Iron Man Episode One

Saturday Stories

May 4, 2019

Iron Man Episode One

By Jonathan Aquino

I

I enjoyed Avengers: Endgame when we watched it last Saturday. My prediction was correct that they would travel in time through the quantum realm. I won't give any spoilers, but the scenes I remember most were when Tony met his father before he was born, and when Thor met his mother on the day she died. I'm curious about time travel, which I've also talked about in my stories about The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow, because my favorite TV show of all time is Voyagers! So, if I took even just one Infinity Stone from the past, then the entire course of history would change because Thanos wouldn't have gotten them all. That means there would be no Snap.

II

But is there only one timeline? Doc explained it to Marty in Back To The Future. When a person goes back, it creates a "temporal events sequence" which creates an "alternate reality." Imagine a horizontal line on a blackboard, with the past on the left and the future on the right. Apparently Biff went from 1985 to 1958, which created an alternate 1985, which Doc showed by drawing a tangent line. Biff made a fortune from betting on horses because he already knew who will win. Marty blamed himself, and Doc tried to console him by saying: "That's all in the past." Marty replied: "You mean the future?" And Doc said: "Whatever!"

III

So, if I'm coming from 2023, five years from the Snap, and I go back to 2012 during the Chitauri invasion to get the Tesseract (which contains the Space Stone) and Loki's scepter (which contains the Mind Stone), then would my presence create an alternate timeline? And then of course, I could meet my 2012 self, like what happened to Cap. But ... wait. They were supposed to bring back the Infinity Stones. So if I take the Time Stone from the Ancient One when Stephen Strange was not yet Sorcerer Supreme, then I give it back to her after I defeat Thanos, wouldn't the same series of events still happen – the Ancient One would someday give it to Doctor Strange who would eventually give it to Thanos?

IV

I had a double dose of Iron Man last week. The first was the movie, and I found a copy of the first Iron Man comics – the March 1963 edition of Tales of Suspense, created by the great Stan Lee. Iron Man originally looked like when he first appeared in the first Iron Man movie directed by Happy Hogan. Tony was a prisoner who created his suit to escape, but instead of the terrorist group Ten Rings, his captors were the communist group Red Guerrillas led by a superhuman warlord named Wong Chu. During the explosion when Tony was caught, pieces of shrapnel entered his body, and when they reach his heart, he would die. A prisoner named Professor Yinsen was there to help him, but time was running out.

Photo courtesy of Marvel