Tony is troubled as you can get:The villains of "Iron Man 2" | Far Flungers

Well, as troubled as you could get in a mainstream comic book. The estimable British TV critic AA Gill once said that people who don't like opera like The Three Tenors. I'd hate to incur the wrath of my fellow fanboys, so I shan't make a similarly droll comparison between comic book aficionados and their ardour - or lack thereof - for the classics, but, suffice to say, the funny books are not the obvious choice when it comes to exploring the truths of the human condition.

Nonetheless, a soupcon of substance occasionally shines through even in mainstream comics. John Byrne's seminal 1986 miniseries "The Man of Steel," for example, which retconned the early years of Superman, ends with the hero embracing his humanity over his godlike powers. "It was Krypton that made me Superman," he says, "but it is the Earth that makes me human." It's not "The Caucasian Chalk Circle," I admit, but it's still a lyrical evocation of the positivist, progressive message that most superhero comics have preached since the Silver Age.

All of which comes back to Tony Stark, since his relative verisimilitude in the comics was exactly because he was always so frighteningly conservative. Stark was in total contrast to other superheroes: after all, anyone who made a living of producing weapons of mass destruction by day, and using them on adversaries by night, would not really be a hippie.

This somewhat sinister core of the character was jettisoned by Jon Favreau in his family-friendly big screen adaptation of 2008. The obnoxious, abrasive, and inherently impetuous representation of America's military-industrial complex in Tony Stark was replaced by Robert Downey Jr's prancing, perfumed, ponce. So, fine, he drank a bit; and, yes, he was loud at times; and, sure, his ego would make Narcissus blush. But his edge had gone - he was no longer an anti-hero: Downey played Stark as a spoiled brat with a taste for fast cars and loose women. In short, he depoliticised Stark.

However, despite this enervation of the lead character, and the film's rather dodgy central theme, "Iron Man" succeeded not just as your typical summer fare, but also as a delightful surprise in a genre that's come to be defined, more and more frequently, by darkness. The cheeky chemistry between Downey and his fellow actors, and the oft-publicised improvisational liberties the cast took with the script, turned the film into a quirky and whimsical comedy of manners. Like a 1930s screwball with robots. Oxymoronically, by shedding Iron Man's most human qualities on the page, Favreau and Downey had made Stark more human on screen. Mind you, it wasn't all fun and frolics. By the end of the film, Tony Stark announced to the world that his company would stop making weapons, and that, yes, he was, in fact, Iron Man.

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