The Horrible IronMan

[chrismarker]

Gabriele -- just finished checking ouy your art/website. It's powerful stuff. Your takes on SpiderMan, Wolverine, the Lizard, Vulture -- just shocking, original, and ominous. I will definitely pick up your books. But, But, now that I have paid my respects -- albiet sincere -- I have to ask (and sorry if I missed this), but have you done IronMan? I've posted a number of times on Adi's thread that I think IronMan should be inscribed as a figure of horror (check out my last posts if you have time), and, after seeing your stuff I can't but wonder...what if? Here's the context: Ironman's armor becomes sentient; Tony can't figure out what's going on; a crisis occurs and it -- the armor -- fuses itself to Tony, imprisoning him; Tony tries several Frankestein like attempts to sever himself from the armor: all to no avail: but each effort malforms him, his body, yet makes him more powerful: a seductive power. His mind begins to change and his suppressed hatred of himself (a la Ellis) manifests into a hatred of IronMan, that is, the recognition that IronMan is a necessary evil that is no longer even necessary. His existence reformed as a question of guilt, of complicity in producting humanity's most destructive technologies, leaves him moraless: he can't deliniate right from wrong: what's certain is only that he -- IronMan istelf -- is a menacing reflection of what technology poses for our future. So, he plays out ideas the the great Walter Benjamin developed about technology and specifically shock. IronMan becomes shocking to look at: this is essential, it's the only thing that keeps him from killing himself; his utility reduced to preparing us -- desensitizing us -- from our inevitable extinction....
(Yeah, I know it's dark, and protocol would require a super-hero triumph of some sort, but hey, could you just, maube even sketch out what that IronMan might look like? My folk in Detroit would love to see it!).

[Xavier]

You like this Iron Man?

[chrismarker]

You like this Iron Man?

It's closer to where I think IronMan should be realised (at least in these times). I'd like to see Gabriele's realisation of Iron Man's face: I think it should be horrible to see: like Georges Bataille's vision of the human mouth("Mouth" from "Visions of Excess"). There's that terrifying/beautiful painting Gabriele did of the Hulk/Banner on his web-site: where we see a figure that is half the flesh of Banner and half the flesh of the Hulk: and its like each part is tearing at the other: so, I was thinking something like that with Iron Man: a hatred between man and armor: a hatred for who he is: so that when we who are every day people see him, see Iron Man, we are filled with dread: we can not look at him.