Well, back in the day my favorite character used to be Spider-Man. Why? Well, same reason as everyone else, really. He wasn't the smartest, but he was still very smart. He wasn't the most powerful, but he had very cool powers. He was the "average guy" and never backed out from doing the right thing. My first comic books were Ultimate Spider-Man 1&2, which was the only series I could find in my country, so essentially Spider-Man was the only character I could read about. Either way, he was both reletable and uplifting. Next to Spidey there was Batman, which I also loved for the typical reasons. The JL cartoon, B:TAS, the toys, the films, Batman was everywhere. He was my No.2 so to speak.
But after years of mishandling (I did eventually read the 616 stuff when I grew older), he's not at the number 1 spot. After Marvel Ultimate Alliance I was exposed to many more characters, and I started changing favorites very often. For long periods of time, my faves were Deadpool, Moon Knight, the Silver Surfer, Green Lantern (Hal), Deathstroke, Constantine, Ghost Rider, Question, Superman, Black Panther, Doctor Strange and others. They came and went, mostly because that's when I started using the internet to read the original comics and I got to know more of them. By the time of Civil War (the comic) I was into the T-Bolts, and when the Dark Avengers came around I started becoming interested in anti-heroes villains. For a very long while since then, Doctor Doom's been in my Top 3 characters list.
Aaaaanyway, the one character that I really "made" my favorite and the one this post is about is Iron Man. I was introduced to him during a trip, where I found a small "collection"-book. It had the FA-story, one issue from the Busiek run, an old story where Fury & Stark teamed up to fight a HYDRA-Monster in the ocean, Demon in a Bottle, & a story where Tony is trapped in a satelite. Reading all those while on trip made the experience memorable, and tied that book with happy & nostalgic memories. After a while I came across an Extremis Trade, the Iron Man movie hit, and I got really into it. I started buying Iron Man figurines, the games on the consoles, even the crappy iphone games. From that point on I was hooked.
As for why that little booklet made such an impression to me, the simplest answer is like I said above, that coupled with a trip and me being young enough, cemented it in my brain alongside happy memories. But there was more it. Tony was different from the other characters I had encountered so far, because he didn't have any special powers of any kind, nor was he a super-genius at every single thing. He was a guy who had a knack for mechanics and electronics, and had managed to both have a healthy company, and be a super-hero. Although I saw his darker side and failings in DiaB, he still managed to pick himself up. So in my eyes, he was the guy that, if you worked hard enough, you could in theory be.
Another thing that helped was that because of his mustache and hair, plus his mom's name being Maria, I thought he was an Italian/Greek-American, so I could relate to him more compared to the other characters who I knew for a fact were full-blooded Americans. When I continued reading Ultimate Spider-Man and came across the Ultimates due to his name being Antonio my theory was even more "cemented" in my mind. Granted, when I started reading the back issues I found out that this wasn't true, but I still have it as my own little "headcanon". I just pretend that while the Starks came from either Germany or England to America, his mom's family had Med ties. Nothing noteworthy, but a small misconception that kinda brought the character closer to me.
So, yeah. That's it for me I guess.
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