Heroic Histrionics

When one looks at the MCU, the first thing people see is a whole lot of characters who aren’t well adjusted to anything. Steve wasn’t eased into the future with anything resembling grace and still reacts like he’s about to head off to war. Tony has PTSD that everyone, even someone who should know better, ignores as though it doesn’t exist. We just won’t touch Natasha or Bruce with this one, and Clint is a family man whose wife seems to be the voice of sanity.

And that’s not even getting into the extended roster.

Deleted scenes and the one mention Tony makes as a revelation to Bruce about how talking about things helps and maybe he should do more of that are the only clues we have about how mental health is handled. That Tony in Homecoming of all things, seems to have been at a healing retreat in India is strangely support to my theory.

The theory in question?

HYDRA’s position in SHIELD screwed the mental health care system.

You see, it all comes down to the ultimately simple concept that those that are fully mentally sound are harder to control, and thus not what you want in your populace. You want people you can nudge the way you want them to go, and you want people who have no support structure who you can swoop in and save from that. HYDRA, having stretched their wings into nearly every level of people in a large chunk of the world, was in a position to be those rescuers.

First, however, they had to put a stigma on mental health and keep it there. Steve, the poor man, probably helped with this goal, because of course if it was Captain America then the man was never traumatized or needed help with anything, and didn’t everyone want to be like that children? Further, as SHIELD grew, so too did the pool of people who needed mental health care, but I fully expect that what everyone ended up in it was more for checks of ‘good enough?’ rather than to talk out their issues because of confidentiality. And of course, no one was encouraged to talk to their families about what they did, ever. That would have been ridiculous, right?

The thing is, things like this, over the course of the better part of a century, have time to grow, to gain momentum, and to become something dangerous that reaches people even outside the direct sphere of the initial thinker.

As to why the India retreat was considered proof toward this theory? Why else would Tony have to go to another country, one where religion is behind the source of healing if he thought he would be able to find anyone he trusted back in the States?

He wouldn’t. He’s a busy guy, and if he had the options, then why would he have to go abroad where he’d be away from everything? If it had been a vacation, that’d be one thing, but India? No. That wasn’t a vacation.

So yeah, thanks HYDRA, you screwed up the populace. Thumbs up for you.

In the years I’ve been writing MCU Tony, I’ve noticed things about how the characters are different than their Comic counterparts. I don’t read the comics, mind, but by this point, I’ve had enough exposure and interacted with enough people who are from those verses, that I’ve reached some conclusions.

Interesting conclusions.

The short of it is this: MCU Howard is basically Comic Tony if he’d been born in a different era.

Now I’ll throw out the long-range version of this. See, this thought started several months ago when talking to someone who writes MCU Howard and Ults Tony. I write with both, and they do a wonderful job with their characters, so I agree they know what they’re talking about. Many of the things I love about how they play their Howard are things that are rather universal to MCU Howards I’ve dealt with over the years, so it’s hardly just theirs.

You see, we were talking about Tony vs Tony and just how the different types of Tony usually are entirely dependent on where a Tony comes from, and how bewildering it is to see Comic things thrown overtop an MCU Tony. Because MCU Tony is a different creature. Yes, they all have the armor in common, that’s a Tony Stark thing, but there are many many things that are different between them.

So, I’ll start at the beginning and let you draw your own conclusions, shall I?

The very first, most pivotal thing that pops into my head is Steve.

MCU Tony views Steve as an aggravating friend slash brother figure that he had to live up to as a kid that his dad adored. He trusts him right up until he can’t, and he expects it to be reciprocal when it clearly isn’t. Yes, there is mutual respect, but they’re not actually close, and while Steve would trust Tony to defend the Earth, he never once considers he might come down on his side when it comes to defending a friend.

Comic Tony, from what I understand, is a whole other animal in Steve’s general direction. They’re close, they have an unwavering bond, they count on one another even when they’re at odds, and Tony actively loves and is somewhat of a Cap fanboy, a sentiment which is returned to a degree. In essence, from the word go, Tony was on Steve’s side and did everything he could for him, because of course. On top of all this, he looked for Steve for a long time before finding him, because that was just what he needed to do.

Now I’m going to point out MCU Howard’s view on Steve. Howard was instant friends with Steve when they met up properly, and there was a touch of proprietary affection there because Howard helped make him into the person he was. He was his friend, they joked with one another, trusted one another unshakably, and when Howard lost Steve it affected him for the rest of his life. He searched for him in every spare moment, something which affected his relationship with his son. He loved him and practically says as much during the Agent Carter series, which is a point that can’t be stressed enough.

So, moving on from that point to point two.

The Company.

Now, I’m a little hazier on Comic Tony’s position on a lot of things to do with this one, and I can’t for the life of me remember if he shut down weapons like MCU Tony did. Was that a thing? If he did, it was certainly far later up the timestream, and definitely not when he came back because he kept Iron Man’s identity a secret. I do know that he built world ending horrors of weapons because he felt it was the best way to deal with certain problems. We also know that he was a very very astute businessman who enjoyed that part of the company, and never actually let go of it while he had a choice about it, because why would he?

