dvandom

Last night, thandrak pointed me at Project Rooftop, specifically their Iron Man redesign contest. As I looked at the entries, I mostly thought, "Well, that's nice powered armor, but it ain't Iron Man" (with a few exceptions). That got me thinking today about the question of what constitutes an iconic Iron Man armor: a suit that you look at and can't mistake for anything BUT Iron Man. Keeping in mind that plenty of canonical armors don't meet these criteria, here's what I think makes the essence of an Iron Man suit, in rough order of importance (most to least):

1. Red and gold. Preferably the red should dominate the chest, helmet, boots and gloves, while the yellow is on the faceplate and the upper limbs. The red and silver armors have never really looked right to me.
   
2. Faceplate with rectangular eyeslits and rectangular mouth slit (with or without "bars").
   
3. Some sort of chest "jewel", which may or may not project an energy beam.
   
4. Bulky enough to obviously be armor (i.e. no skinsuits) but with the exception of special purpose suits it should never be more bulky than the MkI "built in a hut/cave with scraps" armor.
   
5. Most of the bulk is concentrated in the forearms, boots and maybe shoulderpads. So, by taking off the gloves, boots and helmets it's plausible to wear the rest under a business suit.
   

The very first red and gold armor, which was also the first armor built by Tony in the comics after getting back to America (the Golden Avenger suit was his MkI with gold paint), meets pretty much all of these criteria.

Sure, even starting the clock at the first red and gold suit leaving aside the special purpose suits, there's plenty of official suits that don't meet all five of these criteria. But Superman spent some time running around in a blue and white skating suit, and Spider-Man's had red and gold armor. Not every official costume change makes it to iconic status.

But if you design an armor that hits all five of my points, then anyone who has even an inkling of who Iron Man is will recognize it as an Iron Man armor.

( Other Media: MySpace Dark Horse Presents, Iron Man 2 action figures and Mega Bloks; Book of Note: Iron Man vs. Whiplash #4 )

   Dave Van Domelen, "Oh, you're the new Vulture. Something tells me I should be glad my sense of SMELL is gone. But you can't be any worse to work with than the OLD Vulture. The LARRY DAVID look alike. God, I hate EVERYONE today, why IS that?" - Electro failing to get job satisfaction, The Amazing Spider-Man #623

While watching the Naruto Movie (with the chakra armor), jarodrussell said that a Narutoverse Tony Stark would need something like that. I suggested that he needed the armored chestplate to contain a curse mark, and later built armor to channel the chakra of the cursemark. And then I quickly drew this:
( Tetsujin of the Iron Village )