Every Armor Upgrade that Changed the Game for Iron Man, Ranked

Iron Man‘s popularity has increased in leaps and bounds since the debut of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and one of the things that MCU fans loved the most was the high tech feel of the character. Iron Man was on the bleeding edge of technology, and his armor changed multiple times over the movies. This was lifted directly from the comics. Tony Stark has been many things — billionaire, womanizer, alcoholic, leader, friend, Secretary of Defense (really), Director of SHIELD, betrayer of his friends, outlaw — but he’s first and foremost an engineer. Stark has tinkered with his armor since the beginning, adding functionality and making the Iron Man armor a greater weapon in his battle to protect the world.

Iron Man’s armor has changed a lot, and his upgrades to the armor have changed the game for him. These armor upgrades have made Iron Man’s job much easier over the decades. Some of upgrades are obvious, but others are choices that you don’t really think about, but definitely made a huge difference. The world Iron Man lives in never gets any less advanced, so he has to keep moving with it, making his armor better and better as technology becomes more complex. These seven armor upgrades changed everything for Iron Man, allowing him to become a greater hero.

7) Miniaturization

Looking at Iron Man’s first two armors, the silver and the gold, one notices one big thing — their size. These armors were massive and bulky; they looked good, but they’re definitely less high tech-looking than they could have been. However, that changed when he got his first red and gold armor. This armor was much smaller, and was able to pack more technology into that smaller package. The key to this was miniaturization. Stark learned to make his tech smaller, and was able to make the armor more human sized. The armor lost a bit of its intimidation factor, but it also became more functional, allowing him a greater range of movement. Over the years, tech got smaller and Iron Man’s been able to fit even more advanced systems into his armors, allowing each subsequent suit of Iron Man armor to do more and more. Miniaturization has become a key part of real world technology (it’s why the phone you’re probably reading this on has the same processing power of the moon landing computers), and it’s allowed Iron Man’s armor to become sleek and awesome.

6) Repulsors

Repulsors weren’t part of Iron Man armors until the Mark III. Iron Man is more than just his tech, but an argument can be made that the repulsors really made Iron Man into the hero he is today. The repulsors are a muon (a subatomic particle akin to electrons but much heavier) beam, and they push. Iron Man equipped repulsors on the palms and boot at first, eventually placing one in the chest. The repulsors are both a powerful offensive weapon as well as a potent defensive measure. They allow Iron Man to fly, giving him excellent maneuvering ability, and allow him to pack an offensive punch without having to worry about killing anyone. Repulsors have become more and more powerful over the years, allowing Iron Man to use them successfully against the most powerful enemies out there. Repulsors are one of the most important and defining features of Iron Man’s armor, and are the definition of a game changer for the hero.

5) The Briefcase Armor

This has always been one of my favorite Iron Man covers and it shows off the next big upgrade to Iron Man’s armor, one that premiered in the MCU in Iron Man 2. There was a time when Iron Man’s breast plate was crucial to keeping the shrapnel out of his heart, so he had to always wear it. This lead to him eventually making his tech small enough that he could fit most of, including the helmet, gloves, power disks, and other components, it in a briefcase. He’d carry the briefcase everywhere he went so that he could easily change into Iron Man at a moment’s notice. Eventually, the armor would become too complex to store in the briefcase, although he has been able to create new versions of it (including the black and gold armor he was wearing in 2013). It’s become obsolete thanks to another big upgrade we’ll get to later in this list, but it’s still a huge upgrade that changed the way Iron Man worked for years.

4) The Buster Armors

Iron Man fought the Hulk a lot in the early years of the Marvel Universe, and he discovered a big problem with his armors during this period: they weren’t strong enough. They wouldn’t enhance his strength to the level he needed, they weren’t durable enough, and they couldn’t fire powerful enough repulsor blasts. So, Stark went back to the drawing board and worked on the problem, creating the heavy duty Hulkbuster armor. While the Hulk still usually destroyed any suit of Hulkbuster armor (unlike the movies, the comic Hulkbuster armor has no wins over the Hulk), it was still a perfect heavy duty suit of armor and would lead Iron Man to take things in a new direction. Iron Man started to build armor to battle specific enemies, and so was born the Buster series of armor. Each suit of Buster armor had different functionality; some of them made him much stronger, some of them made his repulsors more powerful, and some of them allowed him to deal with different kinds of energy that his base armor couldn’t. From the Phoenix Buster to the Celestial Buster, Iron Man made multiple kinds of armor for this purpose, upgrading his suit in a variety of ways to help him battle his enemies.

3) The HUD

Looking back at the first few Iron Man armors, you could see his eyes through the eye slits. This changed as the years went on, with protective lens placed over his eyes to keep him from getting blinded from debris. As time went on, they were polarized so explosions wouldn’t blind him, either, and eventually they became hooked into the armor’s onboard computer system and became a head up display. Iron Man’s HUD has changed a lot as he packed with armor with more sensors and increased the processing power of the armor’s computers (if you go back to the early David Finch-drawn issues of New Avengers and the Mike Deodato-drawn issues of Dark Avengers, it was presented as multiple screens with a full-size Iron Man/Iron Patriot watching them; this is probably my favorite version of it because it showed the neural link the armor had with its wearer in a novel way), the HUD got more complex. More recent iterations have been based on the MCU version of the HUD but it definitely made a huge difference in the way that Iron Man operated.

2) The Extremis System

The Extremis virus was the beginning of Iron Man’s armor becoming truly high tech and modern. The Extremis virus was created by Maya Hansen and Dr. Adrich Killian for FuturePharm, a subsidiary of Stark Industries, and funded by the US military. The military pulled the plug on the funding and Hansen and Killian ended up selling it to some terrorist factions. It was a nanite-based system that could give whoever it infected superhuman powers, their minds completely linked to the nanotech systems in their body. Iron Man ran afoul of several of the infected and got beaten within an inch of his life. He wasn’t able to react as quickly as them, and he decided that the only way to even up the odds was to infect himself with it. The nanites would form colonies in the porous surface of his bones and when he needed them they would create a special suit that would allow him to interface with his armor better. The Extremis system made Iron Man a much better combatant, taking away the lag time between the armor and his decision making. This was only the beginning of Tony Stark using nanites in his armor, as eventually he would create what at the time was his ultimate suit of armor with them.

1) The Nanite Armor

After the affair with the Extremis armor, Tony realized that nanites were the future of his armor and planned accordingly. It would be several more models after he got the Extremis system before he would incorporate it into his armor, creating what was known as the Prime Armor. This armor was composed entirely of nanites and is honestly the best upgrade of them all. This armor was able to incorporate any of the upgrades of any other armor he had made up to this point. So, for example, if he needed to fight the Hulk, he didn’t need to use his Hulkbuster armor; the Prime armor could take on the attributes of that armor. It would also keep the same smooth lines that it had. His enemies wouldn’t know that he was using anything different, giving him an element of surprise (unless he needed to use a cannon of some kind; that was impossible to hide). This allowed him to suit up much faster, letting him go from a business meeting to fighting alongside the Avengers basically immediately. MCU fans will recognize the nanotech armor from Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, which debuted in the movies several years after it did in the comics. This armor was the biggest game changer yet and it made Iron Man’s life way easier than it was before.

What do you think the most important Iron Man upgrades are? Sound off in the comments below.

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