If you haven’t been following Marvel’s Iron Man comics in recent years, you could be forgiven for thinking Howard Stark is Tony’s biological father. The truth is much more complicated, and that story has just taken another strange turn.
Read on to find out which Marvel character is claiming to be Tony Stark’s father now, but beware of spoilers for The Avengers #31!
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To quickly recap Tony Stark’s convoluted family history, Tony first discovered he was adopted in in 2013’s Iron Man #17. His adoptive brother Arno is the biological son of Howard and Maria Stark, but the Starks adopted Tony as a cover after Arno’s health deteriorated as an infant.
The identities of Tony’s biological parents weren’t revealed for several more years. 2016’s International Iron Man #5 introduced Tony’s birth mother, British radio DJ Amanda Armstrong. The following issue revealed the identity of his birth father, a SHIELD agent code-named Jude. Jude turned out to be a Hydra mole, forcing Amanda to kill him in self-defense and give her baby up for adoption.
Now things are becoming even more complicated in the pages of The Avengers. After discovering a million-year-old Iron Man helmet buried in a cave, Tony is dragged back to the year 1,000,000 BC to meet Odin’s team of prehistoric Avengers. These Avengers refuse to assist Iron Man in returning to the present, alluding to a forthcoming conflict involving every single Iron Man from across the Marvel multiverse.
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Instead, Tony is forced to hide in a cave and try to keep his damaged armor working long enough to fend off curious cavemen and find a way home. Ironically, it was Tony’s own helmet he discovered in the year 2020. He’s soon visited by even stranger sights, including a Gorgilla wielding the Power Stone and a talking snake claiming to be his father.
As he fights to stay alive, Tony flashes back to his childhood, remembering a time when he stumbled across his father Howard overseeing some sort of Satanic ritual. After forging a crude Iron Man armor from ice and leftover scraps, Tony is confronted by more talking snakes and Howard Stark himself, again clad in Satanic robes. Following a brief battle, “Howard” reveals himself to be none other than the demon lord Mephisto, come to claim Tony’s soul just as he once stole Spider-Man’s marriage.
Mephisto again implies he’s Tony’s true father and that the real Howard sold his son’s soul long ago. Tony refuses the offer to become Mephisto’s “Devil in Iron.” Instead, he realizes Mephisto is carrying the Time Stone and blasts it with his gauntlet, sparking a reaction that drags him forward through time. Tony is bombarded by visions of the hellish future from writer Jason Aaron’s King Thor miniseries before finally returning to the present.
Tony immediately travels to Las Vegas to confirm the present-day Mephisto is still imprisoned and to let the demon lord know he failed in his efforts to lure Iron Man to the dark side. Mephisto, however, is pleased with how his plot is unfolding. He’s sown the seeds of doubt in Iron Man’s mind, and he has a secret weapon – his faithful servant Howard Stark.
It’s hard to say right now if Mephisto is literally Tony’s birth father or if he merely considers Tony to be his son because Howard sold him Tony’s soul. It may be that Amanda and Jude are still technically Tony’s birth parents, but their short-lived union was orchestrated by Mephisto. Either way, the fact that Howard himself is apparently alive and plotting with Mephisto against Tony is easily the biggest reveal in this bizarre story. Hopefully upcoming issues will shed more light on what Mephisto and Howard have planned, and what this Iron Man multiverse story entails. Are we about to enter the Iron-Verse?
For other big Marvel developments, find out about the X-Men’s twisted new death ritual and learn why Wolverine has become a vampire hunter.
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Jesse is a mild-mannered staff writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter.
Source: IGN.com Move Over Luke Skywalker, Iron Man's 'Real' Father Is [SPOILER]