We all know MCU Tony got out of the weapon business pretty much at his first real reason to, and never hid being Iron Man. He stopped building horrors on purpose (yes, I admit that Ultron was fumbled badly but he had help with that one), and basically turned to defense rather than offense as his primary weapon. Of course, then there’s the whole ‘here Pepper have my company’ thing which we can all agree that Comic Tony would probably never have done. Not while he was still alive or capable anyway.

And then we have Howard in the MCU. Howard who builds weapons he calls ‘bad babies’ and hides away because of their sheer destructive possibility, who built his company from nothing because it was something he wanted. Howard who ran the company for more than forty years without even seeming to give a hint he’d hand it over to Tony before someone pried it out of his cold dead hands. Howard who was comfortable with the idea of being in a war and staying on that track even after though his first love was planes, once upon a time.

Speaking of love, that brings me to point three of this mess.

Relationships.

Everyone knows that Comic Tony is a relationship disaster. He’s a serial dater, with many long and short relationships in his past that usually ended badly for one reason or another. He has a rather vigorous sex life, he takes bets and is comfortable wandering down the street naked because of them, and in general he never really stops, though he’s devoted as can be when he’s with someone.

MCU Tony, while having been with a lot of people, never really dated. Sure, he’d have one night stands, and the fact that he calls Maya an ‘ex-girlfriend’ because of one says a lot about how ill-equipped he is when he gets serious with Pepper. He’s never done this before, and he has no idea what he’s supposed to do. He’s loyal, devoted, and generally content to run with it once he’s there, but it’s still his first real relationship, and that matters.

Now, back to MCU Howard. In Agent Carter, we learn very quickly that he has a wild sex life, he dates people all the time at varying amounts of intensity, and eventually he ends up with Maria, his wife, and has his son, who never sees his dad’s wild party side, so we can only presume that Maria might very well be why he stopped. After all, Howard used to regularly throw parties and invite in a bunch of half-naked women to run around at the drop of a hat. While not orgies, one should account for the times.

And then the last point. Superhero nonsense and SHIELD.

Comic Tony ends up in charge of an organization like SHIELD briefly, SWORD which I hear was British, as well as SHIELD itself at some point. He’s political, he’s meticulous, and he goes out of his way to make sure that the superhero community is sorted out. He’s one of two people who really got the superhero ball rolling. In essence, he’s a very important person in the super spy and superhero arenas. He likes being in charge of all that, and he has an aptitude for it that he uses.

MCU Tony, bless his heart, is not a politician. He wants nothing to do with running a spy anything, barely wants to be involved with the team at first at all, and most certainly is not a politician. If he was a politician, there was no way he would have been so far behind the curve with the Accords. The poor man had no idea what was going on until far too late to do anything about it. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t trying, but he was late to the game, and out of his depth. He’s a businessman, not a politician, and it shows.

MCU Howard, well, let’s just start with him having been accused of treason and still coming out the other side with enough clout to build SHIELD in the first place, shall we? Who does that? He’s a consummate liar, self-admitted, who does anything and everything he must to get where he feels he needs to be. This doesn’t make him a bad man, no, but it does make him ruthless, a trait that his son simply isn’t as good at and Comic Tony is.

Conclusion, when looking at all this?

MCU Howard is a reflection of Comic Tony. We don’t know what his childhood was like, how good or bad it was, and yes, he wasn’t a very expressive parent to Tony, but he didn’t hurt him either, and we don’t see anything that indicates that he was a drunk the way Comic Howard was. No, he was more likely a severely awkward product of his times that learned to not be as open as he’d been when he was young, which is, interestingly, something that MCU Tony learns as the MCU goes on as well. We can see that in progress.

MCU Howard takes many of Comic Tony’s best traits, and sometimes his worst ones as well, and uses them. They were just set in another era, one with different values than even Comic Tony would have had to deal with, and shaped the man who ended up with them differently.

All of these Starks are still Starks, they’re still all ridiculous, liable to be kidnapped geniuses, but when people throw down a bunch of Comic Tony headcanons all over MCU Tony it doesn’t make sense, because they’re rather different people. Now, if you look at it from the perspective of MCU Howard being the reflection of Comic Tony, and MCU Tony being the product of that legacy, it’s a different, far more fascinating story.

Sure, the name Tony Stark is still irrevocably linked to the title of Iron Man, but the hows and whys and approach differ wildly, as well as how it’s handled. The core things of who the characters themselves are is a little more important than just what they do, I think, and I thank you all for reading this fascinating parallel that’s become obvious to me over time.

And that my friends, is all I’ll say about that. For the moment anyway.

P.S. Edwin Jarvis. Enough said.