[Dolemite]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bo Ttef

Back in good ol' 1984 2020 WAS a cool future timesline in an alternate Universe: Arno Stark was the son of Morgan Stark, Tony Stark's cousin, in the alternate reality of Earth-8410 in the year 2020. Arno, inheriting Stark Industries, became one of the wealthiest, but most brutal businessmen in the field. In this reality, he and other corporations found a way to take over the government and lived the lives or tyrants. Aron, just like his relative Tony Stark, was extremely smart and build a more advanced Iron Man armor, which he used for acts of crime and only for the benefit of his own welfare. He used his suit mostly for bounty hunting, mercenary work, and sabotaging and destroying his competitors. Even killing those whom opposed him was no problem to him. Arno Stark first appeared in a dark future where the superhero known as the Machine Man was revived by a resistance-group of hackers whom tried to overthrow the new government of Arno Stark. The group was hunted down by Arno's policing forces with heavy casualties, but eventually, Machine Man and his group managed to halt Aron Stark's plans to dominate the world. He had lost the battle, and a striking blow for the resistance, but had not yet lost the war.

Yeah, this pretty much sums up the awesomeness of Arno Stark back in the day, other than the whole "plans to dominate the world" bit, which I don't recall happening in the 1984 Machine Man limited series that he debuted in (I just re-read it recently). Arno was indeed used the armor for bounty hunting, mercenary work, and sabotaging/destroying his competitors, but I believe that was just it...he was a businessman first and foremost, and didn't really seem to have Dr. Doom-style world domination goals beyond that. In the MM series he was mainly very high-level hired muscle for Sunset Bain in her fight against Machine Man.

Overall, the 1984 Machine Man series was a really good and original 4-issue series and I recommend that you read it if you already haven't. And yeah, it was set in the then "far off and futuristic" year of 2020, and it's always good for a laugh when sci-fi future dates catch up with the modern era (Back to the Future 2 was based in 2015 and Blade Runner was in 2019). Sadly, we don't have flying motorcycles yet.

Anyway, I've always had a soft spot for Arno/IM2020. There's something about his design that was just cool, unique, and threatening, and the fact that he was an "evil" Iron Man (not really evil, just more morally ambiguous) was pretty unusual back then.

Funny quirk of Arno Stark in the MM series- he would LITERALLY go around referring to himself as "the Iron Man of 2020." Like, multiple times, not just on his intro splash page. Like, who would do that? It would be like I went around saying "I'm the Dolemite of 2020." lol.

Oh, BTW, if you watched the video review above and were wondering what the "fan" was on Arno's right hip, it's actually a huge throwing star weapon.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Trivial Psychic

The 80th Iron Man was a beast, and this one looks even better...minus those peering eyes, which I'm probably just going to black out in the long run.

Actually, the visible eyes are directly from the comic.


I actually liked being able to see his eyes...it made him look a little more threatening.