#amanda armstrong

[why-i-love-comics]

Invincible Iron Man #17 - "The Price of Knowledge" (2024)

written by Gerry Duggan art by Patch Zircher & Bryan Valenza

[avengerscompound]

Invincible Iron Man (2016) #11

[wisdomweirdstuffandrants]

ok who else thought these two were going to get together?

[comicwaren]

From Iron Man 2020 #004

Art by Pete Woods and Celeste Woods

Written by Dan Slott

[maorriel]

Oh, but why hide him if he couldn’t breathe and replace him? He could have medical assistance and still be around them right? Ok Maria sounds good but not Amanda. A true boomer 😂

Oh, That’s even another can of worms to open. It’s gonna be a long-ass post, so buckle up. 

 Howard and Maria had difficulties to conceive a child and when Arno was conceived, there was a big chance of miscarriage, so Howard was exploring the world to find a cure to help Maria keep the child. During this exploration, Howard met Rigellian Recorder 451, who agreed to help him, if Starks would let him to bio-engineer the fetus so it could pilot the God-Killer Armor, that’s supposed to battle the-whatever-future-cosmic threat. 451 did his magic and everything was sugar and rainbows until Howard discovered that 451 added a kill switch that could threaten the baby’s life when he was adult, so he made some biological concoction that would keep the kid safe and injected Maria with it.  451 left the earth and Starks were relieved. Arno was delivered and we even have this cute picture of Starks,

but suddenly the baby started wheezing and having breathing problems and they discovered that he couldn’t breathe without medical help. Maria got angry, demanding that they should drag that robot back to earth and Howard went ‘yeah, sweetie, you know when I injected you with that serum? It was because 451 added a thing that could injure our baby and I tried to neuter it, so it could be side effect of it, lol’. Maria and Howard decided that they had to hide the baby, because if 451 came back it would be really suspicious that the boy who should be completely healthy and intellectually advanced, had severe breathing problems. After hiding Arno, They still tried to conceive but unsuccessfully and then, voila, here’s our boy Tony, who’s given up into adoption because his father was Hydra Agent (he always has rotten luck in fathers) and his mother was traumatized because of that and she asked Fury to keep the baby safe. Cue Fury’s buddy Howard hearing about the baby, who can not only rival his biological son in intelligence in the future, will also look like more like him than his own son and coincidentally has Stark Family Name (Starks tend to repeat the names in the family, Howard is named after his father and Amanda named her kid Anthony, which is Howard’s second name). Howard sprouts bullshit about they never meant Tony to be a decoy and they always loved him, but yeah, whatever you say, Howard.

Also, me preaching about the family resemblance:

here we have, Howard:

Maria:

Arno (he’s skinny here, because of his confinement, but even in IM2020 he doesn’t look a lot like his parents):

Tony:

Amanda:

And Jude:

Granted, Tony is more modeled after his fathers rather his mothers and we could argue, that different artists draw him differently, but every time they draw the entire Stark family, Tony is more likely to resemble the Starks rather than Arno.

[veryvincible]

The Shitstorm That Is TS:IM and IM2020: Family Dynamics

Part 3 / 4. :-)

Blood is thicker than water, baby! Apparently!

1 2 4

So, here’s Amanda. Tony’s birth mother.

Tony lovingly refers to her as “Mom,” and people are understandably confused about this. Everyone’s understandably confused about this.

The thing is, this isn’t awful on its own. Plenty of adopted children develop parent-child relationships with their bio parents long after the adoption takes place. It’s not unimaginable to think that Tony could see Amanda as a mother figure.

But hold that thought.

Amanda’s not really connecting with this funky new Tony. In her own words, there’s nothing.

At this point, Tony’s created a massively multiplayer virtual reality experience called eSCAPE. And things are going wrong. There’s an AI called “Motherboard” who’s fucking shit up.

So, Tony’s spending a lot of time tending to that. He’s being a dick to his loved ones in the meantime, but we’ve already established in a previous post that this Tony really isn’t the Tony we all know and love. That isn’t to say 616 Tony was never a dick to his loved ones because of how work-focused he was, since that would be a blatant lie, but. Y’know.

