Iron Man Spotlight: The Diminishing Intellect...

A few days ago, I posted a little update on the current status of Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, in today's Dark Reign infested Marvel Universe. Once a brilliant and calculating force in the superhero community, Tony's now on the run and his genius intellect has been reduced to a pathetic state. His woes have only intensified as of late due to his inability to control complex machinery, forcing him to constantly downgrade his armor, with his current model being the classic Red and Gold. For all the lowdown on his pitiful situation, you can refer to my previous Iron Man Spotlight Post: the Rise and Fall of Tony Stark.

Cover to Invincible Iron Man #17. Stark's days are surely numbered...
For this post, I decided to focus on just how dire the consequences of Stark's actions were after deciding he decided delete the information contained in his brain and prevent it from falling into Norman Osborn's hands. The process in the past few issues has been a handful for Stark, and now, we see the full effects of the devastating mind deleting process come to fruition. Newsarama provided a peek into the latest issue of IM due next week, Invincible Iron Man #17. It is with this next page that makes Tony's plight all the more grieving:

Using an internet cafe in the middle of Russia, Tony Stark tries to send a simple email to Maria Hill, although with great difficulty. His grammar is obviously suffering at this point as he has difficulty composing words into his message. How the mighty have fallen.
This, and the last two issues of World's Most Wanted, will finally see how disassembled Tony's gonna get when he encounters Norman once and for all (I think). What will his fate be in the next chapter, Stark: Disassembled? Let's hope for the best that he'll pull through as he always does. After all, he is Iron Man... right?

Iron Man Spotlight: The Rise and Fall of Tony Stark...

The Invincible Iron Man soars high.
Iron Man. Love him or hate him, we all know he's coming back to the Big Screen next year... but what's happening to armor clad hero in the comics nowadays? I'll bring you guys up to speed with what I know so far, and trust me, Tony Stark's life isn't all fun and games now.

As one of the most iconic heroes in the Marvel Universe, The Invincible Iron Man has endured a lot of pain and sadness in his life that many would have considered torture to go through. He's fought the good fight for the sake of humanity as a armored adventurer, and used his genius and intellect to construct powerful suits of armor to aid him in his crusade. That power, however, came at a price, and he's always been forced to make decisions that compromised his beliefs and friendships over the years. Recent events have led him to do what many readers would see as "The Ultimate Sacrifice", but will his actions be the death of him? It sure looks that way with the way writer Matt Fraction is handling things.

Things go south for Tony Stark... Literally
With the ongoing storyline World's Most Wanted, Iron Man's life has turned upside down. If there was any way to describe Tony Stark today, the word "Pitiful" comes to mind. In the last few years of his superhero career, he's literally become a man who had everything... and then nothing. Rising to the top of the hill as a figurehead of the Super Hero Registration Act during Civil War, IM won the fight and became Director of S.H.I.E.L.D, changing the landscape of the Marvel Universe and dividing the superhero community altogether.

After the events of Civil War, Cap perishes in a hit perpetrated by the Red Skull. This scene takes place in the pages of Civil War: The Confession, in which a tearful Tony regrets his actions which led to the loss of a dear friend and fellow Avenger.
His actions indirectly led to the death of Captain America, his long time comrade and fellow member of the Avengers. While he continued to promote peace and goodwill through registration, he failed to intercept a secret invasion by the alien Skrull race that quickly took him and the world by surprise. With the help of his fellow heroes, Stark managed to turn the tide and win back Earth, yet he was still held accountable for his mistakes. He literally fell down in disgrace when he was booted out and replaced by Norman Osborn after being blamed for not intercepting the alien threat right away. Not wanting his tech and data ending up in the wrong hands, Stark uploaded the SHRA database into his mind, and had the other remaining copies infected with a virus, much to Norman's chagrin. With the assistance of Pepper Potts and Maria Hill, he makes a run from the organization he led once, now reformatted and renamed as H.A.M.M.E.R.

Iron Man is losing his marbles... And Tony can't do a damn thing about it.
Adding to Tony's problems is he's systematically deleting the information he has stored in his brain, which is in turn affecting his intelligence and causing him to downgrade his armor... until he eventually becomes a far cry of his brilliant self. In short, Tony Stark was a made man... and now he's a wanted fugitive, trying to evade Osborn and his H.A.M.M.E.R. agents every step of the way.

A preview of the wraparound cover to Invincible Iron Man #20, which begins the Stark: Disassembled Arc. The Mighty Thor looks on at a shattered Tony Stark; a scene that eerily parallels Iron Man's private "conversation" to the body of the fallen Captain America in the pages of Civil War: The Confession. Pic from Marvel.com
Now, all that Tony has done has come crumbling down. In a sense, karma has come back to bite him so hard that he will barely get out of his predicament alive. While the storyline has a few more issues to go before it ends, we're already previewing the next chapter in what could be the end of Iron Man as we know him. Stark: Disassembled will chronicle what happens to Tony after the events of World's Most Wanted... and will he ever be the same again? Time will tell. For now, that cover from Marvel.com looks mighty familiar... An ironic reverse of what Tony did before everything hit rock bottom.