The Greatest of Rhodey Buttocks

Secret Six 06

For those of you who haven’t heard of Armored Adventures, it’s practically Iron Man, the high school AU. Tony, Pepper and Rhodey are all sixteen year olds attending a prestigious private school by day, and saving New York from a host of classic comics villains by night. I’m trying to avoid too many major spoilers because really, I think everyone should watch this show. (Don’t let the first few episodes turn you off.)

Source: Iron Man: Armored Adventures Wiki, added by Megazord

Rhodey is a bright student, particularly passionate about History, who wants to follow his father into a military career. He’s Tony’s long time best friend—Rhodey’s mother Roberta was Howard Stark’s close friend and lawyer—and is the first to know about the Iron Man armour. For most of Season One he support’s Tony from the control centre, providing radio backup and controlling the suit remotely when circumstances call for it. Despite an initial bad experience trying to pilot the armour, he dons the War Machine suit in the season finale to go to Tony and Pepper’s aid.

Like his Cinematic Universe counterpart,  Armored Adventures Rhodey is steady, even-tempered, loyal, and strategically brilliant. He’s also stubborn, brutally honest, and not afraid to call Tony on his bullshit. He protests Tony’s inclusion of technology stolen from villains in new Iron Man suits, and calls Tony out when he’s excluding Rhodey and Pepper from the Makluan Ring investigation.

Most notably, Rhodey has a suspicious nature and good instincts about people. He distrusts Gene Khan from the first, taking a long time to warm up enough to be politely friendly to him, and is outwardly suspicious of the motivations of other individuals and organisations that request Tony’s help. Conversely, he is the first to trust the mutant student ‘Anna’ and calls Pepper out on her attitude towards mutant registration.

Relationships:

Tony – Tony is Rhodey’s closest and oldest friend. Rhodey seen as the responsible one in the relationship, often teased by being called Tony’s ‘mom’. He’s more analytical and sees problems with Tony’s impulsive plans that Tony simply doesn’t think of. His slow emotional fuse means that he lets Tony initally walk over him, before pulling him up when his behaviour is seriously inappropriate. Without Rhodey, Tony would struggle to maintain any of the friendships he develops through the series.

Pepper – While it’s not really expanded on, it’s implied that Rhodey and Pepper were friends or at least friendly before the beginning of the show. Rhodey treats Pepper like an indulged younger sister, and talks her down from crazy ideas more than once.

Gene Khan – Rhodey’s outwardly antagonistic towards Gene at first and doesn’t trust him at all. While he mellows towards the teen after a shared experience in the Makluan tombs, he never loses his suspicion towards him.

Whitney Stane – Rhodey harbours a pretty hard crush on Whitney, but is never more than openly friendly with her. He defends her to Pepper multiple times, pointing out that Pepper’s jealousy is souring her opinion of Whitney. He also doesn’t begrudge Tony time spent with Whitney.

Roberta – Rhodey obviously loves and respects his mother very much. He’s also terrified she’ll find out about his involvement with Team Iron Man and his piloting of the War Machine armour, because he doesn’t want her to worry about him.

Abilities:

Not a genius like Tony and not devious like Pepper, Rhodey holds his own in team Iron Man. He’s intelligent, strategic, and doesn’t lose his head to panic. He also has an indomitable will, able to break the mind control technology of the Controller. He’s willing to take incredible risks, like piloting the unsealed War Machine into space in order speed his trip to rescue Tony and Pepper, and quick thinking enough to use the remote systems on the Mk 1 to propel his damaged armour back into atmosphere.

Rhodey pilots the War Machine armour and has a good grasp of the systems and weapons. He can remote-control the other suits and is intimately familiar with the Iron Man technology due to his constant work with Tony in maintaining the suits and systems.

In conclusion:

You have to understand that when you say that you are excusing the lack of women in comics and essentially accusing the fans of not being supportive enough.

Female-led comics do not always get cancelled. Look at Wonder Woman, look at Batwoman, look at Captain Marvel, look at Batgirl. Plus there are great comics not from the Big 2, like Rat Queens and Pretty Deadly, which are female-lead and doing really well. And there have been female-led comics doing well in the past, too.

It doesn’t have to be a self-fulfilling prophecy but when you accept that term it is like you are making it an inevitability.

Black Canary sketch by Eric Matos

"power? but you have so much already."

"i need more. i want to be able to move worlds and shake them to their foundations. i want enough power in my hands to tear planets from the heavens and place them in a new sky."