#legitimately every time the writing of an issue contradicts how he's previously been portrayed I get excited

[daydreamerdrew]

it's been very compelling to me how Tony Stark has already been characterized in so many different ways just up to the point in his comics that I'm at, early 1972.

Tony’s always vacillating between like ugh finally I get to be Iron Man and get a break from being Tony Stark… ugh being Iron Man is taking over my life and preventing me from being Tony Stark… ugh Tony Stark is a terrible person and I need to go be Iron Man to make up for being Tony Stark… ugh I’m sick of being Iron Man but my heart condition means I can never live a normal life because I can't pursue certain things knowing I could die at anytime so I’ve got to make the most of the time I have by being Iron Man even if by doing so I’m putting my health at risk and making it more likely I’ll die… wait ugh being Iron Man sucks I’m going to abandon that and commit to being Tony Stark and yay this is awesome but oh no tragedy has struck proving to me that I have to always be Iron Man! and etcetera

that he's a playboy has been portrayed as something that he is unabashedly and naturally and is frustrated that being Iron Man takes him away from it. it's also been portrayed that he feels disgusted with how he's wasted his life being a playboy and frames it that being Iron Man is what makes up for that. that he's a playboy has also been portrayed as something that he does just as an act to protect his secret identity as Iron Man by making Tony Stark seem like a less serious person. and that he's a playboy been portrayed as an act that he puts on to push women away that he would want to have a serious romantic relationship with but feels that he can't for various reasons.

sometimes he feels trapped behind the mask of Iron Man and calls it a prison for how the role dominates his time and takes him away from being a regular person as Tony Stark. but he also often thinks that he doesn't have the option to live a regular life because of his heart condition meaning that he could die at any time, making it so that he can't really enjoy his life and making it so that he feels it wouldn't be right for him to form a serious romantic relationship with someone because how likely it is that he would die on them. and he's also before questioned whether or not he could do more good as Tony Stark and so if being Iron Man is really selfishly only just for the thrill of it. he's also framed his Tony Stark identity as also another prison that he's stuck behind and that prevents him being a regular person in the sense of emotionally connecting to others, he instead has to be this cold businessman. but Tony Stark has also been portrayed having a reputation for being a really compassionate businessman. but also sometimes he wishes that he actually was that unfeeling machine because it would be easier than dealing with his emotions. and he's also wondered if the beliefs that he it wouldn't be right for him to form a serious romantic relationship because it could pull him away from the responsibility of being Iron Man or because of his heart condition are really only excuses to avoid uncomfortable emotional vulnerability.

it seems to that he has constructed these different identities for himself but cannot determine what is natural to him and what is acting and so is always shifting based on how well it's working for him between that a facet of these roles is who he actually is or that it's not who he is but who he thinks he has to be for various reasons, but can never settle on that something is an act because he has such a limited understanding of himself, but also enough of an understanding to articulate that the way he's acting is unnatural to himself, but what I haven't yet figured out is when I would think that construction process would have taken place.

in Tony's first appearance he was presented as pre-Iron Man being an uncomplicated playboy millionare inventor that had a perfect enviable life. after he became Iron Man he was presented as essentially still being that except with the secret that he's actually a deeply tragic character because of his heart condition. him being a playboy was maintained and then later was characterized as an act, but it's tricky because that's not a characterization change that just moved in one direction but legitimately shifts back and forth.

the idea has been presented that being Iron Man has prevented Tony from being a playboy because it takes up so much of his time. but the idea has also been presented that Tony thinks negatively of him having been a playboy in the past and so at some point in time genuinely changed to not actually be a playboy at heart. what hasn't been presented is that that change of opinion occurred during the events of his origin story as Iron Man and I don't find that at this point in time to be a viable reading because of how him being a playboy was played straight in his origin story's aftermath.

when Tony talked about Tony Stark being a mask he was stuck behind, that he couldn't show compassion because that wouldn't be Tony Stark, he says nothing that gave any clues as to when and why people would have formed the idea that Tony Stark wasn't compassionate in the first place or even why he can't disprove that.

so it's not suggested if he had once been that way and then changed because of the experience that made him become Iron Man but then felt he couldn't let people know that he'd changed because it would give away that he's Iron Man. or if he had never really been that way but adopted the guise after becoming Iron Man and made people think that he was, perhaps just leaning into it and sticking with it when the assumption was made once when he ran away and seemed to abandon people in need so that he could put on the Iron Man armor and come back and save them, so that they wouldn't connect him with the heroic figure of Iron Man. or if it had been a guise that he had adopted before he became Iron Man because of something to do with his upbringing and the world that he was a part of.

which is not even getting into the fact that Tony Stark had actually been portrayed as compassionate before that specific story without it being a problem. and Tony Stark not being allowed to be compassionate wasn't connected to that Iron Man is but was intertwined with how he was stuck behind cold masks in both identities and there was no way for him to ever be tender. he's deeply unhappy about it but doesn't see it as something he could do anything to change, he was just trapped.

but he doesn't come across as trapped all of the time! he's not conflicted about things in every single story. he's also got standard straightforward superhero stories, it's just that over time that's been interspersed with stories of him being very conflicted about it all.

and that's also not even getting into that there are stories where Tony's problem is that he's not differentiating between Iron Man and Tony Stark enough. like when his heart problems got so bad that he needed to full Iron Man armor to stay alive and so was trapped inside it and he just told everyone that Tony Stark went on a trip and left Iron Man in charge and then tried to resume his life as normal, not realizing how that would come across to other people and not realizing that he couldn't just maintain his relationships with Pepper and Happy exactly as they were before without them getting upset, which ultimately ended up with them suspecting that Iron Man was trying to steal Tony Stark's life and getting him made a suspect in Tony Stark's mysterious dissapearance.