The Road to Hell... Iron-Man or Londo Mollari or How JMS Dropped the Ball

(Warning, the following contains many many spoilers about current Marvel events and the television show Babylon 5)

A discussion with Tavella in the comments section of this post has got me thinking as to why I find JMS's portrayal of Iron Man so disappointing.

See, I know that it's Mark Millar and Paul Jenkins that started the whole Tony-as-a-monster thing, but oddly I'm not as annoyed with them. Mostly because I tend to find both writers to be more sensationalistic than insightful with regards to character portrayals. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, given the right vehicle, but it does get in the way when it comes to portraying moral shades of gray.

Fortunately, most of the writers of the Marvel Universe have stepped up. I personally don't think we were ever meant to believe the "right side" won Civil War. Heck, even Tony and Reed never seemed to take in account the idea that they could possibly win. We weren't supposed to come out of Civil War feeling satisfied, I think, but with a genuine sense of "Oh shit, what does this mean for everyone now?"

The general post-Civil War portrayal of Tony Stark to me isn't saying that "being monstrous is good". It's saying that "sometimes human beings do terrible things because they genuinely believe it's the right thing to do." That is not the same as condoning an action. There's a reason that people say "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" after all. And very few historical atrocities came about because someone was actively TRYING to be evil.

Admittedly, Tony's story was that of an antagonist. A villain. His story isn't much different from Magneto's, in a sense. (Depending on Magneto's writer.) A man who believed and acted and was WRONG. A man who let himself do terrible things. What keeps Tony a protagonist (NOT a hero, he hasn't earned that right again yet) is that he understands this. In his own series, in Cap's series, in Fallen Son, and so on, Tony is a man who understands he is damned by his own actions.

(I'm not really going into WWH or Mighty Avengers, because I really do think that editorial intervention has fallen down on the job with regards to keeping everyone on the same page with regard to the character.)

Which is, essentially, why I think Cap had to die. (And why I think he'll be back sooner than most other folk predict.) He's the sacrifice. The embodiment of all the mistakes Tony has made. Tony is a character that deals with numbers, a businessman. For someone accustomed to working with numbers, it can be easy to forget that there are human lives behind them. Tony is a character that I could easily see trying to rationalize his mistakes as "the gains outweigh the loss".

Of course, as long as he'd think that way, he'd be irredeemable.

Cap's death though ruins that. Not because of their friendship, alone, but because Steve wasn't a war casualty. Goliath, for all he was a friend, was a death that could be rationalized: The war was vital to save lives, Goliath gave his life for what he believed. His death isn't meaningless. I hope he would understand and forgive me.

Steve's death wasn't in war. It wasn't in battle. Steve didn't give his life for what he believed. He was murdered. In cold blood. On the footsteps of the courthouse where Tony had put him. His death can't be added into the gains v. losses column, because the war was already over. It was meaningless. He's not a martyr at all. There was no cause.

It's kind of interesting that Steve's role in all this is a traditionally feminine one. Men are traditionally the martyrs, people who died fighting for their beliefs. Very active roles, even in death. Women and children are traditionally sacrifices, passive victims of tragedy. Their deaths are symbolic of corruption, of good ideals turned bad. They didn't choose to die. They didn't die for their beliefs. They just...died. (There are female martyrs, but most are cast in very male-oriented warrior-type roles, like Jeanne D'Arc. Quieter female martyrs tend to be less glamorized in literature.)

Steve's death illuminates Tony's sins like nothing else could. His resurrection, therefore, will probably come about as a symbolic redemption, "coincidently" coinciding with the point that Tony has earned the right to be a (flawed) hero again.

He'll probably have to save him from Bucky Barnes in the process, symbolic of Tony's transcendance of his sin. (Oooh, remind me to do the Bucky-as-symbolizing-sins-of-the-past post too).

Admittedly, who knows how satisfying Tony's redemption will actually be (it'll depend on the writer, for me), but that's I think where they're going with this.

Straczynski's writing in all this though really annoys me. Even if they AREN'T going in the direction I think they are, he's still far too good of a writer to need to resort to making Tony into a Snidely Whiplash character, regardless of how he feels about the character himself.