So, he and Amanda just aren’t vibing. 

Now, eSCAPE is something that Amanda actually likes. She’s a singer, and eSCAPE lets her look and feel like a youthful rockstar again. She spends a lot of her own time in the program, too. And at some point...

This is where she ends up. And guess who’s with her.

This is Motherboard. eSCAPE is supposed to be “her reality,” where anything she says goes. The thing is, she’s not just presented as a rogue AI. This isn’t a fault in her programming. Sure, maybe the real Maria Stark never went off the rails quite so hard, but this isn’t just an in-comic AI flub.

This is how the writers choose to present Maria Stark herself.

And in eSCAPE, Tony gets along with her and Howard flawlessly.

There we are. Amanda’s the good guy, and Howard and Maria are assholes.

But isn’t this kind of... wrong? To fully understand the mindfuck that is Dan Slott’s idea of family, we have to go even deeper. Howard and Maria-- well, only Maria, really, because Howard’s nothing but a loving NPC here-- is being demonized because of bad mischaracterization, right? That’s all it is?

Nope! It’s not.

(Note: Amanda’s appearance is changed in this panel. She is the one in blue. This is explained in the issue.)

Newsflash! Tony Stark’s biological mother can “out-love” Tony Stark’s digital mother. Rather, Tony’s bio mom should be able to care more about him than the mom that didn’t give birth to him. The dialogue didn’t say “Motherboard isn’t the real Maria, you should be able to out-love her!”

The dialogue said, “You’re Tony’s biological mother. Out-love Motherboard.”

But it doesn’t end there.

“You didn’t raise that boy,” cries Amanda. “You were never there for him!”

Well... Amanda didn’t raise him either. That’s nothing against bio moms who decide to put their children up for adoption, that’s a fact. Amanda wasn’t there. Amanda didn’t raise him.

Howard and Maria were not ideal parents. They were shaky and inconsistent, but they were there for quite a while before sending him off to boarding school, and even then, they weren’t gone forever.

Howard and Maria were the ones who raised Tony Stark. For better or for worse.

Last image is a recording of Tony talking to actual Tony, who seems to have forgotten the entirety of the eSCAPE deal.

Maybe I’m reading too much into this, but the word choice is there. The demonization of Tony’s adoptive parents is there. Remember that detail in the beginning, where he calls Amanda “Mom” effortlessly?

There are all kinds of dynamics that adoptive parents and children can have, but Tony was adopted as a baby. He didn’t meet Amanda until decades after that. Some things are understandable within the context of the comic, and some things just aren’t. This is one of the things that, in my opinion, isn’t.

It feels more like the writer is projecting his own image of family onto this one. Amanda’s the good guy, because Amanda’s the biological mother.

I don’t think 616 Tony would feel any kind of catharsis from the act of killing his mother. 616 Tony loved his mother. 616 Tony, for the most part, loved both his parents. More often than not, he fails to recognize Howard’s abuse as true abuse. Even when he makes comments about it, he acts more like it was just “one of those things” between them, a behavioral blip like every parent has. Every time we get a peek into his developmental years, he’s shown having both good and bad experiences with his parents.

And Maria vouched for him on more than one occasion. Maria did love him.

Especially for a character like 616 Tony, who has explicitly stated that he’s not a big fan of the whole “killing people” thing, the way this was handled was just irresponsible. Tony can hate killing. Tony can love his adoptive parents. Tony can love Amanda. All of these things can coexist... just not in TS:IM, apparently.

And then Amanda left.

Oh, and guess who gets the loving family?

Arno, who is literally psychologically tormenting them. Arno, who really doesn’t seem to love them all that much. Arno, who- through no fault of his own, genuinely- wasn’t raised by them.

But they’re blood, right? And that’s what matters. Grouping people together by blood.

And Tony only ever gets to be part of the family again...

When Arno can use it to manipulate him.

Next up, the “AI Revolution.”

[femme-fangirl]

True lesbian icon

Amanda Armstrong is and always will be my idol

[micswho]

An au where amanda kills not only tony's biological dad but also howard and then she falls in love with maria and they get married and together they raise and love tony