There's no debating it; Iron Man is one of the most fashionable heroes of the Marvel Universe. He always comes perfectly dressed for every occasion, whether he's up against Kang the Conqueror, heading up S.H.I.E.L.D., or even dealing with high-powered executives in a corporate takeover. Iron Man's so far out of the league of his fellow Avengers. At this point he's just competing with himself... from other universes.
Over the years, several different alternate universe versions of Ol' Shellhead have appeared, enjoying various degrees of success and notoriety. For this list, we're looking at ten of the coolest versions of Iron Man's alternate selves.
10 IRON MAN 2099
In a future where the only company that matters seems to be Alchemax, it’s hard to believe Iron Man could even exist, as so much of what made Tony Stark important had long faded into the history books. But Alchemax CEO Tyler Stone takes genius inventor Sonny Frisco and convinces him to join Alchemax’s version of the Avengers.
This effectively turns Iron Man into something he’d always pretended to be but never actually was: a corporate-owned hero. Constructing a futuristic suit containing the advanced tech of the year 2099, Sonny wasn’t around very long, but at least he looked cool.
9 LORD IRON
The sequel to Neil Gaiman’s legendary 1602 series, 1602: New World, allowed a lot of other Marvel characters to make an appearance. One of them was an alternate version of Tony Stark who was once captured by England and tortured into making weapons for them. After Stark endured torture at the hands of David Banner, he builds this version of the Iron Man suit—a massive, robot-like being that runs off of “lightning bottles” resembling electricity, initially intending to use it to hunt down Banner. Ever the weaponeer, even in the distant past, the suit is loaded down with electricity-based weapons as well.
8 IRON MAN 2020
For whatever reason, in the 80s, it was a thing to set things in the early 2000s as if none of us would be around by the time we got to that era. Iron Man 2020 was created in like… 1984, and that's not even 40 years in the future. In any case, Arno Stark is Tony Stark’s not-so-distant relative from the future who bought Tony Stark’s company and took on a role as a mercenary while wearing a futuristic version of the Iron Man suit. The suit exudes evil, with clockwork gears for shoulder blades and gnarly looking teeth in his mouth.
7 1872 IRON MAN
During Secret Wars, we were given a crossover book featuring the Marvel Universe in the Wild West of 1872. In this world, Tony Stark plays an inventor who was driven to drink after watching people misuse his weapons to slay surrendering soldiers. He spends years ignoring the problems around him in the city of Timely until he’s finally inspired by the death of the town sheriff Steve Rogers to use his final weapon: a massive suit of steam-powered Iron Man armor. This suit exists for every single steampunk fan to geek out over, as it resembles Stark’s original grey armor, albeit riveted together and using basic weaponry like flamethrowers and lightning generated “repulsors”.
6 MAINFRAME
Marvel’s MC2 timeline is something of the “happy end” future for the Marvel Universe. The older heroes get to pass on their lineage to the next generation, but the world wasn’t destroyed for it to have happened. In Mainframe’s case, it’s an example of Tony Stark literally being unable to let go and unable to pass on his legacy to anyone else. Mainframe is an android with the personality of Tony Stark inside of an Iron Man armor. It’s a bit controlling, but at least he manages to become his own person. Plus, his black and gold armor is pretty sweet.
5 MAESTRO
In 2015, following their Secret War event, Marvel released a comic based on their popular mobile game Contest of Champions. The series featured Marvel characters across the multiverse doing battle against one another in exchange for a shot at ultimate power. One of the primary antagonists for the series was a souped-up version of Maestro, the Hulk from the future gone completely evil yet retaining Banner’s incredible IQ. This version of Maestro managed to kill an Iron Man from a universe where Hulk was Iron Man and took his armor as a trophy. Impressive and terrifying all at once; what the Hulk should be.
4 IRON MAN 3030
Rhodey Stark was created during Hickman’s legendary run with the Avengers. A descendant of Tony from far in the future, she travels into the distant past to visit her forefather, helping him and the Avengers to solve an impossible problem: stopping a rogue planet yanked from its own orbit and shot at their Earth to destroy it. Heavy stuff, but she handles the problem fairly easily, allowing the Avengers a chance to survive the remainder of the Secret War. But, more importantly for this list, she’s managed to pull off a swaggy gold armor that should’ve given her ancestor some ideas for future designs.
3 IRON WOMAN (MANGAVERSE)
In the early 2000s, Marvel briefly flirted with a manga-fied version of their universe, as anime soared to new heights thanks to Toonami and Adult Swim. Iron Man’s Mangaverse version is Antoinette Stark, Tony Stark’s sister who takes on the role after Tony vanishes. Formerly with S.H.I.E.L.D., Antoinette turns Iron Man into a massive organization, with tons of other “Iron Men” while she served as Iron Woman. This version is dope enough as it is, but then she also has added weaponry reminiscent of Gundam designs, thus fusing one of the coolest superheroes with one of the coolest anime series ever.
2 IRON HAMMER
Realizing they couldn’t really bring back Amalgam comics anymore, Marvel had a bit of fun with their recent Infinity Wars storyline, creating an alternate universe where the entire Marvel universe was cut in half by combining them all. This left multiple Marvel characters merged, often to really cool results. Iron Hammer is Iron Man fused with Thor, in a world where Sigurd Stark was once the son of the All-Father before being cast out into Midgard, bereft of his memory. Iron Hammer takes the Silver Centurion armor (already one of the coolest designs) and gives it a giant freaking hammer. How cool is that?
1 IRON LANTERN
Amalgam feels like something that could have only happened in the 90s. Both DC and Marvel were so absurdly successful they were doing crossovers all the time, and they finally decided to do a major one, smashing both of their universes together to create a single one for a cross-over event that spanned sixteen one-shots. In Iron Man’s case, he was merged with Green Lantern. In the Amalgam universe, Hal Stark was a man who needed a suit of powered armor to keep his heart beating. Fortunately, he was able to keep running off the energy of his own power battery.