Tony Stark is the king of the witty put-down, though even he has his smarts tested by the smart-alecks of Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer's homeland.
The Marvel superhero heads to Ireland in Colfer's novel for young readers, Iron Man: The Gauntlet (Marvel Press, on sale Oct. 25). In the book, Stark travels to the isle for an eco summit, runs into one of his most dangerous enemies and is relieved of his high-tech armor — save for one lone gauntlet. "There is comedy, tragedy, explosions galore, imprisonment, escape, redemption and melting bridges. And a very shallow artificial intelligence," says Colfer.
USA TODAY has a first look at the Iron Man jacket, and an exclusive excerpt below, which Colfer says shows the lengths Stark will go — including using his inventor know-how and his helpful artificial intelligence Friday to build android versions of himself — "in order to conceal his true whereabouts from the government and media so he can run some sneaky side operations."
Because Robert Downey Jr.'s Iron Man is such a known pop-culture figure from the Marvel movies — including Captain America: Civil War (in theaters May 6) — Colfer figures he could do away with the origin story and instead focus on action and breakneck adventure "that should tempt younger readers along for the ride."
The author adds there's a definite fish-out-of-water element to the plot, since initially Stark is bemused by Irish folks' lack of awe in his superheroic presence. Soon, though, he's too busy trying to stay alive to worry much about that. "I did chuckle at the idea that world-famous Tony Stark would travel to Ireland where the more famous a person is, the less respect they get. We like to keep it real over here."
Fowl's fantasy Artemis Fowl series, about a teenage criminal mastermind, was a huge hit. The fifth book, The Lost Colony, made it to No. 3 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list in 2006.
Read an excerpt from Iron Man: The Gauntlet:
The Prototony was not, in fact, a prototype. It was just that the name had stuck from Tony Stark’s first attempt to build a replica of himself several versions previously. Other trial names had included the Tonybot, the Replistark, and the Toborg, which had been Friday’s favorite, as it sounded like an insult somehow. She had even taken to referring to people she didn’t like as “total Toborgs.” In any event, android Tony swanned around the oceans on board the Tanngrisnir, giving the actual Tony a little wiggle room to fly his solo missions to remote and dangerous parts of the world, recovering and retiring stolen weaponry.
Much more difficult was creating the virtual pop star Shoshona Biederbeck and making the world believe that she was a real person. Stark had written a program that analyzed the structures and progressions of all the major chart hits of the past half century, and then he’d churned out his own versions of the tunes, which were amalgamations of previous songs — close enough to sound familiar but removed enough to avoid copyright lawsuits. Shoshona’s last few videos had exploded all over the Internet, and she had hits like “Bang Boom Pow,” “Girls Got the Power,” “Oops, What’d I Do?” and the obligatory message track “You Know You’re Beautiful, Right?”
The trouble was Shoshona had grown so popular that a music label wanted to meet her, so Tony had to build a convincing Shoshona-bot. It was either that or his songstress would have to go into exile due to the pressures of the biz. “There is such a thing as being too smart,” Friday often told him. It would have been far less complicated in every way to construct a hologram of a mysterious beauty, but Tony Stark enjoyed playing with the media, so he went the extra mile with Shoshona.
After dinner, Tony retired to his dressing room for a quick cleanup before the evening’s party. A local rock band was throwing a launch bash in their city-center hotel, and Tony had promised to attend in the suit.
