Tag: rhodey

ruffaled:

Let’s talk about a little-known digital exclusive comic tie-in that Marvel released when the Iron Man came out on DVD.

It’s called Iron Man: Fast Friends – a two-part series that provides snippets of Tony and Rhodey’s friendship before Afghanistan and after Tony became Iron Man.

These panels below show that Rhodey tried hard to stop Tony from going to Afghanistan, because from his vast military experience, he knew his best friend would be targeted. But Tony blew him off that night and dismissed his concerns. At one point, he even said, “This is Rhodey. The Air Force makes him chew on meteors and growl at puppies, but he loosens up after a bit.”

Now imagine when Tony did get taken by the Ten Rings, just how devastated Rhodey must have been.

He tried to avert the situation even before they left the U.S. but his concerns weren’t taken seriously. Then, one day, Tony Stark was kidnapped in broad daylight. Just like that.

There’s a deleted scene in Iron Man, where Rhodey’s commanding officer was surprised by his decision to put his career on hold to go search for Tony again – three months after he went missing. The CO warned that other people would kill to have Rhodey’s career but he wasn’t fazed the slightest. He still went and searched for Tony until they found him.

Also, imagine how Rhodey must’ve felt when he found Tony battered and bruised in the sweltering heat of the desert, with a gaping hole in his chest? The Iron Man novelization said that, initially, Rhodey thought the arc reactor was a bomb. So, not only was his best friend abducted and tortured, he came back physically broken. (I think Rhodey changed his mind about pitying Tony’s chest injury when he first saw the suit taking on those two fighter jets. From then on, I’d like to believe he was in awe of the suit.)

I feel like those little add-ons, like the comics above and the novel, give their MCU relationship a much more nuanced perspective. And I love them.