Iron Man in... Armour Escalation!

Oh, Tony.  Had he known what trouble he would have started making suits of armour, would he still have built that suit in the first place?

Of course he would have, he needed to escape his captors.  Had he not been captured, well, he still would have built it: he's too arrogant not to.

When creating villains for the Invincible Iron Man, Marvel (namely Stan Lee) needed some heavy metal hitters - but who's up to the task to take on America's newest, greatest superhero?

Well, it could take an army.... A Red Army.  Enter the Red, no, too obvious, Crimson Dynamo.

Hey, this was modern in the sixties.

No point going into a specific history here - there are at least a dozen bad guys to take on the mantle of Crimson Dynamo (I wasn't kidding about a "red army").  While their histories may be different, the basic plot points stem from being Russian, sometimes having an affiliation with the KGB, and hating Tony Stark and/or the United States.

Okay, this is a little more menacing.

What is interesting, however, is that many of the Crimson Dynamo villains either worked or trained with the Black Widow.  Could this be some of the dark history Scarlett Johansson's character mentioned in The Avengers?

Instead of having a crimson wave of armoured soldiers flood Tony's life every few months (again, over a dozen guys donned the suit and took a shot at him), maybe Tony should have delivered an epic speech, thusly ending the Cold War.  Because in the end, you may have "...two guys killing each other, but I guess that's better than twenty million."

Perhaps the Red Crimson Dynamo was a little too obvious at an attempt to parallel the Cold War.  With that in mind, why not take another Russian KGB agent, and put him in another battle suit.

"What's stronger than iron?"

"Well, how about Titanium."

"Perfect!"

Enter Titanium Man.

A little more high-tech than the weeping tile armour of the Crimson Dynamo.
He's got a laser gyroscope!

Sent on a mission to collect the armour of a Crimson Dynamo mission gone wrong, Titanium Man made his debut.  Physically bigger and badder, Boris Bullski was given some steroid serum to make him strong enough to handle the armoured suit - which, of course, enhanced his overall capabilities. 

Once again, modern technological advancements meet fashion sense.

In the end, the world once again chanted, "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" as Iron Man tanned Boris's red hide black and blue, and the USSR no longer welcomed him home.

But wait now, I'm sensing a theme here.  Is Marvel really this prejudiced against the Russians?  Nyet.

Capitalism allows for competition, and as witnessed in the first Iron Man movie, competition came in the form of Obadiah Stane and his Iron Monger suit.

Unfortunately, that antenna only gets AM radio.  No wonder he snapped.

Out of the comic book, Stane's history is richer than portrayed in the movie.  Stane was actually CEO of his own company, Stane International, and through a series of coordinated events he bought out Stark Industries, secured a munitions contract with SHIELD (Fury, that's cold), and got Tony back on the bottle (Iron Man was a recovering alcoholic at the time). This caused Tony to become a vagabond and relinquish his armour to Jim Rhodes (Cheadle, you're moving up in the world).  Oh, and upon leaving the keys behind, Tony left some blueprints of Iron Man armour behind too.

Blueprints?  What did you think would happen?

Stane builds himself a suit capable of destroying the current Iron Man armour, and continues to make millions all the while.  Life is good.  Tony continues to roam around boozing.  Life isn't all that bad either, as far as Tony's concerned.  Eventually, Tony has an epiphany and builds the Silver Centurion armour, goes back and gives Obadiah a whuppin', and Obadiah decides seppuku is better than imprisonment and mockery:

I'd say something witty, but I'd rather let Austin Powers do it.

What's keeping these mechanized menaces from taking over the world?  They've got the power suit!  So what's missing?

Once again, it comes down to heart.  Without a goal, a purpose-driven life, all your gadgetry is useless.

Even better, though, is if your heart can fire a unibeam.  That's an added bonus.

Yeah, unibeam beats hard work and determination.  Until then, stay in school, kids!