There was no mystery as to Stan Lee’s intent when creating Tony Stark, the Iron Man, all those years ago. In case you forgot, Stan Lee saw Iron Man as an opportunity to create a character that went against the values of the growing counter-culture of the sixties. Stan the Man opted to do the impossible: make young readers relate to the bourgeois capitalist, Tony Stark. He succeeded. And the rest, as they say, is history.

What we’re left with is a legacy of a hero. A flawed one at that. To understand the importance of this you first have to understand the Marvel method. This is what Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were creating, which updated and shifted the superhero genre entirely. Gone was the age of the square jawed do-gooders. Now we had relatable heroes with true vices. They could be a bickering family of four, that kid next door with real world problems or, of course, a playboy alky.

This was the all-important shift in comic books. Without this shift, it would be impossible for superheroes to continue to be important. It’s also hard to imagine Western Civilization without superheroes and, in that way, it seems like an inevitable shift one way or the other. It’s America’s great mythology after all.

So here we arrive to the importance of the thing; the reason why Iron Man is such an important character in fiction. Flawed heroes will always be more relatable. It’s easier to see ourselves in characters who fuck up, doubt themselves, or have some sort of inner conflict that stifles them.

At the end of the day, these are the characters that we never tire of. Why? Because that’s us. We fuck up, we doubt, and we’re often harder on ourselves than we deserve too. Seeing how others deal with that – how others overcome – helps us find North on our moral compass. Which brings us back to superheroes as this great American mythology; these gods we look to for moral guidance.

As long as we can see our own flaws and shortcomings in superheroes, forever shall they reign.