316 IRON MAN
theories were true? What if order, rationality, even our perceptions of time and space,
were the ultimate conspiracy theories? How would we break free of such constraints?
In order to answer these questions Morrison uses the comics medium itself, as comics
mark a meeting point between the primal building blocks of representation—words
and images. By playing with signs throughout the work Morrison makes Th e Invisibles
a massive sign system. Th e text itself becomes an exercise in semiology, an elaborate
visual and linguistic code, or as he termed it, a “hypersigil,” something more than a story,
a living, breathing fabric of stories, images, and signs that is intersected by other stories
and refers to cultural myths and archetypes. Like Alan Moore, Morrison equates creat-
ing comics as a kind of magical working, manipulating words and images in a primal
alchemy.
Th e Invisibles is Morrison’s largest and most important work, and his best exploration
of the themes of fi ction: magic, anarchy, and apocalypse. He has written scripts for its
adaptation to television and fi lm, but these projects were not commissioned. Some have
said that the Wachowski brothers’ 1999 fi lm Th e Matrix “ borrowed” much of its plot,
characters, and ideas from Th e Invisibles , although substituting a computer program as
the origin of our shared illusion, rather than language or personalities. Morrison has
returned to the ideas in Th e Invisibles in later works, notably Th e Filth (2002), which he
has described as a companion work to Th e Invisibles.
Chris Murray
IRON MAN. Created by the artistic team of Stan Lee , Larry Lieber, Jack Kirby , and Don
Heck and introduced in the pages of Tales of Suspense #39 in March 1963, the story of
Iron Man follows genius inventor, capitalist, and playboy Tony Stark as he confronts
an array of villains while encased in a futuristic, self-designed mechanical suit of armor.
Although he spent his early years as an ethically blind arms manufacturer supplying
advanced weapons to the United States military, a life-threatening injury forces Stark
to radically alter the goals of his technological innovations. Th e tension brought on by
this confl ict—between scientifi c loyalty to one’s country and the individual duty to do
what is right—fuels much of the early Iron Man mythos and realigns Stark as a heroic
fi gure. Other prominent themes in the character’s history include Cold War milita-
rism, corporate corruption, international espionage, and more recently, global terrorism.
Also a founding member of the superhero team Th e Avengers , Iron Man often makes
appearances in various books and storylines throughout the Marvel universe and has
become a central fi gure of Marvel’s recent crossover event storylines.
Born into a wealthy industrialist family, Tony Stark was primed early on to become
a pillar of American industrial capitalism. At the age of 15 he began studying electrical
engineering at MIT. When his parents were killed in a car accident, Tony, just 21 years
old, took over Stark Industries, his late father Howard Stark’s arms and defense manu-
facturing company. At fi rst enthusiastic about aiding the U.S. military in its war against
Communism abroad, Stark was personally involved in the development and testing
of new technologies. Because of this need to remain active in producing experimental