See, as I said, I give a pass to Millar and Jenkins because I don't think their talents lie in this sort of complicated moral quagmire. But Straczynski not only is a talented writer who excels at this sort of story. He's written it!

Babylon 5 was a brilliant piece of work, in my opinion (well, the fifth season was kind of weak, I think, and the tv movies probably went a bit overboard) and there's no character more complex than Ambassador Londo Mollari.

Londo was self-centered, shallow, scheming, lecherous, manipulative, immature, power-mongering and corrupt. His conduct was as far from the ideal ambassador as you could get. Early on, before the Shadow metaplot had grown past the first initial seeds, Londo was largely a foil for the other Ambassadors: wise and benevolent Delenn, noble and honorable G'kar, enigmatic Kosh. He was comic relief.

There was always something that kept him from being completely cartoonish though. A flicker of genuine "human" concern and fondness for his poor put-upon aide Vir, a large sense of humor and his own measure of charm. And he very genuinely loved his people and sought to serve them (while gaining power and influence in the prospect).

It was his relationship with G'Kar that first allowed Londo to show depth. G'Kar's people were greatly wronged by the Centauri (Londo's people) and the two had a very vicious rivalry. This of course led to the inevitable "rivals must work together to survive" during a plot where a plague or poison or something (my memory is shaky) was released on the station. Londo, pragmatic, urged teamwork, but to his shock and dismay, G'Kar was actually willing to die if it meant that Londo would die with him. The horror and realization didn't abate just because they were ultimately rescued.

Londo's choices end up making him a pivotal character soon enough. When the evil Shadows come, Londo and his people ally with them. Londo himself enters into what amounts to a Faustian bargain with the Shadows' representative Morden (admittedly, Londo is unwitting of this), each time getting exactly what he wants, though it comes with a price each time. And each time, Londo gives in, though his conscience does twang periodically.

There is a point that is indicative of Londo's fall (or that of his race), when Ambassador Kosh (whose race is the antithesis of the Shadows) emerges from his exo-suit to save the Captain from death, each race is in breathless awe. In his true form, the Ambassador resembles to each being something different (to the human Captain, and thus to the audience, he strongly resembled an angelic figure) but religiously significance.

Londo however quietly confesses that when his colleagues each had a religious experience of their own, he saw nothing.

Londo is ultimately redeemed by his actions in a number of ways. In order to save his people, he ends up assassinating their insane emperor, winding up in a position of power that he once would have wanted. When the Vorlons (Kosh's race) threaten his planet to seek his death, he implores his aide to kill him. (Circumstances intervened). Much later, as Emperor, Londo would ultimately engage in truly heroic self-sacrifice to save his friends and his people.

Londo is fascinating, because he's sometimes a monster. But because he's also human (metaphorically speaking). During his rivalry with G'Kar, he was often the more understandable of the two, despite his and his people's misdeeds. His actions were almost never truly maliciously intended, but that was part of what made them so monstrous. A fact that was never glossed over. However the audience never lost the sense that Londo was a three-dimensional being.

If Straczynski could write Londo, he could write Iron Man. An Iron Man that makes one ache in understanding, if not sympathy, even as he sends himself further down the spiral.

The fact that he has not done so, that he's resorted to a one-dimensional caricature is something I pin entirely on him. Sure, Iron Man's fall was clumsily written. Sure Millar and Jenkins dropped the ball.

But Iron Man isn't just some character that Millar and Jenkins created to perform a specific role in the plot. He's a character with decades of genuine heroism behind him. He's a good character, a complex character, the epitome of the flawed human being, and has been so for many many years before Londo Mollari was ever more than a gleam in JMS's eye. And fan-entitlement or not, he and his fans deserve more respect than they've been given.

JMS is more than capable of salvaging the mess that is Tony Stark. He has tremendous talent when he wants to use it, he could add so much clout to the other writers' interpretations, leaving the Jenkins and Millar travesty as a soon-to-be forgotten anomaly in the history of a strong, complex and appealingly flawed character.

Instead we get a cartoon so one-dimensional that it's not even worth seeing Thor pummel him into the ground. What's the point? He's not even *there*.

Maybe next time, JMS.