Ultimate Iron Man

Ultimate Iron Man first appeared in “Marvel Team-Up #4” and much like in the original Iron Man, the man in the suit, Tony Stark is a billionaire businesssman and inventor.

Also mirroring the original universe, Tony is a playboy with a drinking problem, however in this universe he has a new (novel) reason for the drinking problem.

Tony is the son of inventor Howard Stark and geneticist Maria Stark. The Starks were developing a biological personal armour coating when a lab accident with a regenerative virus fatally infected Maria. The virus mutated her unborn child, Tony, growing additional neural tissue throughout his body.

Tony was blessed with incredible intelligence but at a cost, his neural skin constantly regenerated causing him to be in constant pain.  Howard saved Tony by coating him in their bacterial bio-armour.

I love the "Ultimates" series but I can't help but think that this gave Marvel a get out clause for Tony’s alcoholism. Tony discovered early on that Alcohol dulled the chronic pain he suffered from and therefore we are supposed to believe that Tony’s reliance on alcohol is his attempt to reduce the pain and not down to a character flaw.  Personally, I like my superhero’s to be flawed, it makes them more human.  Batman is consumed by vengeance, flash is shallow, green lanterns have been anything from self involved to homicidal.  Tony has a drinking problem, and we read the story to find out what could force him to resort to alcohol in order to blot out the world.  Giving us a “it dulls the pain” reason is just dumb and insulting to the readership. Anyway, rant over.

The rest of the story is a slight re-work of the original one.  Tony is taken hostage (this time by terrorists) and whilst pretending to make weapons for his captors, he builds a makeshift armour and uses it to defeat the terrorists.

Sometime later, Tony used the armour to save the President from an assassination attempt and in the process became a huge international celebrity. 

Realising that this life was the one that Tony really wanted, he entered into the full scale development of the armour and began his career as a superhero.

He also agreed to join forces with the Ultimates, a S.H.I.E.L.D sponsored superhero team.

Unlike in the original universe, Tony’s dual identity as Iron Man is publicly known.

The ultimate universe gave the writers an excuse to re-invent the suit capabilities for the modern world.  The new armour grants Tony tremendous superhuman strength and durability, enabling both supersonic flight and submersible travel, and houses repulsor rays, a uni-beam, mind-impairing "thought-scramblers," "light-negativity" devices allowing short-term invisibility, force field generators, a tracking system, communications tech and onboard computers. He can manually recharge his armour from outside sources or draw additional power from a network of dedicated satellites.