WinterIron

thankss ToT

flirting by offering food to a beautiful blonde and the reaction to getting rejected

marvel parallels 34/?

As in the MCU, Tony grew up wealthy; the best reference point for canon on Tony’s childhood is probably the extended series of flashbacks in an IM arc in the early 1990s (issues in the #280s) when Tony fakes his own death and spends a lot of time in cryogenic suspension reliving his childhood. (This is also where we get fandom-favorite lines like “Stark men are made of iron.”)

The most relevant comic to answer your question would probably be this flashback sequence in #287:

Over Maria’s protests, Howard (who is definitely abusive toward Tony in 616) decides to send Tony to boarding school at age 7, because Tony likes books too much and is too sensitive and needs toughening up – and we see that, upon arrival, he’s teased and insulted by the other boys (with various insults pertaining to his perceived masculinity, which is definitely a thing that comes up a lot for Tony, but that would be a whole other essay, but basically, given this and something like Legacy of Doom, you could very easily make an argument that Howard was terrified Tony was going to turn out gay).

Also one of the teachers takes away Tony’s toy robot that we see him playing with in previous issues, because he likes robots better than people. And as we see on the third page there, he still likes books, and that’s when he discovers his lifelong passion for King Arthur.

So I’m gonna go with ”Tony was a nerd who was bullied in school,” at least in his younger years, although I assume that changed when, say, he went off to MIT.

Iron Man Public Identity #2

I’ve been thinking about him today