For those who may not be familiar with the original comics, Mickey Rourke's character in Iron Man 2 is a deeply weird extrapolation/conflation of two different Iron Man characters, one of whom wasn't a villain. Way back in the '60s, before the book was actually called Iron Man and was still Tales of Suspense, a Soviet engineer called Anton Vanko developed a powered suit codenamed Crimson Dynamo, then defected to the US and went to work for Stark Industries. Not long after, he was killed in the course of preventing a KGB officer from stealing the Dynamo suit back, and that, apart from occasional reappearances of (later models of) same, was the end of Anton Vanko's involvement.

In the movie, Anton Vanko is the old man who dies at the beginning. It's implied later in the film that he did indeed defect in the '60s, and worked with Howard Stark on the original arc reactor project, but they had an unspecified falling-out and he returned to Russia, where, obviously, things did not go well for him. Rourke's character, Ivan, is his son (he didn't have one in the comics); his whole reason for being in the storyline is the grudge he has against the Stark family for how things turned out for his father. (Things clearly didn't go too great for him, either, given that he's covered in Russian prison tats and probably has TB.)

All of which is fair enough, but then, for reasons I do not entirely understand, the movie writers then decided not to make Ivan the Crimson Dynamo once he had developed his own RT technology. Instead, they crossed him with another comics character—a third-string villain called Blacklash (originally Whiplash), a Mob enforcer whose shtick involved electrified titanium whips. Seriously. Wha? No, I don't get it either, but that's what they did.

So, that said, what we have here is basically the comics version; nothing to do with any of the business described above.

>Exciting things in store for Iron Man influenced powersuits, though.
>And Justin Hammer's a prick as usual.

Justin, on the other hand, is basically the movie version, 'cause Sam Rockwell killed that role. In the good way. The original comics version is an old man, originally portrayed as a sort of relic robber baron from the Gilded Age, the wily, treacherous financier type. He works a lot better as a contemporary rival of Stark's who is not as good at tech, but much less scrupulous.

>So what put this back on the active list after umpteen years, Gryphon?
> Not that I'm at all complaining - it was a very pleasant surprise!

Hell if I know, man, I just work here.

More seriously, I think it's mostly down to Matt, digging around in the bin for something we could finish off in relatively short order while we grapple with stuff that's in a less advanced state. "Hey, if we broke this here, it wouldn't take a whole lot of work to make it releasable, and then we'd have a bunch of the next one done."

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.