cap_ironman | Canon Resources Needed!

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canon question

Canon Resources Needed!

Okay, comm! A bunny might have gently gnawed on my digits but for that I am desperately in need of being pointed to certain instances of canon. Please help!

So, we all know Tony can be a bit of an asshole to people around him. Can people please refer me to (preferably with issue number but just the name/description of the particular arc works as well) specific instances of him being an asshole to Pepper / Rhodey / Avengers / other superheroes / his employees / random by-stander / anyone at all! And while post CW instances are fine and more than welcome, what I'm really looking for is of the pre-CW timeline. (But. like I said, both are fine.)

Off the top of my head, I can think of- the time he didn't tell anyone he was cryogenically frozen / not dead; the time he dated Jan without telling her his secret ID; the time he was drunk and rude to Jarvis; the time Rumiko told him she loved him and he didn't respond/ ran away...

Anything else is okay, please?

Edit: Uh... clarifying because this wasn't clear in the original post... I am not implying that narratively Tony *is* an asshole, I'm looking for instances where people might *perceive* him as an asshole in-comics... Of course, if you have any incident in mind, where you feel the narrative also insists on the dickish-ness or where *you* felt the behaviour was unjustified pure!dick, do share! Thanks!

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You know, I've practically memorized the older comics, and yet somehow I'm drawing a blank.
I know there was one time that Happy was a total dick. He'd walked in on Tony and Pepper seconds from a kiss, waaay back in the 70's. (Yes, while Happy and Pepper where married), and in retaliation he told Pepper that Tony was Iron Man, knowing Shellhead scared the crap out of her.Gimme a bit to go through my collection, I'll find some.

Got one, Crash and Burn arc, just after the cryo-disaster. IM V1 numbers 303 to 305(?). Tony vs. just about everyone, trying to deal with the various messes his company has gotten into. A hacker got into SE's files and published all sorts of secrets even Tony himself didn't know about. In 305, he finds out Stane had built a gamma bomb factory(?) that's still around, and that Hulk knows about it (this was a Smart!Anti-Nuke!Hulk era). So he gets out the Hulkbuster armor and gets ready to fight, only to find out (halfway through the battle) Hulk was fully prepared to talk it out. Thankfully, Big Green is pretty forgiving, and suggests Tony switch to decaf. This arc is also interesting because it features the New Warriors jumping in headfirst and blowing things up willy-nilly, forcing Tony to kick some tail.

Thank you! *goes to read*

Mrmmm... this is kind of hard, because IC-Tony is rarely an asshole without reason, or in really huge and notable ways. Most of the things I can think of are directly related to his drinking, his mental health problems or a plot where he was acting in a rational-once-you-know-everything manner. :\ Civil War, whichever side you were on, was an anomaly.

I don't think he's really an asshole at all, TBH. Even in your examples. I can't speak for the cryogenic freezing (haven't read that), but the time he dated Jan was almost definitely due to him being afraid she'd back out if he revealed his identity (a pretty understandable worry). The time he was drunk and rude to Jarvis, the man was in the middle of attempted suicide-by-alcohol, which completely changes the situation. And with Rumiko, I think you're talking about the Sentient Armor arc? Where the armor was essentially being an abusive boyfriend and probably would have killed Rumiko if Tony had responded? Also completely changes the situation.

This doesn't answer your question, but it's something your question reminded me of...

There's an Avengers annual from the early 80's, I think, where the Avengers get stuck in an elevator at the mansion and meanwhile Jarvis is freaking out because the coffee machine is broken. (It was a sort of slice-of-life story.) And Jarvis is thinking that the others will be okay with tea, but Tony needs his coffee. And it's always made me wonder what happened to make Jarvis that panicky about it ;-)

Honestly, though, most of Tony's asshole moments come during his drinking arc or after Civil War. That's when the term Irondickery started being thrown around, and with good reason. (What he did to She-Hulk is a low point for me.) Before that? Tony's a pretty considerate guy.

