Hello Marvelites!

Tony Stark is a tech geek engineer at heart, tirelessly labeling his creations and poking at weak spots to find improvements. In the films, Robert Downey Jr. always seems to have a secret new toy up his sleeve, right up to ‘Iron Man 3’s’ Extremis-enhanced abilities to control his armor. So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that there’s more to ‘Iron Man 3′s’ tech than we expected.

Marvel was happy to show off concept art of the suit being used as just a single repulsor glove, then let Robert Downey Jr do a little Comic Con dance with the actual prop on as new armor sat on rotating display in Hall H. You’ve seen pictures by now. A muted, almost cream colored gold has replaced the bold yellow of the previous suits. It was displayed with the other armors behind it in order. There was the bulky silver Mark I, the stainless steel Mark II (destined to become war Machine), The deep red and gold Mark III (the suit used at the end of the first movie), the square shouldered Mark IV (with a removeable helmet from the beginning of IM2), the silver-plated suitcase Mark V, the triangle-chested Mark VI, and the Chitauri-fighting Mark VII. Seven versions over three films.

We’ve already seen War Machine’s new upgrade into the Iron Patriot armor and gotten many 3D Comic-Con looks at the new armor: MACH XLVII (47). Yes, the armor we’ve seen is not Mark VIII, the eighth armor, but the forty-seventh armor.

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The Extremis-enhanced bad guys under direction of Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin villain are going to be too much for Tony to handle on his own, so he thinks ahead, thinks big and has a plan. Tony’s about to go out and fight some bad guys when he mentions the Mark XLVII to Pepper Potts. Pepper asks what happened to the other forty and Tony just smiles.

From the cockpit of Mark XLVII Tony is able to control multiple armors in battle. We over here at LR have been vaguely aware of an action scene where Tony was going to control multiple Iron Man suits (presumably they look similar to distract his enemies as to the location of kill-able Iron Man Prime), but the number 40 seems…awesome. 40 Iron Men.

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Shane Black and ‘Iron Man 3’ are going big. Get psyched.

Talkin’ ‘Bout Marvel:

Anyone else kind of twiddling your thumbs waiting for AvX to wrap up? Been keeping up with the main title, but really just waiting for Marvel NOW! to come along and switch the world around again. But, enough about comics…

Iron Man 3 looks to have added Chinese actor Wang Xueqi, who will play the character Chen Lu, according to a site called Mtime.com. Chen Lu is the Marvel 616 Universe version of Radioactive Man, basically a Chinese scientist who develops super powers when an experiment goes awry. Perhaps this is our Chinese Extremis Doctor Guy Pearce’s character brings into the fold?