A new era is on the horizon for one of Marvel’s premier heroes, and it will be a powerhouse team at the helm. That hero is the Marvel favorite known as Iron Man, and the character is set to soar with writer Joshua Williamson and artist Carmen Carnero when they kick off a brand new series in 2026. ComicBook had the chance to speak with Williamson all about the new series and what it has in store for Tony Stark, as well as what led to this dream scenario, what inspired the new armor, and much, much more.
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Williamson has been insanely busy over the past few years over in the DC universe, as well as the Energon Universe, thanks to G.I. Joe, but now he’s hoping over to the Marvel Universe to take on one of Marvel’s top heroes. That said, he’s not leaving those DC books anytime soon and is instead pulling double duty to work on a character he’s loved for a long time.
Working On Iron Man Is A True Dream Scenario
“Maybe about a year ago, my DC exclusive was ending, and so we were coming up with a different kind of deal for me where I could still do the books I wanted to do, because obviously, I was doing G.I. Joe by then. I was doing a couple of things here and there, and I still wanted to continue doing the consulting work I do for DC. Like, the stuff I do with Scott with Next Level and the events, and I kind of had my hand on a lot of stuff with DC for a long time. I didn’t want to let go of it,” Williamson said. “So I was like, how do I navigate this? And so we kind of came around to a really great agreement, and I started talking to Marvel a little bit here and there, and it was really a matter of schedule and project. Then at one point earlier this year, around the spring, I got this email from them, and it was just like, Iron Man.”
“I was very confused by this because I really love Iron Man. Like, I love Iron Man. I have a ton of Iron Man toys in my office, and I think about Iron Man a lot, and I was very confused by it because I was like, do they know I like Iron Man? How would they know I like Iron Man? You know what I mean?. I have all these Iron Man toys. I have almost all the armors that are available, and I have the helmet, I have all this stuff,” Williamson said. “So I’m like, how’d they know? They didn’t know. They just thought, maybe this would be something I’d be interested in.”
Williamson will be teaming with Captain Marvel and Captain America artist Carmen Carnero for the series, and he couldn’t be more thrilled with the magic she’s working on the book. “The art from Carmen, it’s so good. She’s really doing amazing work on that book. It’s really fun. I don’t know, I feel like she’s definitely making Iron Man, like, sexy. I’m not sure how to put this, like, as a book, not just Tony Stark, but as a book,” Williamson said.
“She’s really talented, and we talked about that book (Captain Marvel) too, because I went to her really early on and I was like, what do you want to draw? What do you not want to draw? So it ended up leading to some conversations about what she had done in the past and stuff. Yeah, she’s awesome. I’m just, I don’t know, I’m over the moon. She’s great,” Williamson said.
Tony Stark Is The Weapon, Not The Armor
The central concept of the new series is how it frames Tony Stark’s ascension to becoming Iron Man. To this point, Stark creating the armor was seen as the accomplishment, but in Williamson’s eyes, it’s actually the transformation of his character in the process, and the man he was able to become after shedding the most selfish parts of his character. That’s why A.I.M has shifted its goal from taking down Tony Stark to crafting a Tony Stark of their own.
“Advanced Idea Mechanics, like, that’s their whole thing. They make s***, they’re advanced ideas. That’s what I always obsessed with, was that idea, the idea that when Tony went into the cave, he went in one way. He went in as a selfish individual, right? He only cared about himself and did not care about the world as a whole. He cared about money, glory, and fame. That ultimately came down to he cared about himself, and then he goes into this cave, he thinks he’s going to die, and he makes this armor,” Williamson said.
“From that point forward, Tony made this armor, and that’s the accomplishment. He made this armor, and it’s like, no, no, no, no. Tony became a better person. He made Tony. Like, that’s the thing. He came out a different person, and he came out being able to suddenly create things that he was not able to create before, and it pushed him, and the actual act of him becoming a better person and no longer just caring about himself, no longer being selfish, it actually unlocked something in him that allowed him to sort of be more creative and actually start developing things he wasn’t developing before,” Williamson said.