Thank you! Though just from the description, that seems more like 'Jarvis really cares for Tony and his apparently canon! caffeine addiction' than 'Jarvis is afraid of possible Tony flip-outs'.

*calls to the comm* Can anyone point out what year annual this is? Much obliged!

Uh, about She-Hulk... I've heard a lot about it, but I'm *still* not sure what exactly happened? Can you clear that out, please?

I'm wary about Civil War because most of the non-main-comics have Tony behave wildly OOC, a fact which fans seem to ignore even as they ignore Cap's bits of OOC! dickery even in the main series. It seems a bit strange to me the way fans have picked at canon in specific ways which all make Tony look worse. People will point to the fact that Tony started a war with Atlantis in Frontline but not that Frontline also stated that the battle which Cap initiated and placed in the middle of NY, caused 47 civilian deaths. So... very wary. D:

I now ignore all of Civil War. I think it's better that way.

I don't think there's a great conspiracy where people are Out To Get Tony, either. Some people like Steve better, but I think anyone shipping them also likes Tony a lot (if they didn't why would they ship him with their favourite?). Okay, I win at circular reasoning, but I really don't see how you could ship your favourite with someone you don't like.

Oh, by fans I meant general comics fen, like on the boards and forums... I don't have much of an idea about what Steve/Tony fandom thought about CW, me not being here for the event, and it being a mostly taboo subject, except the general 'it was OOC' and 'never happened' in the fix-fics which I obviously adore!

Oh, okay. I thought you meant here, and was confused.

I avoid wider comics fandom for the most part, so can't comment there.

Sorry, I am not very coherent apparently. Yeah, I spent some time going over old (as in during the events debacle) Tony threads at some places and :/

I'm wary about Civil War because most of the non-main-comics have Tony behave wildly OOC, a fact which fans seem to ignore even as they ignore Cap's bits of OOC! dickery even in the main series. It seems a bit strange to me the way fans have picked at canon in specific ways which all make Tony look worse. People will point to the fact that Tony started a war with Atlantis in Frontline but not that Frontline also stated that the battle which Cap initiated and placed in the middle of NY, caused 47 civilian deaths. So... very wary. D:

Which one was that? The one that started in the Negative Zone and was accidentally teleported into New York when Steve's team were trying to escape? If you look at the page, the teleportation goes so wrong they don't even arrive at ground level.

Sure, all parties have responsibility if their fight killed people (and I am quite happy to say that Tony's was grossly out of character in a lot of supporting titles) but making it sound like Cap thought a battle in New York was an awesome plan is cherry-picking canon in the exact way you're criticizing.

Well, yes. I'm not saying it was Cap's sole responsility, it's just that it is a fact which makes everyone look bad and I had never really heard about it anywhere (on the boards etc) until I actually flipped through Frontline. I was actually of the impression that Marvel had tried to sell the entire CW off as no civilian casualty. While the Atlantis thing was *everywhere*. And people kept attributing stuff Tony had nothing to do with, to him. And when you ask where it happened everyone is all "..." or issue #X where it's really not like that at all. And no one ever brought up the fact that Cap in canon actually refused to talk it out on one occasion (deeply OOC, yes. But so is cackling!Tony). And the whole attacking legal law-enforcement part of the anti-reg strategy. So :/

Maybe I was just reading the wrong boards?

Well, that's probably because accidentally moving your battle to a place where people die due to collateral damage is bad, but not as bad as deliberately mind-controlling someone to murder an ambassador so your country will go to war with an extremely dangerous nation led by an arrogant and violent guy with superpowers. (Also, the civilian casualties thing is pretty laughable. Hardly anyone ever dies when superheroes fight supervillains; but heroes fight heroes and 47 people die? Frontline was a crock of shit, honestly, it had that dreadful reporter telling Cap he was outdated because he didn't have a Myspace, and had Tony doing all sorts of ridiculous things.)

