Tony Stark: Iron Man is a 2018 comic book series published by Marvel Comics as part of the Marvel: A Fresh Start initiative. The series is written by Dan Slott with art by Valerio Schiti.
Following his return from a coma, Tony Stark has founded Stark Unlimited, a think tank for future technologies, as well as an ideas incubator for the Iron Man Armor. Joined by Bethany Cabe, James Rhodes, Jocasta, and newcomer Andy Bhang. Tony navigates the challenges of being a superhero and a businessman.
The first issue was released June 20, 2018. The series lasted for 19 issues, with the final issue released December 18, 2019. The series would be concluded in Iron Man 2020.
Tony Stark: Iron Man provides examples of:
- Badass Family: Thanks to the revelation of his brother, Arno Stark. He tells Tony he doesn't want him to build him an armor... then he makes his own, the Mark MMXX (or 2020) armor.
- The Bus Came Back: Jocasta and Bethany Cabe return.
- Dead All Along: The 2015 graphic novel Avengers: Rage of Ultron ended with Ultron merging with Hank Pym. Whenever the Ultron/Hank Pym hybrid showed up in past Marvel stories, fans have always speculated whether or not some part of Hank Pym was alive (even when a part of his soul gets trapped within Soulworld only to be eaten by Devondra in Infinity Countdown). During "The Ultron Agenda" story arc of Tony Stark: Iron Man, Ultron Pym attempts to fuse humanity and robots together similar to how he and Pym were fused, but when Iron Man reverses the process on his hybrids, revealing that the humans had died during the fusing process, officially confirming that Hank Pym has been dead all along and that the "Pym" personality of Ultron's is nothing more than a simulation of Ultron's Oedipal mind.
- Evil Counterpart: The series seems to be setting his brother Arno up for this role; whilst as brilliant as Tony is, he's also a moral absolutist, who will give out his science-based assistance when asked, but in ways that are often Be Careful What You Wish For. In his first feature in issue #5, Arno allows the workers on a ranch of bio-engineered "ethical cattle" to be stampeded to death when he figures out they've created a Hive Mind that can feel the pain when its individual members are killed, coldly refuses to help a band of Saharan farmers who ignored his instruction to not plant more of the desert-growing grain he gave them, and mocks the man he transplanted a replacement arm onto after it turns out that something of the arm's original owner's consciousness still survives in the arm.
- Humongous Mecha: Tony creates a modular giant armor, twenty stories tall, which assembles itself out of two submersibles, two gunships, a large and a small aircraft, and which he likes to call the Fin Fang Foom-buster.
- Official Couple: Tony Stark and Janet Van Dyne rekindle their romance from The Avengers #224 is issue #4.
- Put on a Bus: A villain example: In issue #19, Ultron Pym surrenders After realizing that he is not the perfect hybrid of Hank Pym and himself, that Hank Pym is actually dead all along after they merged in Avengers: Rage of Ultron, and that Pym's personality is nothing more than a simulation created from his oedipal mind, and is then locked up in a vibranium cell laced with Asgardian magic by the Avengers.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Tony has decided his morals command him to be on the "AI are people too" side of the debate. He hires the Ultron-designed Fem Bot Jocasta specifically to be the Stark Unlimited AI interface, to avoid exploiting or denigrating artificial intelligences. At her instruction, he removed his former suit-controlling AI Friday and transplanted her into a gynoid body. Likewise, in issue #6, she calls him out on planning to simply blow away the robot data-thieves that are attacking his company just because it's expedient and they're legally okay to kill. Ironically, Jocasta is revealed to have herself a case of Become a Real Boy, secretly using Tony's new ultra-immersive virtual reality "eScape" to fantasize about being human, after earlier abortive attempts at using an image inducer to pretend to be a human amongst the other employees went embarrassingly wrong. Then she makes an attempt to transfer her consciousness from her gynoid body into a bio-engineered biodroid body.
- The theme comes to its climax when Arno Stark and Baintronics reveal publicly that Tony is currently a digitally-saved "backup" of the original Tony's mind that was uploaded into a cloned human body (with Baintronic copyright stamps hidden in its blood cells, for added humiliation). The government rules that, no, Tony is not human any more, and thusly Stark Industries defaults to Arno Stark's possession. This causes Tony to get involved in the budding Robot Rebellion to earn human rights for artificial lifeforms.