Spidey's number one fan

1. Canon

in im2, when he’s confronted with copycats of people who’ve tried to make his suit, and failed, he makes fun of them and puts them on display. he’s trying to win an argument here, he’s got a lot of eyes on him, he needs to play up the belief that he’s the ONLY person who can make these suits.

however, when whiplash succeeds to make a copycat, and tries to kill him — tony goes into prison cell, one on one, and talks to him about the tech. asks him questions, prods him on how he did it. because he recognizes the ingenuity there, and he respects intelligent people. he wants to learn, and the best way for him to learn are from people he considers peers.

and he does this with younger smart people too. with harley keener, in im3, he asks him questions about his potato gun. it’s a dinky little invention, nothing groundbreaking, but tony sees the intelligence required of an eleven year old to make something like that out of the materials available to him. potatoes, crude engineering of hamster cage parts.

and again, in civil war, meeting peter for the first time. he asks him about the webshooters. “this is impressive work. who designed these? how are you pulling this off?” because again, he sees and respects intelligence. particularly in the untraditional ways. things made out of dumpster parts. scrap metal. crude engineering.