Was there blame on both sides? Yes. Was there equal blame on both sides? No, there was not, and that's why people dwell on Tony-blaming. Tony pulled some profoundly dick moves, whereas Steve was hotheaded and unreasonable. Sure, they were both OOC, but if you take their actions as canon Tony did far, far worse.

That's why people blame Tony; it isn't some kind of conspiracy, it's that in the books he did terrible things ranging from assassination to theft to locking up a fifteen-year-old reality warper in a time-dilation prison known to have psychological effects on inmate. I can absolutely cite a large number of things that Tony did during Civil War that were unequivocally bad, illegal and wrong. Steve was a bit of an asshole. (In the What If? sure, if Steve listens it's better - but if Tony speaks his heart, sincerely, Steve listens. Tony needed to speak. Steve needed to listen.)

I love Tony. But his behaviour during Civil War was wrong. He meant well; he acted appallingly. (As did Reed, absolutely; and Carol to a lesser extent.)

And the whole attacking legal law-enforcement part of the anti-reg strategy.

That's interesting, because I never saw Cap's side as having a strategy (again deeply OOC for Cap.)Their strategy seemed to be "Hide. Rescue allies if necessary."

Yeah, I don't think Jarvis's freak-out is evidence of Tony being a jerk, just that not knowing makes me imagine wild hijinks involving caffine withdrawl. And I think I own that annual, so I'll check on the date and maybe grab scans when I get home from work.

I agree with you that both Tony and Steve were OOC during Civil War, but a) there are a few aspects of CW that I like (like the fact that it kick-started the Steve/Tony fandom!) so I can't just throw the whole thing out the window and b) I find the things Tony did to be objectively worse than the things Steve did. That said, I'm a HUGE Tony fan. When I talk about the Bad Things he did, you have to know that I'm feeling a mix of things - discouragement at the writers who had him cross lines, a sort-of excitement that comes from loving and wanting to explore a dark characters, and a fanficcer's instinct to reconcile the character as he is now with the character he used to be. What look like attacks on Tony's character often really, really aren't.

As for what he did to She-Hulk... well, Jen was working for Tony post-Civil War, and they were sleeping together too. This I consider to be in-character for them both. Then when Jen started getting wary of her job Tony injected her with nanites that inhibited her powers. Part of the reason was that he was planning on using the same nanites on the Hulk, and wanted to test them.

Oh thanks about the Jen issue... Wow, I can see him throwing her in prison if she started looking like likely to run (to be more or less consisten with the rest of CW OOC-ness) but not experimenting on her? When that was supposed to be basically the reason he was doing what he was doing? O_o;

Okay, it was from the 1980 annual.

Scans!
(http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v326/autumnburn/comics/?action=view&current=annual80a.jpg)

A bit later...
(http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v326/autumnburn/comics/?action=view&current=annual80b.jpg)

And this one I threw in just because ;-)
(http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v326/autumnburn/comics/?action=view&current=annual80c.jpg)
Notice the typo? Tony says "I like to talk with you." when I'm pretty sure it was supposed to be "I'd like to talk with you." I like that typo!

Edited 2011-02-04 05:05 (UTC)

Oh! Thank you!!! That is awesome! (Knowing that Tony has canonical coffee love is so CUTE!) And whoa, do I spot slashy interaction from the list, there? ;D

You need to look up "Iron Dickery" (a wholly NotOwned(?) subsidy of Super Dickery.

...also, do you know what a clavicle is?

cheat sheet (http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/1546889.html)

It's what I just broke!

I love that moment! It's so... classic! :D

Anyway, could you point me to this site, please. I googled but there's just random incidences of the word in blog posts with no context or issue (and apparently some of them are evil-clones/ AUs? o_O;) Or else, yanno, CW...

A+++

The ones that always stick with me are Tony mindwiping everyone on the planet who knew his Iron Man identity, and, well, pretty much all of Armor Wars. Of course, like most asshole!Tony moments, they involve Tony genuinely believing, in his own fucked-up way, that he was doing the right thing.

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Canon Resources Needed!

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re: Tony being a jerk

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