His circumstance demanded that he looked at what was happening and figured out how to solve the problem. The obvious problem with the Flexi-Armor is that it was obviously designed for the artist’s benefit. What they may not know is that certain armors were the byproduct of laziness on either the writer or the artist’s part. Not all Iron Man armors are created equal, but fans already know that. There was a time when Tony Stark believed it was necessary to construct a series of underwater Iron Man armors capable of withstanding deep-sea pressures, and the dangers that lie within. Hulk Buster armors are nothing new at this point. The result are creations like Tony Stark’s Bleeding Edge armor, which looks cool. Needless to say, Iron Man looks absolutely perfect without a big schnoz to ruin it all. Sure, Tony redesigned the entire Iron Man suit into the iconic form that has taken on reminiscent forms we know and love today. It was a major departure from the streamlined suits audiences had come to know by that point, and it even recharged constantly via bulky lab cables.
It’s been made abundantly clear that Iron Man’s suits were designed to shield him from all types of outside threats. Or if there’s enough demand, we’ll even consider locking in a long-term forward agreement to secure not only material availability for the suits – what with Boeing buying up as much titanium as it can for suppliers, I say call out all the stops – but to shave a few bucks off the bottom line for the protagonist so he can afford to replace that beatiful Cobra he wrecked. The armor eventually found a permanent resting place at the bottom of the sea, and the Iron Man comics were spared a brief, yet downright weak suit. He ordered J.A.R.V.I.S. to activate the Clean Slate Protocol, which caused every Iron Man armor to be destroyed in a firework-like explosion, in celebration of Christmas. In this alternate universe and timeline, Tony Stark was effectively married to a bulky and far less eloquently designed Iron Man suit that kept him alive. In Iron Man 2, Pepper stands guard at the Stark Expo and is nearly killed after when the Hammer Drones self-destruct, but Tony saves her a few seconds before they explode. She survived the car crash that killed her family and gave her powers, only to become a puppet of the mind-controlling Kilgrave.
While a straight-up Hulk Buster would have been fine, this particular armor decided to disguise itself as a flashy muscle car. It was capable of transforming (literally) from car to bipedal suit form at a moment’s notice. A top 10 at the Memorial showed that magic combination of rich promise and current form. The heroes’ new looks/status quos will only be temporary of course (the story is set in the recent past before current events like the death and quickie resurrection of Wanda). Less technical and rigid than traditional armors, this skin-tight variant allowed artists to simply draw the superhero like all the other muscled characters, to the detriment of both realism, and cool factor. ‘I’m a performer, I’m really up for things like that,’ he says, as he heads off for a stilt-walking rehearsal. In truth, it was simply too overpowered and did too many different things. Though the sheer shock of such an event was designed to shake things up creatively, many characters, including Iron Man, were not terribly well-received. When it comes to children’s characters, they don’t get more wholesome than the all-singing, all-dancing Elsa from Frozen.
There comes a time when comic book writers go a bit too far off the deep end when it comes to “upgrading” key characters. Multiple characters poked fun at the nose, putting Stark on the defense. There’s some backstory to this debacle that centers around Stan Lee making an offhand remark about the suit lacking a visible nose, which unfortunately spawned a rather silly decision. After Onslaught laid waste to the entire Marvel universe, the decision was made to reboot many of the characters into what is now known as the infamous “Heroes Reborn” storyline. One of his biggest complaints is that mainstream “heroes from every place else had actual costumes” while Native characters weren’t represented well. The Mark XXXV is the second armor to feature claws in its arms (after Mark XXXIV, nicknamed “Southpaw”, which features one claw in the the left arm)’ as well as display visible Pressure Support Systems in the outer parts of the armor that guide the claws in retracting and contracting when carrying objects or debris.