Why Iron Man?

Of all the characters out there, why is it that Iron Man is my favorite?

Personally, I think one of the things we like about comic characters is that there is a sense of one in particular is who we want to be like, or in some ways our opposites, so there is that immediate attraction to their persona in that sense.

Take me for example. I'm quiet, shy, reserved and cant understand engineering to save my life. What is Tony Stark? Playboy industrialist and inventor who can get ladies at the speed of Bond. Quite the difference, and I admit I wish I was like that. I know some Hulk fans wish that when someone pisses them off they could just morph into a nearly unstoppable creature.

But that's not the only thing. I've always liked technology. Robots, spaceships, all that stuff, and Iron Man always provided a technological aspect to the story through Tony and the armor (especially during Len Kaminski's run with a lot of tech talk and plot). The Iron Man armor is the pinnacle of human innovation, and let's face it, it definitely can be real one day, just most likely not in our lifetime.

The other thing I love about Iron Man is that he's realistic in the sense that anyone can be him (well, pre-extremis bullshit that is, but that's a post for another time). It was just a man, a frail and flawed man, in a technological wonder. He didn't need a healing factor, telepathic powers, gamma radiation or a super serum to turn him into a hero. It's just a man in an armor he invented.

Lastly, Stark isn't one to win through sheer brute force, though he is more than capable of that. If you read the comics over his history, few times has he gotten into a slugfest and just beat the hell out of someone. Instead he uses his brain to beat them, using what he knows about the enemy or their weapons and what is around him. Though the few times he has, in particular the few issues where Stark donned the War Machine armor, he beat the hell out of anything that got in his way, so he is more than capable of doing it.

So that's really why I like Iron Man the most in a basic summation. Both the armor and the man inside of it are appealing, and that realistic sense to the character and his powers (again, pre-extremis) serve to better draw you in.