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sineala · 7 years

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Sine, Sine! I'm sorry to bother you, but do you have any good tips for writing 616 Tony! I just love your characterization so much :)

Oh, boy, an opportunity to talk about my fave! I was actually sitting here thinking, gosh, I hope someone asks me to write meta about my favorite characters sometime soon! And then you did, so thank you, anon! (And thank you, I’m glad you like my characterization.)

Uh. This got long.

I don’t know if what you want are tips on writing 616 Tony as distinct from other Tonys, or 616 Tony as distinct from other people in his universe, but I will try to hit both.

If you haven’t read Elspethdixon’s 616 Steve/Tony ship manifesto, you really should, because it contains the most important tip for writing 616 Tony, namely: Tony hates himself. A lot. Self-loathing is the background radiation of Tony Stark’s life.

The second most important thing, which you will also learn from that ship manifesto, and which you already knew, is that Tony Stark has a suit of Iron Man armor. Now, in MCU, we know that the way this goes is that Tony spends most of his life fucking around and being rich and wasted and making weapons until he gets captured in Afghanistan, takes a bunch of shrapnel to the chest, and decides to devote himself to superheroing. He has a secret identity that lasts… until the end of Iron Man 1. He is Iron Man, and it’s made him reevaluate his life. Also, he probably doesn’t hate himself. As much. I will leave that discussion to people who are more into MCU than I am.

616 Tony, on the other hand, becomes Iron Man when he’s really, really young. Like, early twenties. He doesn’t spend decades in dissolution. Vietnam is his impetus to become a superhero, yes, but it’s really not the same thing at all. By the time we get to modern canon this means he’s spent basically his entire adult life being a responsible superhero, and now he’s busy mentoring the next generation of superheroes – Kamala, Sam, and Miles while he was alive, and Riri now that he’s dead. (”Dead.” Comatose. Whatever.)

But the way that Tony’s self-loathing intersects with Iron Man is that he does the secret identity thing. No one knows. No one knows for years. Even after Steve finds out in the early 80s, most of the team doesn’t know for at least a decade after that. The public doesn’t find out until the early 2000s. (Twice. It’s complicated.) So even if you look at him now and see a guy with a public identity, you should realize that this is a very recent development in his life.

A lot of superheroes have tension between their caped and non-caped identities. Steve, for example, has a bunch of angst about trying to be Steve Rogers, a regular guy, versus Captain America, and how to live up to that, and how much of a regular life he should try to have. This is not Tony’s problem, as Tony’s regular life is… pretty out of the ordinary, as these things go. No, Tony uses his identity as Iron Man to fuel his self-loathing.

Iron Man is a hero. Iron Man saves people. Everything that is good about Tony, Tony puts in a box and calls it Iron Man. He compartmentalizes. (I could probably write a whole other post about how Tony’s a control freak.) Iron Man’s fine, and Tony develops a drinking problem. (Demon In A Bottle actually happened while Tony had a secret identity, and included him deciding that he was sick of being Tony Stark and was just going to be Iron Man.) While with someone else it might not be a bad thing to say that Iron Man is all the best parts of him… that doesn’t leave a lot to be Tony. And he doesn’t really like the parts that are left.

However, I think Tony Stark is still a really good guy. I mean, early canon is early canon, sure, but even as a boss he’s always depicted as, basically, the most benevolent face of capitalism you could possibly imagine. Like, the fantasy job that was available in the fifties and sixties where a dude could support a family of four and buy a nice house in the suburbs and then retire with a generous pension? A SI job is clearly that job. He knows his employees’ names, all of them, and he just seems deeply concerned about them, all the time. And, hey, how about that time he let the Avengers move into his house and never leave, huh? :)

Also he’s… not really a playboy, as I would use the term. During the early years, when he was dependent on the chestplate, he certainly used it as a cover, and we see him deliberately keeping himself from getting close to people because he was just going to die and make them sad (no really), as well as presumably to preserve his identity. We see him wishing that he could get closer to people because he has so much love to give! In the romantic relationships we’ve seen him in, he’s generally very devoted, occasionally more than the other person is, occasionally to the point of creepiness. (Okay, that’s not really one of his best traits.) He falls hard and fast. He just falls in love a lot. He sincerely does. He’s a romantic, even if his persona says otherwise. So, yeah, he has a public persona. Tony Stark is a public persona. It’s pretty evident that that’s not really him, either.

