Tony Stark’s Heart - The Last Word
(I meant to post this a while back, but it somehow got lost in the ether. It’s a follow-up to January’s posts on Tony Stark’s heart.)
So what’s the status of Tony’s heart now? Good question.
In Iron Man #30 (1998 series), Tony suffers (yet another) heart attack while fighting a sentient version of his armor. Instead of kicking him while he was down, the armor rips out its own heart and implants it into Tony’s chest (that’s what the second panel shows, though the action is far from clear).
The fact that Tony now has a purely mechanical heart was confirmed in the following issue:
This was the status quo as Iron Man, Volume 3 continued for 58 more issues. As Iron Man, Volume 4 — the one initially written by Warren Ellis — begins, the story changes. In this version, the shrapnel never actually penetrated or injured the heart, but would have if the magnetic fields of the Iron Man armor hadn’t kept it trapped 2 cm from the heart. Tony then goes on to say that medical science was finally able to remove the shrapnel. So in current continuity, until his recent takeover by Ultron, Tony never had an injured heart.
One last scene, which may or may not be relevant, occurs in Iron Man #5. After being injected with Extremis to save his life after a severe beating, fellow scientist Maya mentions his damaged internal organs. “Grew new ones,” is Stark’s reply.
March 30th, 2008 at 9:51 am
[…] Last and certainly not least Polite Dissent has a post about Tony Stark’s Heart […]
March 30th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
I seem to recall Tony also having his entire nervous system replaced or something back in the early 90s. By this point, he’s putting Col. Steve Austin to shame…
March 31st, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Forget his heart! What about the man’s liver for chrissakes? ;)
March 31st, 2008 at 7:49 pm
http://pacioccosmind.blogspot.com/2008/03/little-bit-about-my-real-life.html
I actually put in a little bit of my own on Tony Stark today, but from the engineering perspective.
Great work! Keep it up
March 31st, 2008 at 8:33 pm
This brings up a question I’ve wondered about for years. Can a patient with an artificial heart ever become excited or nervous? Physiologically, I mean. (I assume s/he could become anxious psychologically.) Is adrenaline produced by the adrenal glands at a signal from the brain or from the heart? With no increase in heart rate (which I assume is regulated a chip), what would be the process?
April 1st, 2008 at 8:45 am
At this point, Tony Stark’s heart should have it’s own title…’The Amazing Man-Heart,’ perhaps…
April 1st, 2008 at 7:05 pm
Yes, given the events of CW, I think we can safely say that Tony grew some new ones.
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