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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 1h

It honestly wasn't too bad. Since I missed out on Iron Man in the 80s I just started going through the bins for older issues, mostly Silver Centurion stuff. Teen Tony didn't last long, and Heroes Reborn Iron Man was surprisingly okay

But yeah it was definitely a bad strategy on Marvel's part

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Reposted by The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️

thedestroyer616.bsky.social @thedestroyer616.bsky.social · 1h

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 1h

Exactly. Editorial thought Iron Man had gotten stale because the comic, cartoon, and toys weren't doing as well as X-Men and Spider-Man. Ultimately it just hurt sales more, especially from people coming to the comic from the cartoon

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 1h

I got really into Marshal Law in high school (partly because my young dense self didn't realize it was supposed to be parody). I eventually fell off around Marshal Law vs Hellraiser

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Reposted by The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️

Marvel Comics in the 1970s @marvelcomics1970s.bsky.social · 1h

Iron Man #123-128 cover dated June-November 1979.

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 1h

Actually one way I can think could salvage the terrible reputation of the Crossing would be for a certain writer who loves using obscure 90s characters to reveal that Evil Tony had been banished to an alternate reality, then bring him to the 616 and team him up with Stevil Rogers

The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 6h

8. Iron Man was saved from this unflattering bit of continuity by, of all things, Heroes Reborn, when Franklin Richards essentially undid everything that happened in the Crossing from Tony's history

So, no, I don't like the Crossing

End 🧵

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 2h

I wondered that myself and did some research. Apparently it was somewhat inspired by Apocalypse's design but was an entirely new sculpt, part of an "Iron Man Concepts" line that Hasbro put out to piggyback off of the popularity of the first movie

The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 5h

Abnet and Lanning had been writing Force Works from the beginning. When Bob Harras and Terry Kavanaugh kicked Len Kaminski off of Iron Man and came up with the outline for the Crossing, Abnett was brought over to write Iron Man, with Mark Waid on Avengers. D&A and Waid HATED the idea

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 5h

Yeah I think Avengers Forever retconned it as Kang messing with time rather than the brainwashed sleeper agent thing

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 6h

8. Iron Man was saved from this unflattering bit of continuity by, of all things, Heroes Reborn, when Franklin Richards essentially undid everything that happened in the Crossing from Tony's history

So, no, I don't like the Crossing

End 🧵

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 7h

7. Their solution to continue using the IP was to kill evil 616 Tony, bring in an alternate reality teenage Tony Stark, and have Teen Tony take over as the 616 Iron Man

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 7h

6. What they did instead was a retcon reveal that Tony has secretly been Kang's agent since the Silver Age and has been committing atrocities for Kang ever since, making Iron Man completely irredeemable

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 7h

5. It's revealed during the crossover that Tony has been brainwashed by Kang and has become EEEEVIIILLLL!

This isn't a bad conflict to set up, and the writers COULD have set up a plot of freeing Tony from Kang's control, or revealing that this Tony was an evil clone, or a robot, or a variant

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 9h

4. Despite Deodato's cool take on the Modular Armor from the cover, Iron Man shows up in this new Doom-esque armor, then after 40+ pages of everyone sitting around the mansion, Tony kills two Avengers supporting cast characters

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 9h

3. For context I had JUST gotten into Iron Man two months prior to the Crossing through the toy line and in a short time had powered through the long boxes at my LCS to get every issue of Force Works, most of War Machine, and the whole Kaminski/Morgan run or IM in preparation

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 10h

2. For those of you who didn't have your soul crushed in the mid 90s, the Crossing was an event running thru Iron Man, the Avengers, and Force Works (all titles I was reading) that centered on Iron Man, with art by Mike DeSoto, who'd just come off a successful Wonder Woman run. Sounds great right?

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 10h

1. Whoa. I've never seen this 00s Iron Man figure before

I don't *think* it's a comics accurate armor, but between the chunky gauntlets and the scowling mask it reminds me of evil Tony's armor from the Crossing

And now I have to go on a rant about the Crossing 🧵

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 12h

I admit that I mostly like the Modular Armor for nostalgia's sake. That being said, while the helmet and the Iron Pants aren't my favorite designs, the sleekness of the armor overall gives it a more dynamic feel

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 12h

Have they announced Golobulus (sp?) and Nemesis Enforcer?

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 12h

Given the number of hurricanes I've evacuated ahead of, and the number of neighbors who chose to stay behind, my head canon for this lady is that she heard somewhere that Ultimo was a deep state fake

Iron Man #300 - January 1994

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 1d

When Killerwatt became a work release member of Duggan's West Coast Avengers I had to look up who he was. At first I was like "Wait he's supposed to be from the near future", but then I was like "Oh wait we ARE in the near future"

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 1d

Doesn't that timeline take place 20 or so years after the time it was published, so more or less now?

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 1d

I felt the same way, especially after Gerry had made Emma my other favorite character starting with his Marauders run

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 1d

Thanks!

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The Armory ⚙️🔩🔧🛠️ @starkunlimited.bsky.social · 1d

Same! I hadn't read Iron Man since the beginning of the Bendis run, which really turned me off from the character, but Gerry the Genius Duggan pulled me back in!

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