling anecdote about a trip to the Arthurian court with Dr Doom, wherein he became convinced that conflict in the hero community was inevitable.
So how do we reconcile the Tony who became convinced of the inevitability of war, with the Tony (who must logically, chronologically follow the first) thinks the Iron Man suit could end war? I could say that what we have are two different interpretations of the character, but it's more fun to say that we're seeing Tony-the-character work out two ideas about the sources of (and solutions to) war.
1. Arms and arms races are the source of war. Extremis is very much a story about Tony-the-former-arms-dealer. He's an idealist, to be sure. He asks Sal Kennedy if the suit could end war - essentially he's asking if the suit could be an effective enough deterrent to prevent war. * I think that it's important that Extremis isn't a story about Iron Man the Avenger, or superhero. When Tony talks about the possibility of ending war in this story, he seems to be talking about ending war between human governments.
Tony is a former arms dealer who built his company with military seed money. We're told that children continue to be maimed and killed by his land mines.
We learn that sometimes he can’t bear to look at his own reflection.
Tony is a man who is painfully, fully aware of his contributions to suffering around the world. He knows he fucked up. But because he’s aware of how he has done evil, he can recognize his potential for doing good - he knows that he can be, and is a force for good in the world.
Being Iron Man is his favourite way of doing good (as well as being totally fun) - it’s hands-on, immediate and tangible. By the end of Execute Program, being Iron Man has been, in a sense, tainted. There have been other stories where Tony doesn’t want to be Iron Man anymore, or doubts his effectiveness and usefulness, but I think this is the first one where he realizes that Iron Man is a weapon that is easily misused, and one that he has himself misused.
The key is the concept of the suit being in essence, the ultimate WMD. It’s like a... talking, flying nuke, and Tony, a private citizen, has complete and total control of the technology. And he’s not even sharing with his own government.
After he’s ‘weaponized’ his own tech, it’s not such a stretch for him to ‘weaponize’ superhumans. The Iron Man suit has been taken over, abused, used for petty ends (by Tony and by others), just as superhumans have. On so many occasions. If Iron Man is a gun, manufactured by Tony Stark, then isn’t Captain America a gun, manufactured by the American government? Or Scarlet Witch a weapon, manufactured by the X factor? It makes a lot of sense to me that a former arms dealer, (who is still a SHIELD and US defense contractor) would think in these terms. It also makes sense in the context of his engineering background - he frames the problem in terms that he understands and as something that can be fixed.
If superhumans are arms, and arms cause war, ergo we need superhuman arms control.
Human nature is the source of war.
Post-Execute Program Tony is convinced that the Iron Man suit is just another gun, that it isn’t enough to end war. He seems to still be committed to ending all war, but he no longer thinks that arms control is sufficient, right? Well sort of. Tony still thinks that arms control is important, but he wants to expand his agenda to include human WMDs.
Some fans argue that Tony’s support of Registration was contrary to his previous characterization (especially Armor Wars), but his support of Registration comes from a long-standing belief that war is a part of human nature. But that also, human behaviour can be modified. Registration represents the beginning of his efforts to change human behaviour more generally.
Tony is one of the founding Avengers and he funds the group through his charitable foundation, even when he isn’t on the team. He believes, almost from the start, in the importance of superheroes, and crucially, not in back alley vigilantes, but in organized superHEROes who will together fight the fights that no one of them can handle alone. There’s a huge cowboy element to his character, but as much as he likes to go his own way, he also clearly believes that no one can go alone all the time, because there will be threats that he can’t handle. There will be future threats to the world. The Avengers are founded pretty early on in his superhero career, but Tony is already convinced that a permanent team is necessary, and he throws a lot of money into it.
Through the Maria Stark foundation he also supports other charitable causes - the foundation has a mandate to end poverty, build sustainable housing, revitalize neighborhoods, give scholarships to economically disadvantaged youngins. If you count Marvel Adventures: Iron Man, he supports, and has worked for Habitat for Humanity. There may have been Peace Corps too, but my memory is fuzzy. In Execute Program he funds and organizes an international peace conference, and it’s implied that he funds peace research and peace building efforts.
Tony is a guy who’s committed to social justice in general, and to changing the world. But his core concern remains conflict and security because what he wants, fundamentally, is to protect all human life. (This, btw, is not new - it dates at least back to the 70’s circa his trying to kill himself with alcohol). I think that by the time of Civil War, he’s started to think in terms of human security, and think about how the underlying social conditions lead to human insecurity.
Ok, so if human-nature-causes-war comes before arms-races-cause-war (damn retcons!) then how does this all work out?
Well, I think that we’re looking at a character who needs, on a very basic level, to reduce things to engineering problems. If he frames the larger problem of human nature being he cause of war in terms of arms control, it’s easier to manage. It’s a problem he’s capable of fixing. But by the time the CW comes along, Tony has decided that model is too small.