“Obviously, a lot of it is the armor, but you can tell Tony’s built a lot of things, and so I was always obsessed with the idea that, if he thought he was gonna die again, what would he build? So that’s how it started. What would he build if he was gonna die again? What would Tony do and create to save himself, but I kept thinking about, like, Tony, Tony, Tony, Tony, and I was like, we have a lot of stories like that in comics in general, where somebody goes through something traumatic and comes out the other side different, right? So we should just do that,” Williamson said. “Like, somebody should start trying to make another Tony. They should start trying to create the situation where they can take somebody who’s like Tony, a smart person, a genius, a creative person, and then put them through hell and see what they create in the process.”
While the process begins with rather typical aspirations of crafting weapons, it’s actually Madame Masque who pivots and gets A.I.M to understand they are missing the forest for the trees. “And at first, A.I.M. is like, well, they’ll create some kind of cool gun. They’ll create some kind of cool weapon, and that’s what we have from now on. Then Madame Masque is the one who’s like, ‘No, no, no, no.’ It’s the fact that we get to have our own Tony Stark, who then creates things forever for us, and because she has this past relationship, this past love with Tony, she knows things about Tony that other people don’t know. She has insight into his head in a way that others don’t. So it allows her to really be like, I know exactly how to make Tony, and there are tricks to it,” Williamson said.
“That becomes the plot where it’s like, she’s trying to create Tony, a new Tony, and Tony finds out. It’s like, I have to stop this from happening, and it’s really about these characters, you know, and it’s about Tony and what Tony has gone through,” Williamson said. “And Madame Masque, she knows how to manipulate him, and she’s figured it out, and she knows things that she shouldn’t know. That’s all part of the story.”
It’s About The Character, But You Must Take The Armor Seriously
One of the perks of working on someone like Iron Man is being able to create a new set of armor, and that will be the case with this series as well. That said, Williamson didn’t necessarily realize just how seriously Iron Man fans take that armor.
“It is interesting. I was talking to Gerry Duggan about this, and I was like, Oh, it didn’t click in my head, because every fandom has its own things that they sort of concern themselves with, I guess I will say. So it’s like, if you’re a Batman fan, I understand certain things that are, these are kind of the fandom’s rules for those characters, and you can bend those rules and break them in some places, but I do think it’s the whole thing of you have to know the rules before you break them kind of thing,” Williamson said.
“With Iron Man, it was funny because to me, I was like, okay, here are my priorities for this book. I want Tony not be a bummer. I do not want to be depressed. I don’t want to be burdened. I want him to have fun and be himself and be charismatic and charming and really cocky and to the point where maybe he’s too cocky and gets himself into trouble,” Williamson said. “Like, that’s the Tony, the one who puts his foot in his mouth, but is the smartest person in the room, and he’s like, why is that a bad thing? That’s the Tony that I wanted to write, and so my book is very much about Tony and Tony’s life and who he is, who he is and why he is the way he is.”
As for this armor, there were a number of inspirations, though the ’90s were especially present in the brainstorming. “With the armor, I was like, well, with the armor we’ll do this, this, and this. We talked about the design, but it didn’t click in my head. Now, I know, oh, Iron Man fans, they really care about the armor,” Williamson said. “Because I’m an Iron Man fan too, and I always liked the different types, and we had talked about a lot, and we went back and forth looking at different armors, and I made a collection. I made a document of all the armors that I have liked and gave it to Carmen, and the editors did, and then Carmen had hers, and we were like, going through them and being like, what about this? What about this?”
“We also wanted it to have a bit of an almost 90s vibe to it. We looked at some of the 90s armors, and so we were just, like, piecemealing this armor together and how it’s different. Carmen and I have these emails just talking about how the armor is different from everybody else’s, like, what you’d expect. So we’ll gradually reveal what the deal with the armor is,” Williamson said. “It was just so funny because, I mean, in my head, I was like, yes, the armor is important, but you recognize it’s like, oh, that’s right, you know what I mean? But, yeah, awesome that we got to design a new armor and have it do something different. The book is a lot about, it’s very much a Tony Stark book, but he’s Iron man through all of it. We have some really amazing action sequences on every issue with him as Iron Man, so yeah, it’s gonna be really fun.”
Iron Man #1 soars into comic stores on January 28, 2026.
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