3. Iron Man Is A Supervillain

And now we get down to the core complaints about Civil War: EVERYONE IS OUT OF CHARACTER. This is gonna take up all three of the top spots, so let’s get started on our first victim of character assassination: Tony Stark.

Here’s the thing; the central conceit of Civil War, that Tony supports the idea that the US government can be trusted to regulate all superhumans, goes against Tony’s entire history as a character. One of my all time favorite Iron Man stories is the ‘80s classic “Armor Wars”, in which Tony discovers that his technology is being used by numerous organizations, most of them supervillainous, and flips out. When he discovers the US has been using Stark technology, he finds those using it, beats the heck out of them, and forcibly shuts down their tech, not trusting the government farther than he can throw them.

But why even go that far back when I can look to the early 2000s for an example. When Tony discovered that, yet again, the US was using his tech without his permission, he wormed his way to a position as the Secretary of flippin’ Defense, because (say it with me now) he did not trust the government. But once Civil War comes around, he’s more than happy to pledge his undying loyalty to the US. He also, y’know, builds an evil space prison and recruits murderous supervillains, but if I got into THAT, we’d be here all day.