He has refused to produce arms for world governments, and shifted into defensive and consumer products (aside from the stuff he makes for SHIELD). He’s funded and been a part of the Avengers for years and years. He’s even fought the US government for control over his own tech. But war is still happening. And when he goes back to Arthur’s court he’s forced to admit that war could easily erupt in his own community.
Tony is convinced not only that it could happen, but that it will. And further, that superhumans will be a source of friction in an even broader conflict.
So he thinks on the problem of human nature being the cause of war. He thinks on the problem of a superhuman war, on the personalities in his community, on the rising tensions between humans and superhumans, between the government, the people and superheroes, and he comes up with a plan.
Tony, being the practical idealist that he is, decides that he’s going to engineer a solution to the problem of human nature. He figures he’ll start small. He’ll start with superhumans, because he sees a conflict brewing. He no longer sees weapons (or superhuman weapons) as the source of war, instead they’re a means for human nature to achieve its end - conflict. By the end of Execute Program he’s forced to admit that WMDs can’t end war, and that they don’t cause war - they may be the immediate reason for particular conflict, but there’s something inherent, something that precedes the weapons.
In the Illuminati mini, Tony wants to create a kind of superhuman United Nations. An idea which is shot down as being impractical and overly idealistic by the other ‘leaders’ of the superhuman community. His first plan sounds an awful lot like an international Avengers organization. ** Instead, the Illuminati is formed and the group, operating like a secret, elite Avengers, handles crises that no one else can. But the group meets intermittently and only works on developing, or potential crises. This is not enough for Tony and he and Reed Richards begin to secretly consult on the longer term problem of human nature. It’s the combination of Reed and Tony that results in the commitment to ‘manage’ history.
When the Registration Act first comes along, Tony sees a threat to his lifestyle, but moreover, a threat to peace. The government control all the living WMDs? Oh noes. Tony previously fought the government over control of his tech - he’s by no means afraid of the US government. So he decides initially to fight the act.
What changed his mind?
1. Stamford. Yeah, ok. This one is obvious - he’s the bleedingist bleeding heart to ever bleed. It brings up all his guilt over having been an arms dealer and taints what he sees as having been his greatest contribution to the world. It makes superhero-ing dirty. It reminds him of every time he screwed up and forces him to ask himself why he didn’t do better.
2. Project Wide Awake. This is the big one. A lot of people see this as Tony’s ‘excuse’ for his actions in Civil War and not as a credible threat. But I think that far more than Stamford, it’s the kind of trigger the character needed to change his mind. Stamford is one thing, but as of the 70’s Tony was riding a wave of crippling guilt. On the other hand Project Wide Awake is a major threat to social justice. Any attempt to implement it, in a climate of serious tensions between humans and superhumans, will result in major loss of life. Basically, it’s a call to arms.
The last thing Tony wants is a war, but he sees it as being not only inevitable, but now immanent. It’s coming and it’s coming fast - if the government is willing to even consider Project Wide Awake, then it’s for damn sure serious about Registration. And in a post-Stamford world, it has the support of the public. If superhumans fight it, there will be a war, but because they’re living WMDs the conflict will flare up and spark something much larger. (And they’ll blow a lot of shit up).
Tony chooses to support Registration. He chooses to support Registration because even though it puts him in conflict with part of the superhuman community, it’s a conflict that he believes he can end quickly - he chooses the short war over the long one.
But he also chooses Registration because he comes to believe in its importance. Factor in Arthur’s court. Factor in the Avengers. Factor in Extremis and Execute Program. Tony believes that there must be structures in place to fight the big fights, but he also believes that those structures need to have a formal system of accountability. It’s not enough to be committed to the fight.
Aaaand I think I'm done for now.
* Although this idea is picked up in Execute Program with the suit being turned into the ultimate peacekeeping/search and rescue platform. Even in Extremis he says that he views Iron Man’s role as primarily being peacekeeping, but there’s definitely (I think) a suggestion of military deterrence. Especially when you consider that he approaches extremis much the same as he does his own tech, and dangerous alien tech he’s encountered in the past - he co-opts it and takes total control over it, denying everyone but himself use of it.
** Total ripoff of Justice League Unlimited. I would totally love to see how his idea would have turned out.
Anyway, it seems like this is the week for Tony talk:
crisonquills has a post about perceived vs. actual Tony.
And if you're at all interested in the character you should check out WAXING SHELLHEAD PART 1: BREVOORT TALKS IRON MAN and WAXING SHELLHEAD 2: KNAUFS TALK “IRON MAN: DIRECTOR OF S.H.I.E.L.D.”" at Comic Book Resources, part of a week long series about Iron Man. ETA: WAXING SHELLHEAD PART 3: BENDIS TALKS IRON MAN AND AVENGERS.