He’s not as quippy as MCU Tony, or as all-around warm-and-fuzzy nice as AA or MA:A Tony, or as utterly flamboyantly campy as Ults Tony (although, man, if you want to talk about drinking problems, go see Ults Tony). If you’re writing his internal voice, I tend to go with a fair amount of obscenities (more than Steve, anyway), and bring your science metaphors to the party if you got ‘em.

But, yeah, the self-loathing. I like to joke that you can tell it’s a good Iron Man comic if Tony is naked and crying, possibly in the rain, because he thinks none of his friends love him. (By this criterion, Iron Age and Execute Program are very good.) Possibly contingent upon the self-loathing, he never passes up an opportunity for self-sacrifice. Sure, any superhero worth his or her salt will happily die to save others – it’s part of the character type – but they all have to get in line behind Tony, who will be there killing himself first. Possibly several times. As many times as it takes. You know that moment in Red Zone where Tony rips off his helmet, exposing himself to deadly flesh-eating bacteria, to give Steve CPR and save Steve’s life, because Captain America is more important than him? That’s Tony Stark. I will also once again point to Execute Program, where Tony literally stops his heart to save Steve. He really likes killing himself for Steve.

I guess other than the self-loathing the main trait I think of as characteristic of 616 Tony is the sense of responsibility, and yeah, I do mean that in the Spider-Man “with great power” sense. He’s a founding Avenger. He knows what he’s doing. If you’re writing an MCU or an Ults story, say, there are a lot of things you could put the Avengers or the Ultimates up against that they’ve never seen before, and they might freak out. Just a little. (When the Ultimates first fight the Chitauri, Tony nearly gives up. He’s just a regular guy. He’s having a hard time dealing with this stuff.) But the thing about 616 is that it’s going to take a lot to make the Avengers, and by extension 616 Tony, freak out about anything. Their lives are weird. So, yeah, he’s seen it all, he’s vastly experienced, he’s been a professional superhero for ten or twelve years now – which, unlike in MCU, means it’s more or less his whole adult life – and he’s going to step up and take charge and do whatever needs to be done.

As an illustration of both his sense of responsibility and the degree to which he regards Tony and Iron Man as two different people, I want to point you to Iron Man v3, the Secretary of Defense arc. Following Red Zone, in which it was revealed that the Red Skull was the previous Secretary of Defense (616 governments are terrifying, okay?), Tony has been nominated to replace him. And we see his Senate hearing, and one of the senators has reservations about Tony’s suitability, based on his public persona. (This arc happens shortly after the first time the public learns Tony is Iron Man.) And this is Tony’s response:

Senator: We can’t let you loose in the Pentagon. You’ll turn it into a cult of personality and you’ll never listen to this body again! You’re too smart for school, Mr. Stark. You make up your own rules. For legal behavior. For being honest with people. I won’t even get into your personal life…

Tony: Is there a question in there, Senator?

Senator: It’s all a question! Why should anyone think that Tony Stark would put this nation’s safety before his own personal aggrandizement?

Tony: Because I’ve been doing that for years! Because I’m Iron Man – and I never ONCE took the credit!

Senator: What exactly do you mean, Mr. Stark?

Tony: Just what I said, Senator. “I’m Iron Man – and I never took the credit.”

Tony: Did I try to associate his positive image with my companies? Yes, I did. But that’s all. I never, ever asked for a direct reward for anything I ever did as Iron Man.

Tony: And for every life I told you I saved as Iron Man, there are tens – hundreds – that I’ve kept to myself. To save lives, I have traveled far. Farther than any of you will ever go. I have traveled to dark places. All alone, away from anyone who could see, hear, or help. I have staved off threats that you will never, ever hear about. The simple knowledge of them would wreak more fear and ruin on the world than I could ever hope to gain from them.

Tony: Yes, Tony Stark is Iron Man. But Iron Man is not about Tony Stark. Iron Man is about everyone else… and if Tony Stark is Defense Secretary, it’ll work the same way. That’s all I have to say. Thank you.

(This is IM v3 #76 & #78, BTW. We get half the speech during the hearing, and then half in boxes later while we see Iron Man risking his life to save people. Tony gets the SecDef job.)

So I think that speech basically sums up 616 Tony. He’s Iron Man, and he never took the credit. And that’s who 616 Tony Stark is, to me. It’s not just that he’s about accountability, as the MCU arc goes; it’s true that he’s also about accountability, but he’s about accountability not as something he’s finally learned but as a part of the core of his character from the very beginning, as a part of being responsible and doing the right thing and saving people. And not needing to take the credit.

I hope that helps answer your question!

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