Everything I've done, everything I'll do today, everything I'll ever do, I do to protect this world. Someone once told me that with great power comes great responsibility. That's usually thought of as a lesson for children. A simple injunction to do the right thing. But there's nothing simple about it. When I put on this armor, I took on more power than any human was ever intended to have... and maybe more responsibility than my heart can truly bear. But today... I will do my job. I will protect you. No matter what it takes... -- Tony Stark


The biological parents of Tony Stark were two S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, Amanda Armstrong and Jude, who met during a courier mission. After Jude saved Amanda from an assassin, they got to know each other and fell in love.

Following a two-year relationship, Amanda became pregnant. A week before giving birth to the baby, Jude revealed to have been a Hydra double-agent with little regard for anybody but Amanda and himself who sold out fellow S.H.I.E.L.D. soldiers, and was even responsible for the incident that had almost cost Amanda her life. During a discussion when he was trying to convince Amanda to accept Hydra's protection, she attacked Jude and killed him.

Traumatized by this development, Amanda asked S.H.I.E.L.D. to ensure her future baby would find a safe and happy home. However, director Nick Fury followed the same procedure used for unwanted pregnancies in the agency, and the baby was left in an orphanage in Sofia, Bulgaria after Amanda birthed him in a local hospital. Fury's associate and famous industrialist Howard Starklearned of this, and decided to find the baby and adopt him, keeping the name Amanda wished he retained: Anthony.

Howard Stark presenting Tony to Maria

In addition to Howard and his wife Maria suffering the latter's inability to give birth again,^[23] they needed to find a healthy boy to act as a decoy in place of their secret first born, Arno Stark. Arno's gestation had been extremely difficult, and his birth was only made possible with the help of an alien robot, the Rigellian Recorder, who had agreed to help the baby survive in exchange of the opportunity to bio-engineer him, so he could accelerate humanity's technological growth in the future.

However, as 451 genetically modified the baby in womb, Howard had discovered the robot hid some sort of kill switch, that would compromise the life of his son in the future, for which Stark developed a "biococktail" to interfere with it behind 451's back.Once Arno was born, 451 left the Earth. In a turn of events, Howard's interference with 451's machinations had caused the newborn to become fatally ill. The Starks had decided to keep the baby hidden in the Maria Stark Foundation Hospice. In addition to filling the void left by Arno's fatal illness, Tony's adoption would prevent 451 from learning of Howard's meddling if it ever returned to Earth.

Early Life and Education

Tony grew up completely unaware of Arno's existence or that he was adopted. While loved unconditionally by Maria, Tony suffered from a strained relationship with his father, both due to the constrast of Tony's sensitive and reclusive nature with Howard's glorification of physical prowess and Howard's ever-increasing drinking habits, which caused him to verbally abuse Tony and suffer from mood swings. This last factor caused Tony to turn to electronics as a coping mechanism at barely five years old, as he started to believe hardware to be comprehensible and reliable, whereas people were unpredictable and hard to understand. Tony's world couldn't find order, but the things he built did.

Tony's childhood




In order to toughen his son, Howard sent Tony to boarding school at the age of seven, much to Maria's dismay. The following years, Tony learned of discipline of body and strength of character as Howard intended, while spending his free time reading alone. At the age of thirteen, the stories of Thomas Malory opened Tony the doors to a new world of dedication to a cause greater than oneself, of chivalry, honor, and armored.

Soon afterward, Stark donned one of his battle suits in order to prevent thieves from stealing parts from the other copies of it. This experience made him realize that the suit was too dangerous to be made available to the public. The next day Stark revealed what had happened to him in the war zone to Joanna Nivena, his then fiancé.Together they attended a tennis match in Forest Hills, N.Y. that afternoon. Stark brought along his armor, which he was taking to a nearby laboratory for tests. Terrorists who threatened to kill everyone present with a bomb invaded the match. Joanna urged Stark to don the armor to stop the terrorists. Stark did so, captured the terrorists and saved the spectators by throwing himself atop the bomb. Iron Man thus publicly became a hero, and Stark had a new sense of purpose, having decided to combat evildoers as Iron Man.

Wishing to retain some degree of anonymity, Stark established the fiction that Iron Man was his paid bodyguard wearing a suit of armor that he had invented. Only his most trusted aides learned Stark and Iron Man were one and the same. One of these early confidantes was "Happy" Hogan, whom Tony hired as his chauffeur.Hogan fell in love with Tony's secretary Pepper Potts, whom Tony eventually fell in love with as well. Even though Potts reciprocated Tony's feelings, she eventually began a whirlwind romance with Hogan, which ended with the two of them getting married.

At first, Stark used his Iron Man identity mostly to combat spies, like the Actor, and criminals who threatened Stark Industries, like the Melter or Mr. Doll.

During this time, the original Crimson Dynamo attacked Stark Industries, but Tony Stark persuaded him to defect. Also, Stark faced off for the first time against the Mandarin, who would become one of his most recurring enemies.

Later, he expanded the scope of his alter ego's activities to battle any force or person who threatened the security of America or the world. Stark was instrumental in the organization and armament of the original global intelligence and law-enforcement agency known as S.H.I.E.L.D.. As Iron Man, he became an founding member of Earth's Mightiest Heroes, the team of super-human champions known as the Avengers. Stark donated his Manhattan mansion to the Avengers for their exclusive use.As an Avenger, Stark would go on to participate in many missions over the years, although he sometimes had trouble reconciling his private affairs with his responsibilities in the Avengers. With the other remaining founders after the Hulk left,he was among those who discovered the frozen form of the heroic Captain America, still frozen since World War II. He was also the Avenger who sponsored the membership of Hawkeye, a man whom he had briefly fought with, after realizing his good intentions. Hawkeye was one of the new Avengers who joined when Stark and the other founders decided to take leaves of absence.

Over the years Stark constantly refined and modified the design of his armor. From a bulky, transistorized iron suit, he eventually built a relatively lightweight, integrated circuit, magnetically-polarized suit with more human-looking articulated musculature. Stark's extraordinary genius in theoretical mechanics has enabled him to keep his suit of armor state-of-the-art. Stark eventually underwent heart transplant surgery so that he was no longer obligated to wear his metallic chest plate.

For moral reasons, Stark eventually decided to stop manufacturing armaments and devoted his company to other areas of technology.