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My cousin fracking loves Iron Man and I want to get him one or two collections of Iron Man comics... What would be some good ones to start with?

Actually if you want to start Iron Man, go with the original series #1

It's one of the few series #1's of a classic character, that is cheap, you can find it for around $75-80 (more if you wait till IM2 comes out and popularity makes the price go up some). $75 may seem like a lot but its a cheap price for a good #1, compared to DC#1 or Action Comics #1

There's a few that I'd totally recommend:

-Demon in the Bottle (or something like that), which deals with his alcoholism
-Armor Wars (what a lot of upcoming Iron Man 2 is based on)
-Extremis (Warren Ellis writing at his best)
-Mask in the Iron Man (one of the few Iron Man stories I read and I totally dig it; his armor gains sentience)
-There's a Marvel Adventures Iron Man series, I think. They're aimed at a younger audience and can be bought pretty cheap in digest form. I hear they're quite great.
-I hear the two Ultimate Iron Man mini-series are supposed to be good. They're written by Orson Scott Card.

And yeah, you really can't go wrong with the earlier stuff. If you don't want to spend too much money, there's the Essentials; reprints of the old stuff in black and white and collected in these giant, phone book-sized collections.

Extremis is amazing, and honestly is perfect movie material. Seriously, you need to get that one. Skip Ultimate IM, it's terrible. He's a living brain with an exoskeleton, and the suit has a gorilla face. It's bad.

I...wait...what?

ThatNickGuy said:

I...wait...what?

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If the incredulous stuttering is due to Ultimate IM, then yes, it's bad. Stark is born as something like 90% brain tissue, so he's a super genius. However, he has no skin or something so the very air he breathes causes unbearable pain. His father develops this synthetic covering that acts as a skin, so Tony can live. Tony develops the armor but it looks stupid and it's like 15 feet tall. It's so, SO stupid. As an IM fan I was, for the first time in comic-reading history, angry at how my favorite character had been re-imagined.

I assume this ultimate Iron Man that you refer to is a completely different character than the Iron Man in the Ultimates? Because... dude, pimp be ballin' all natural Tony Stark in the Ulitmates.

Thanks guys... Mav, I don't think I'll be spending $75 right now because I'm not sure if he'll appreciate the comic books yet. He loves the movies, and he painted me this AWESOME picture of Iron Man, so I'm hoping he'll like them as a surprise gift. If he does enjoy them, in the future I'll look for something cool and valuable like that.

Get the first trade of Matt Fractions run. It's in continuity, fairly current, has good art, and makes for a good jumping on point (it started not long after the Movie).

Bowielee said:

I assume this ultimate Iron Man that you refer to is a completely different character than the Iron Man in the Ultimates? Because... dude, pimp be ballin' all natural Tony Stark in the Ulitmates.

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I think they're the same. However, Millar at least writes him better in Ultimates 1 and 2 than Card does in the Ultimate IM books.

They are supposed to be the same, but their backstories don't match.

Offtopic, he (your friend) actually likes Iron Man?

Never let him read Civil War or Planet Hulk / World War Hulk. Because those three storylines single handedly made me hate Tony Stark. I had honestly hoped Hulk would utterly kill him in WWH, he deserves to die for his crimes against the super hero community.

I'm partial to the Iron Man : Hypervelocity one shot myself.

Mav said:

Offtopic, he (your friend) actually likes Iron Man?

Never let him read Civil War or Planet Hulk / World War Hulk. Because those three storylines single handedly made me hate Tony Stark. I had honestly hoped Hulk would utterly kill him in WWH, he deserves to die for his crimes against the super hero community.

Click to expand...

Really? It's what made me finally like the guy. *shrug*

For a good Mandarin story there's also the ones with Fin Fang Foom, i think around #260. Mandarin conquers half of China even.

The Knauf bros. run, after Extremis while Tony was director of SHIELD, was actually quite good, it gets overlooked. They wrote a revival of Mandarin which was fantastic.