Tony post Bendis and Millar is an a-hole. Tony through the 1970's and 1980's was a flawed man trying to be a hero. He never stabbed anybody in the back and did the best he could.

The Tony Stark of the late-1990's was just a badly written character (much like what with Millar's doing to him) that shouldn't even be considered part of normal 616-Continuity.


When did Tony Stark become The Batman...?

Morality is a perspective and not a hard fast set of black and white rules. Morality is defined by the people and culture they are living in. When looking at things in hind sight, anyone can pass judgement on the morality of specific situations and concepts.

The Inhuman only realized the Alpha Primates were being treated unfairly recently. It took them like 35 years of real time and centuries of Comic continuity to do this. It also has to be remebered that the Primates were bred for a specific reason and were part of the living eco system of the Inhuman culture. And you have to remember the Inhumans ridgid caste system. Everyone had assigned roles and no one deviated from that. The Inhumans also came to the realazation that the AP were more then just Mindless constucts after they themselves were confronted by the revelation that they were genetically bred sentients who were to be used as living weapons and special agents for the Kree in their conflicts with other races.

The Genoshen Mutates were used by thier governments with the intent of bettering the country and making a better life for the majority. The needs of the many outweighing the comfort of the few. In theory it might have looked like a nice deal. In practice, nope. Like the Whole Proreg movement. Governments arent suppose dot be immoral. The goverments is supposed to bend to the will of the people. When it doesnt, then its time for revolution and a new government.

Super heroes are defined by thier action and by the perception of the civilians. Maybe Richards isnt always a hero. He is human after all.. Not everyone can be Superman. And Richards has always been a myiopic minded kinda scientist. Both him and Stark seem to be looking at the big picture and trying to create a more perfect world. If there is to be a perfect there can be no free will. When you have free will you always run the chance of ones personal choice coming into conflict for whats best for the entire tribe. Thats why socialism never seems to work.

In the real world there are no total heroes. If you have humanity you are more complex then a good guy or bad guy. Youre a flawed person who tries to do the best they can. If you are infalible you are a god. A major reason I dislike the Illuminati Idea: who are these people to manipulate things? They are all flawed. I mean look at them. These men have made some of the biggest mistakes in the Marvel Universe at one time or another.

Part of the appeal of Civil War to me. I get to see why these characters are behaving like they do.When their actions, no matter how seemingly out of character, can actually be shown to have an organic root in who they are, well, I can dig it.

Morality is a perspective. However people with the morale perspectives of people like the Genosian government and Tony in the Thor affair have a very specific name.

Sociopath.

Can Tony be a Sociopath... yeah sure why not. He's a successful buisness man who's not above going berserk on his own to settle the score.

Reed? I really don't see it. Not everyone can have the kind of "Return the dollar I saw on the street to the Police Station" morales superman has... but Reed pretty much always has. His main motivation is fear in civil war.

He's afraid he'll lose everything which doesn't make much sense considering he's not only gone against the US government recently to stop the production of more metahumans like the Fantastic Four. He went against the UN to invade Latveria. Reed is always willing to do the right thing.

Do we really know he was never asked? This is the age of retcons. We also don't know Thor's opinion on cloning. He may have wished for something to fill the void if he were to die. Of course, I'd wager that Thor will reappear a smack around Clor when he does come back, but that's still up in the air. Until Thor comes back, we don't really know how he feels about the clone, only that we wouldn't want it to happen to us if we were in that position.

There's also the fact that the DNA could be a mishmash of pieces and parts (it was alluded to that he isn't as strong as the real Thor in an interview) and the furthest the copy has gone is to just use the basic structure of Asgardian physiology.

Of course if Thor comes back and gets pissed off, then Tony will be an ### and how he handles himself then will be the deciding moment.

Does everyone accept that Speedball is Penance? Sorry, I didn't mean to get back to the original point of this thread! :P

I think if he was asked then something this important would have been mentioned during the Reed and Tony talking with the other heroes there.

Thor is a god. It would be akin to Jesus Christ saying: "Hey, Tony! If anything happens to Me... clone Me."

Thor's opinion? Come on... we all know it's going to end up like this.

Skull... insert Hammer.

And... I'm pretty sure we do know Thor's stance on being cloned anyway. Since... he's been cloned before. If i remember correctly it really pissed him off.

Speedball...case closed.

Yeah, you'd think they would, but then again, just because something is shown doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Until Thor gives his opinion on the situation, it's hard to speak for him, especially since these are his friends doing it and he'd probably assume their intentions were good at least. I could just as easily say Thor wouldn't care because he probably knows as much about cloning as Hercules does about registration. Well, maybe he can spell it at least.

And gods aren't all the same. For example, Jesus says stuff like "Turn the other cheek" whereas Thor is known for saying stuff like "Thou shall taste the hammer of Thor!" so they're kinda different.

Oh, and on topic, uh...Speedball. Yeah.

He should hook up with the woman from Psionex then, if he now likes pain. Pain can be pleasure she once said, so be it.

I think of the South Park episode that introduced the world to "Towely". Parodized the scene you mention, even the "kill me" line. I loved that scene in both, SP and the movie "A:R".

Or Joe Q will steal it and create the "Infinitive Gauntlet" followed by "Infinitive War" then "Infinitive Crusade" and then eek out "Infinitive Abyss", which he will promptly dismiss as being an alternative universe concept rather then a 616 story. Cause, that's the way it is.

And don't forget, he's killed innocent people before.

When didn't he become Batman? Oh, you missed everything around the time of Onslaught when Tony killed people to cover his lame ###, then tried to kill his teenaged version of himself when the Avengers got the kid in hopes of being helped out, but failing killing the kid, he instead gave the kid a heart problem, but then he himself died, but beforehand, gave blue prints he conviently had on hand to Pym that were for use to make a new set of armour for the teen tony that had a built in pace maker...you missed all that? He planned on taking down all his team mates, he had plans based on their strewntghs and weaknesses. And this was back in the early 90's. So, yeah, he was doing a batman riff. That, and he's rich and a playboy and smart. Still an a--hole tho. LEast Bats doesn't need armor... cept when he's fighting a crossed-over predator or something... and even then.