Smashing through walls, flying through the air like a human jet, controlling an amazingly complicated robotic suit of armor effortlessly, seemingly by mere thought. Oh, and being practically indestructible.
This is the Marvel Comics character Iron Man. The full title of the comic is actually The Invincible Iron Man, a kind of giveaway about the powers he is supposed to possess. Being invincible is a pretty tall order. Basically Iron Man is a really, really smart guy—ok, he is a genius—in a super high-tech suit of armor.
The origin story for Iron Man, like that of all comic characters, has been revised, revisited, and re-created over the years, but the essential idea is that Tony Stark the industrialist gets kidnapped by bad guys. They know (as does the whole world because Tony Stark really is a genius and brilliant inventor and head of a huge international conglomerate) that he can build all kinds of devices. At this juncture, he moves away from being a capitalist solely concerned with profits from making munitions to becoming Iron Man, the iron-garbed superhero and founding member of the Avengers.
Iron Man belongs to that small club of superheroes who are viewed as possible. This is a key part of his appeal. It seems as if you could just pull on his suit and go flashing around. And you wouldn’t be entirely wrong: Although we cannot yet power up to use repulsor rays, some of Iron Man’s character is based on a realistic extension of concepts in neuroscience, robotics, biomedical engineering, and kinesiology that we already have today.
