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Who's your daddy, Tony Stark? Maybe not who you think

A newly issued comic book shakes up Iron Man's family tree. Warning, spoilers ahead.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
2 min read

Warning: Spoilers for the International Iron Man comic book ahead.

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Sure, there's the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Tony Stark, those 2-hour segments we get in the various "Iron Man" and "Avengers" movies. But Stark has a richer background that's doled out in his various comic books, and a development just revealed in the International Iron Man book turns Stark's parentage on its head.

In a promo for "International Iron Man #7," Marvel teased the news, writing, "In the middle of the events of Civil War, Tony finds out the truth about his parents and their connection to the history of the Marvel Universe." And when the comic hit newsstands September 21, fans learned just what that meant. (Here come the spoilers!)

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Iron Man's family tree is getting more complicated, at least in the comics.

Marvel Comics

In the movie world, Tony's parents are wealthy Howard and Maria Stark, and 2013's "Iron Man #17" revealed that the couple adopted him as a baby.

Now the new "International Iron Man" reveals more about his birth parents, S.H.I.E.L.D. agents Amanda Armstrong and Jude, a double agent. Seems that Jude came to a bloody end at a pregnant Amanda's hands, and it was sometime after that that baby Tony came into the Stark family.

Tony's love for the only parents he ever knew was expressed in the recent movie "Captain America: Civil War," where he sought revenge for his parents' lonely death on a snowy road. Will this new revelation make its way to the big screen? Whether or not it does, it adds a tasty tangle to the always-complex superhero universe.