Iron Man Blogging, 7/26/19: Demon in a Bottle

So issues #41 - #130 of Vol. 1 are, for the Invincible Iron Man, a pretty rough stretch, huh?

Of course, I'd read the "Demon in a Bottle" arc (#120-#128) well before I started my current fine-tooth-comb exploration of the comics. Oh hai, super-famous story that introduces 616 Tony's alcoholism! But there's something to be said for reading the preceding context. Let's take an inventory of some of the major things that happen before Tony starts hitting the sauce:

• He gets sucked into a super-villain Hunger Games that goes on for several issues and almost drives him to exhaustive collapse.
• His heart starts failing again.
• Midas takes over his company, and he must fight another hard battle to wrest it back.
• His love interest betrays him.
• He's evicted from his Manhattan penthouse (due to an explosive assassination attempt).
• His friends at SHIELD conspire to buy him out.

And guys, I know I'm forgetting things because, as (I believe) the Jack of Hearts observes in one issue, Tony's life here is basically a non-stop war. Je-sus.

And then you get to "Demon in a Bottle" itself, which directly attacks Tony's need for mastery (and his penchant for self-recrimination) in a manner that is outright horrifying. For those not in the know: Justin Hammer hijacks Tony's armor and forces him to kill a diplomat. That is -- a stunningly apt metaphor for what's going on with Tony personally at that exact moment. It's a 40-year-old comic, so it's probably too late to grill the writer on this, but I'm convinced said armor hijacking was originally dreamed up to give Tony's overall loss of control a more tangible manifestation. For me at least, it works. I mean, if I were writing this story, I probably would've phased in the drinking throughout the build-up arcs I mentioned above. But abruptness is a failing of basically all the comics of this period, so -- I'm going to roll with it.

Now, the reason why the MCU doesn't explicitly tackle this dimension of the source material - beyond the occasional sly references - is pretty obvious. But that doesn't mean the MCU ignores it. No: the creative teams behind MCU Tony simply changed the nature of the addiction while retaining the baseline psychological susceptibility. For MCU Tony, the addiction is the armor (or technology in general). This is far more pro-social than whiskey, to be sure, but as several of the movies reveal, Tony can and does take his armor thing in destructive directions. In Iron Man 2, we learn that his palladium poisoning is accelerated by continued use of the armor. Does Tony stop? Nope. In Iron Man 3, meanwhile, Tony completely neglects his physical health building armor to avoid his emotional pain -- a classic reason why many addicts take up their drugs of choice. And in Civil War, we hear from Tony himself that his obsession has jeopardized his relationship with Pepper. So yes: basically, MCU Tony doesn't have an altogether healthy relationship with his Iron Man persona. Or, to put it another way, Pepper is right in Iron Man (well, duh -- events have proved this): Iron Man means the death of Tony Stark. Iron Man is, in fact, Tony's method of slow self-immolation. That is tragic as hell.

God, I love this character.