So how do we reconcile the Tony who became convinced of the inevitability of war, with the Tony (who must logically, chronologically follow the first) thinks the Iron Man suit could end war? I could say that what we have are two different interpretations of the character, but it's more fun to say that we're seeing Tony-the-character work out two ideas about the sources of (and solutions to) war.
1. Arms and arms races are the source of war. Extremis is very much a story about Tony-the-former-arms-dealer. He's an idealist, to be sure. He asks Sal Kennedy if the suit could end war - essentially he's asking if the suit could be an effective enough deterrent to prevent war. * I think that it's important that Extremis isn't a story about Iron Man the Avenger, or superhero. When Tony talks about the possibility of ending war in this story, he seems to be talking about ending war between human governments.
Tony is a former arms dealer who built his company with military seed money. We're told that children continue to be maimed and killed by his land mines.
We learn that sometimes he can’t bear to look at his own reflection.
Tony is a man who is painfully, fully aware of his contributions to suffering around the world. He knows he fucked up. But because he’s aware of how he has done evil, he can recognize his potential for doing good - he knows that he can be, and is a force for good in the world.
Being Iron Man is his favourite way of doing good (as well as being totally fun) - it’s hands-on, immediate and tangible. By the end of Execute Program, being Iron Man has been, in a sense, tainted. There have been other stories where Tony doesn’t want to be Iron Man anymore, or doubts his effectiveness and usefulness, but I think this is the first one where he realizes that Iron Man is a weapon that is easily misused, and one that he has himself misused.
The key is the concept of the suit being in essence, the ultimate WMD. It’s like a... talking, flying nuke, and Tony, a private citizen, has complete and total control of the technology. And he’s not even sharing with his own government.
After he’s ‘weaponized’ his own tech, it’s not such a stretch for him to ‘weaponize’ superhumans. The Iron Man suit has been taken over, abused, used for petty ends (by Tony and by others), just as superhumans have. On so many occasions. If Iron Man is a gun, manufactured by Tony Stark, then isn’t Captain America a gun, manufactured by the American government? Or Scarlet Witch a weapon, manufactured by the X factor? It makes a lot of sense to me that a former arms dealer, (who is still a SHIELD and US defense contractor) would think in these terms. It also makes sense in the context of his engineering background - he frames the problem in terms that he understands and as something that can be fixed.
If superhumans are arms, and arms cause war, ergo we need superhuman arms control.
Human nature is the source of war.
Post-Execute Program Tony is convinced that the Iron Man suit is just another gun, that it isn’t enough to end war. He seems to still be committed to ending all war, but he no longer thinks that arms control is sufficient, right? Well sort of. Tony still thinks that arms control is important, but he wants to expand his agenda to include human WMDs.
Some fans argue that Tony’s support of Registration was contrary to his previous characterization (especially Armor Wars), but his support of Registration comes from a long-standing belief that war is a part of human nature. But that also, human behaviour can be modified. Registration represents the beginning of his efforts to change human behaviour more generally.
Tony is one of the founding Avengers and he funds the group through his charitable foundation, even when he isn’t on the team. He believes, almost from the start, in the importance of superheroes, and crucially, not in back alley vigilantes, but in organized superHEROes who will together fight the fights that no one of them can handle alone. There’s a huge cowboy element to his character, but as much as he likes to go his own way, he also clearly believes that no one can go alone all the time, because there will be threats that he can’t handle. There will be future threats to the world. The Avengers are founded pretty early on in his superhero career, but Tony is already convinced that a permanent team is necessary, and he throws a lot of money into it.
Through the Maria Stark foundation he also supports other charitable causes - the foundation has a mandate to end poverty, build sustainable housing, revitalize neighborhoods, give scholarships to economically disadvantaged youngins. If you count Marvel Adventures: Iron Man, he supports, and has worked for Habitat for Humanity. There may have been Peace Corps too, but my memory is fuzzy. In Execute Program he funds and organizes an international peace conference, and it’s implied that he funds peace research and peace building efforts.
Tony is a guy who’s committed to social justice in general, and to changing the world. But his core concern remains conflict and security because what he wants, fundamentally, is to protect all human life. (This, btw, is not new - it dates at least back to the 70’s circa his trying to kill himself with alcohol). I think that by the time of Civil War, he’s started to think in terms of human security, and think about how the underlying social conditions lead to human insecurity.
Ok, so if human-nature-causes-war comes before arms-races-cause-war (damn retcons!) then how does this all work out?
Well, I think that we’re looking at a character who needs, on a very basic level, to reduce things to engineering problems. If he frames the larger problem of human nature being he cause of war in terms of arms control, it’s easier to manage. It’s a problem he’s capable of fixing. But by the time the CW comes along, Tony has decided that model is too small.
