Polite Dissent

11 Responses to “ Tony Stark’s Heart – The Early Years ”

1. Jason
   January 16th, 2008 at 2:02 am
   

   I always liked that about Tony. Every time he went out to fight the good fight, he was risking his life and facing death. His armor was always on the verge of running out of power, after all, and his opponents almost always made him use every last bit of energy in his batteries. He never had to go out there and take the chances he did, but he always did because he could turn his disability into a super-ability!

2. Chris
   January 16th, 2008 at 6:39 am
   

   So…Tony Stark has a problem with his heart? Is that what I’m getting? Huh. Who knew.

3. Arkonbey
   January 16th, 2008 at 7:30 am
   

   Wow, man. That was a lot of work to make that post!

   What with being tied to the need to find an outlet and all, I wonder if Stark has problems in Europe (or is the Iron Man suit universal). Perhaps the new Iron Man suit should be a hybrid.

4. ScienceGiant
   January 16th, 2008 at 7:53 am
   

   Is there some reason Tony never considered a heart transplant? Other than the Gilligan’s Island rule? I mean, it must be a million trillion times easier to have a pacemaker implanted than wear the Iron Man armor. I’m curious to see how the movie plans to deal with this.

   Also, my alltime fav updating on Tony’s suit: coating it with gold spraypaint. I LOVED IT!

5. jillian
   January 16th, 2008 at 10:46 am
   

   http://www.marvel.com/i/content/st/2060new_storyimage0341082_full.jpg

   Looks like there’s something, er, vaguely around his heart. Chest. Area. (My god, I should just not comment on this blog.)

6. iJusten
   January 17th, 2008 at 10:55 am
   

   I notice that at few times the writer is confusing what the armour actually does. Few times the comics seem to suggest that the heart *itself* needs the energy keep beating, instead of to keep a piece of shrapnel *off* the heart.

7. McKenzie
   January 17th, 2008 at 11:08 am
   

   Forget his heart, what about hygine? How in the world did he keep that huge metal wife-beater on for 10 years without getting some sort of infection, or at the very least without it affecting his playboy lifestyle.

8. fluffy
   January 17th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
   

   Has Tony Stark ever gone to the UK only to find that he didn’t have the right adapter for his chest plate?

   MUST… FIND… THE RIGHT… PLUGS

9. Seth Finkelstein
   January 18th, 2008 at 4:32 am
   

   I don’t know how reasonable this is medically, but I think the original idea was that there were a lot of little metal shrapnel fragments in his chest that were slowly working their way towards his heart as breathed, moved around, etc. And that there were just too many of them to remove (given the surgical technology of the time) without completely ripping up his chest. The chest plate “magnetic field” kept all the fragments from moving further in or pressing on his heart, but couldn’t extract them. So a heart transplant would just end up with him having an injured new heart as remaining pieces of shrapnel in his chest damaged it.

   Something like what happened to the guy who Dick Cheney shot in a hunting accident, where a piece of bidrshot actually moved in the victim’s chest and caused him to have a heart attack later.

10. John Bishop
    January 22nd, 2008 at 5:37 pm
    

    Imagine how effective Iron Man could be if he wasn’t wasting so much time and energy on all that exposition!

11. Will Gillies
    November 5th, 2009 at 8:24 am
    

    The way I figure it best is the electromagnet kept the shrapnel at bay, but there was some heart damage. The armor had a very primative defibralator system.
    a ‘a focused beam of radio-stimulation that would jump-start his heart control nerves.’
    (I lifted that from http://forum.newsarama.com/showthread.php?t=154962)
    Eventually , the heart got damaged so badly, after Stark’s battle with an LMD version of himsef it was repaired by synthetic tissue.
    Now, I don’t know if it was the old heart patched up (which I suspect) or an entirley new heart.

    Now, Many Many years later, after some more heart trouble, alcholoisim, getting shot and paralyzed, walking again, getting his nervous system eaten and replaced, being frozen, being defrosted and paralyzed again, and walking yet again, Tony Stark is killed during the Crossing.

    Then there was teen Tony, who also had a heart trouble.

    Then Heroes reborn happened.
    A new Tony Stark got his heart shredded, by a bit of helicopter, and donned armour which kept it beating. (nanites probably)

    Then cam heroes return. The three above Tony Starks were merged into one. No heart trouble, no artificial nervous system. He was ok.

    Until the ‘living armor’ storyline. Then he got that artificial heart which I guess ceased to be a plot device after Extremis, the Extremis itself being a bigger plot device. The last i saw the Ultronic heart
    was during the Avengers Disassembled Iron man tie in when Ruiko, Tony’s Girlfriend died.

    Heres more if it helps.
    http://www.ironmanarmory.com/starkbio.html

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