Iron Man Just Revealed His Incredibly Harsh Opinion of Captain America

Warning: contains spoilers for Iron Man #17!

Marvel’s Iron Man’s longstanding feud with Captain America was always based on petty immaturity, but now Tony Stark has finally revealed what he truly thinks of Steve Rogers’ service to the United States, and it’s woefully disrespectful toward the armed forces. The rivalry between the two heroes was only exacerbated by the conflict in Civil War and has only grown stronger with time, despite Captain America’s attempt to move on. Iron Man #17 reveals the feud has escalated to a truly petulant level courtesy of Iron Man: insulting Rogers’ service.

In current comics continuity, Tony Stark recently defeated Korvac, the power-hungry villain with a God complex. Since acquiring the Power Cosmic, Stark has developed a God complex of his own – he even created an Iron God armor as a manifestation of his newfound abilities to add to his ever-increasing list of odd Iron Man armors – and has decided to give the people of Earth a gift. Thus, when Stark returns from space, he grants everyone in New York City his own genius-level intellect. Everyone within the city limits has Tony Stark’s intelligence…but none of his morals.

Immediately, chaos engulfs New York City as the population creates new and groundbreaking inventions; teleportation, flying machines, energy-efficient devices and more effectively turn the city into a lawless haven for super-geniuses. Criminals become geniuses as well, and their attempts to cause destruction are only stopped by the efforts of the police (who themselves have similarly enhanced intelligence). This mass-empowering event is overseen by Iron Man, who enforces order by reducing the IQ of criminals to eighty while locking them up in a prison of his own design…and given only a copy of Fields of Valor: A Novella of Yesterday by Steven Rogers.

This is disrespectful in the extreme on the part of Tony Stark. Iron Man believes Captain America’s book will induce boredom on the part of the reader, hence granting it to the incarcerated as a form of punishment. Even years after Civil War and Captain America’s shocking death, Iron Man still sees Rogers as a boring has-been who can’t stop talking about the war.

But perhaps Iron Man is simply jealous of Rogers’ heroic exploits. Rogers comes from a humble background and is beloved by nearly every person in the Marvel Universe for his heroism and courage under fire. Unfortunately, hundreds of thousands of other Americans who served alongside Rogers are insulted by this move. Iron Man’s true thoughts on Captain America are disrespectful, childish, and brought on by ego, but that’s to be expected.