He has refused to produce arms for world governments, and shifted into defensive and consumer products (aside from the stuff he makes for SHIELD). He’s funded and been a part of the Avengers for years and years. He’s even fought the US government for control over his own tech. But war is still happening. And when he goes back to Arthur’s court he’s forced to admit that war could easily erupt in his own community.
Tony is convinced not only that it could happen, but that it will. And further, that superhumans will be a source of friction in an even broader conflict.
So he thinks on the problem of human nature being the cause of war. He thinks on the problem of a superhuman war, on the personalities in his community, on the rising tensions between humans and superhumans, between the government, the people and superheroes, and he comes up with a plan.
Tony, being the practical idealist that he is, decides that he’s going to engineer a solution to the problem of human nature. He figures he’ll start small. He’ll start with superhumans, because he sees a conflict brewing. He no longer sees weapons (or superhuman weapons) as the source of war, instead they’re a means for human nature to achieve its end - conflict. By the end of Execute Program he’s forced to admit that WMDs can’t end war, and that they don’t cause war - they may be the immediate reason for particular conflict, but there’s something inherent, something that precedes the weapons.
In the Illuminati mini, Tony wants to create a kind of superhuman United Nations. An idea which is shot down as being impractical and overly idealistic by the other ‘leaders’ of the superhuman community. His first plan sounds an awful lot like an international Avengers organization. ** Instead, the Illuminati is formed and the group, operating like a secret, elite Avengers, handles crises that no one else can. But the group meets intermittently and only works on developing, or potential crises. This is not enough for Tony and he and Reed Richards begin to secretly consult on the longer term problem of human nature. It’s the combination of Reed and Tony that results in the commitment to ‘manage’ history.
When the Registration Act first comes along, Tony sees a threat to his lifestyle, but moreover, a threat to peace. The government control all the living WMDs? Oh noes. Tony previously fought the government over control of his tech - he’s by no means afraid of the US government. So he decides initially to fight the act.
What changed his mind?
1. Stamford. Yeah, ok. This one is obvious - he’s the bleedingist bleeding heart to ever bleed. It brings up all his guilt over having been an arms dealer and taints what he sees as having been his greatest contribution to the world. It makes superhero-ing dirty. It reminds him of every time he screwed up and forces him to ask himself why he didn’t do better.
2. Project Wide Awake. This is the big one. A lot of people see this as Tony’s ‘excuse’ for his actions in Civil War and not as a credible threat. But I think that far more than Stamford, it’s the kind of trigger the character needed to change his mind. Stamford is one thing, but as of the 70’s Tony was riding a wave of crippling guilt. On the other hand Project Wide Awake is a major threat to social justice. Any attempt to implement it, in a climate of serious tensions between humans and superhumans, will result in major loss of life. Basically, it’s a call to arms.
The last thing Tony wants is a war, but he sees it as being not only inevitable, but now immanent. It’s coming and it’s coming fast - if the government is willing to even consider Project Wide Awake, then it’s for damn sure serious about Registration. And in a post-Stamford world, it has the support of the public. If superhumans fight it, there will be a war, but because they’re living WMDs the conflict will flare up and spark something much larger. (And they’ll blow a lot of shit up).
Tony chooses to support Registration. He chooses to support Registration because even though it puts him in conflict with part of the superhuman community, it’s a conflict that he believes he can end quickly - he chooses the short war over the long one.
But he also chooses Registration because he comes to believe in its importance. Factor in Arthur’s court. Factor in the Avengers. Factor in Extremis and Execute Program. Tony believes that there must be structures in place to fight the big fights, but he also believes that those structures need to have a formal system of accountability. It’s not enough to be committed to the fight.
Aaaand I think I'm done for now.
* Although this idea is picked up in Execute Program with the suit being turned into the ultimate peacekeeping/search and rescue platform. Even in Extremis he says that he views Iron Man’s role as primarily being peacekeeping, but there’s definitely (I think) a suggestion of military deterrence. Especially when you consider that he approaches extremis much the same as he does his own tech, and dangerous alien tech he’s encountered in the past - he co-opts it and takes total control over it, denying everyone but himself use of it.
** Total ripoff of Justice League Unlimited. I would totally love to see how his idea would have turned out.
Anyway, it seems like this is the week for Tony talk:
crisonquills has a post about perceived vs. actual Tony.
And if you're at all interested in the character you should check out WAXING SHELLHEAD PART 1: BREVOORT TALKS IRON MAN and WAXING SHELLHEAD 2: KNAUFS TALK “IRON MAN: DIRECTOR OF S.H.I.E.L.D.”" at Comic Book Resources, part of a week long series about Iron Man. ETA: WAXING SHELLHEAD PART 3: BENDIS TALKS IRON MAN AND AVENGERS.