Iron Man: In Marvel Comics, Captain America Killed Tony Stark (For Good)

Thanks mostly to the MCU, Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, is probably the biggest Marvel hero in the world. He’s instantly recognizable, beloved by fans, and – after the events of Avengers: Endgame – thoroughly dead. Of course, any comic fan knows that in the original stories, Tony Stark is still running around. More than that, they know that when a popular character dies, it’s only ever for a little while, and writers will eventually find a way to return them to the land of the living. But every rule has an exception, and not only did Tony Stark die permanently in the comics, but it was Captain America who did the deed.

Their fight takes place at the conclusion of the epic “Times Runs Out” story in Avengers #44, written by Jonathan Hickman with art by Kev Walker and Stefano Caselli, and while readers don’t see the final blow struck, it’s a certainty that Iron Man perishes, and Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, was not only the man attacking him, but the person who had prevented his escape at every turn.

If you’re wondering what it took to bring Captain America and Iron Man to deadly blows, you may be comforted to know the two only resolve their grievances physically at the literal end of the world. In the run-up to Marvel’s 2015 Secret Wars event, the Marvel Multiverse was in collapse. It began with a series of “Incursions” – events in which two parallel Earths briefly shared the same space before destroying each other. Iron Man gathered together the Illuminati – a secret cabal of Marvel’s smartest and most influential heroes – to find a solution, and they landed on one pretty quickly: buy time by destroying the parallel Earths that made contact with their reality.

The Illuminati

Steve Rogers was strongly opposed but Tony, seeing no other option, colluded to wipe his memory and work with the rest of the Illuminati to do the unthinkable in pursuit of some potential future solution. The kicker? There was no solution. As the name of the story attests, time ran out, and though a group of villains led by Thanos actually took over the duty of repelling other Earths, the Illuminati became despised figures – the men who had not only failed to save the Earth but kept the danger a secret where others might have tried.

So, is the Tony Stark who died some kind of alternate-universe copy? Not at all – in Avengers #44, Tony and Steve have a final dinner, which Tony uses to show his longtime friend that he’s helped the amnesiac Captain Universe find her missing family. It’s a final gesture meant to reassure Steve that Tony hasn’t become the enemy, but it backfires when Iron Man overplays his hand and Captain Universe calls him out, telling Captain America that there was never any hope to stop the Incursions and, what’s more, Tony knew it all along.

Furious, Captain America leaves the meeting to address the final Incursion, in which the Ultimate Marvel Universe is preparing to destroy the mainstream Marvel reality in an attempt to save itself. In the meantime, Reed Richards (aka Mr. Fantastic) is organizing inter-dimensional life rafts; vehicles intended not to stop the end of the Multiverse, but rather to survive it and convey a few select people to whatever might come next. In a discussion about who will be aboard the rafts, Captain America vetoes their selection of Tony Stark. Despite objections that the genius inventor Iron Man will be of huge value to the survivors in whatever is left of reality, Rogers stays firm: in his mind, the end of reality is Tony Stark’s fault, and his old friend does not get to escape the consequences.

Captain America vs. Iron Man

Captain America isn’t content to simply stop his friend from escaping the end of everything. Once the final Incursion has happened and the end has arrived, Tony detects an intruder in his high-tech base. Going to confront them, he discovers Captain America in an old robotic suit Tony once made him to increase his strength and durability. Tony laughs, reminding Steve that he built this technology and won’t be taken down by it, but Captain America spits back that this has always been Stark’s problem – thinking it’s all about the tools, when truly it’s the man inside the suit that matters.

Tackling Iron Man out into the street, Captain America engages Tony in a brutal, ugly brawl in which he tears away Iron Man’s armor, demanding that he finally admit what everyone already knows: Tony Stark never had the answer to this problem, and he was lying when he pretended he did. Blasting Steve with little concern for the Super Soldier’s survival, Tony admits it’s all true, but he also adds a final detail that keeps the two Avengers fighting until their final moments: even knowing how everything went, if Tony had his time over again, he wouldn’t do anything differently. The “camera” zooms out as the two continue to fight, just as a SHIELD helicarrier tumbles out of the sky, exploding on the spot where their battle rages on. To make things certain, reality ends soon after, marking the end of Steve Rogers and Tony Stark in the original Marvel Universe.

Did Tony Come Back?

Iron Man is still walking around, so what gives? To cut a long story short, Doctor Doom was able to gather enough broken pieces of reality to keep things going until the multiverse could be recreated by Franklin Richards, but what Franklin made is a recreation. The current Marvel Universe is a copy of the original reality – remade with painstaking detail, but remade nonetheless, with both the Captain America and the Iron Man of this new, eighth iteration of reality unknowing recreations of Marvel’s original heroes. Marvel has been very clear since that this new reality is different, right down to the molecular level, and several people remember the events of “Time Runs Out” and Secret Wars, both of which were cut out of the history of the new Marvel Universe. In short, the original versions of Captain America and Iron Man died hating each other, locked in a battle they both not only knew would be fatal, but chose as their last act on Earth.

Is there anything fans can use to soften the blow? Well, while it’s not really referenced in Hickman’s Avengers run, this Tony Stark is technically still inverted from the events of Axis, which brought his worst characteristics to the fore. Likewise, Steve Rogers had recently had the Super Soldier Serum drained from his body, turning him into an old man. In this sense, neither hero was fully themselves by the time of the fight – even if they had been for the vast majority of the events leading up to their animosity – so their actions are just distanced enough from their current personas that we can speculate they wouldn’t behave the same way again. Still, it’s sadly undeniable that Captain America and Iron Man didn’t kill each other in some imaginary tale or possible future, but at the true, canonical end of the original Marvel Universe. Compared to that, Tony’s “snap” death in Avengers: Endgame feels downright merciful in comparison.

About The Author

Robert Wood
(396 Articles Published)

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Robert Wood is a comics editor for Screen Rant and the author of ‘The False Elephant (and 99 Other Unreasonably Short Stories).’ He received his Master’s in English Literature from Lancaster University, and now happily spends his days applying it to Daredevil and the Hulk.

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