Iron Man Extremis is one of the best Iron Man stories ever written. It was written by none other than comicbook legend Warren Ellis. Ellis has a long resume that consists of writing The Astonishing X-Men, Moonknight and The Thunderbolts.
Please, consider white-listing VULKK.com with your AdBlocker and support the site! Thanks!
And transhumanism is exactly what Iron Man Extremis is all about.
Iron Man Extremis
The Iron Man reboot starts with Tony Stark being a weapon designer whose weapons are being used against Al-Queda. During an inspection tour Tony gets injured by one of his own bombs and a shrapnel hits his heart. He creates his first armor in a cave where he is held captive. Yo Hinsen helps out but pays for it by getting killed while Tony manages to escape.
Three men enter the D.R. Cole Slaughterhouse. Two of them turn and inject their partner with a mysterious chemical called Extremis. The man falls to the floor in immense pain, a bizarre physical change slowly overtaking him.A few days later at the FuturePharm Corporation, Dr. Aldrich Killian, a man responsible for stealing the Extremis chemical commits suicide. Killian’s boss, Maya Hansen finds the body upon walking into his office.
At some point Tony fights one of the men, he is named Mallen, who has taken the Extremis chemical and he ends up having superior strength, reflexes and a greatly accelerated healing factor.
Tony and Mallen fight and Mallen wipes the floor with Tony Stark which prompts Tony to take a modified version of Extremis.
Extremis powers
Effects of the Extremis process, apart from the changes specific to Tony Stark, included: greatly accelerated healing; immensely-boosted immune system; generation of “new, improved organs” (Tony’s cardiovascular and respiratory systems were greatly upgraded); and, the side effect of increased aggressiveness. Tony Stark had the super-powers removed from the Extremis compiler, though, effectively ‘exchanging’ them for the ability to interface directly with machines and his own armor; but, Mallen retained said super-powers, resulting in his high-level super-strength, super-speed, advanced invulnerability, and the abilities to breathe fire and project arcs of electricity from his hands, as well as being bullet-proof.
In the movies
Iron Man part one and three draw heavily from the Iron Man Volume IV comicbooks. For instance Tony Stark’s bomb exploding and shrapnel hitting his heart. The first Iron Man armor that was built in the cave. And ofcourse Yo Hinsen, who helped Tony only to die except Hinsen died while he was trying to distract the guards buying Tony more time to install the software in the Iron Man armor.
Also in the movies, Tony is a weapon designer but he also mentions that Stark Industries also develop tools such as medical biometric implants, cardiac replacement medicine and internal analgesic pumps.
Ofcourse in Iron Man part three, we meet Maya Hansen who is a botanist experimenting with Extremis on plants before going to human trials. We get to meet Dr. Aldrich Killian who is the founder of A.I.M. (Advanced Idea Mechanics) who wants to show Tony his new invention. Instead Tony leaves him standing in the cold, literally.
This version of Maya Hansen works together with Killian. Killian seems to be an amalgam of Mallen in the comics. He has injected himself with Extremis and is able to shoot fire, regenerate quickly and has superior strength.
Maya Hansen and Aldrich Killian have conspired. Although with different motives. Hansen seems to be poised to use it for good and just closing a deal with the devil to complete that goal. Killian however is going for world domination by creating a fake terrorist called The Mandarin.
While I liked the Iron Man three movie, I have to say that if you are going to draw inspiration from the comics and use a character like Dr. Aldrich Killian then at least give him a better or a deeper background. The Killian character was very flat in the comics with hardly any backstory at all. The story Killian in the movie was very very thin. They should have fleshed it out a bit more.
Where to find Iron Man Extremis
You can find Iron Man Extremis on Amazon as well as probably in your local comic book shop. The series are also available as part of the Marvel Unlimited monthly/yearly subscription service.
