Warning: SPOILERS for Iron Man #25New York City may be Spider-Man's home territory, but the city has always loved Iron Man more, and Marvel just admitted it. Tony Stark has the wealth to live in multiple places in the country, but New York is one of his key bases of operations, and along with the headquarters of the Avengers and the X-Men is a key location for many superheroes in the Marvel Universe. But Iron Man #25 reveals precisely why Iron Man will always be more welcome in the Big Apple than Stan Lee's famous wallcrawler.
While Iron Man has changed much in the last 60 years, one constant remains: his tremendous fortune which allows him to fund the Avengers and his futuristic inventions. The technology Iron Man develops has also tremendously helped the city of New York, but he is not without his flaws. In recent issues of Iron Man, Stark used the newly-acquired Power Cosmic to grant everyone in New York his own genius intellect. Unfortunately, so many geniuses in one city created a nightmare scenario in which the criminal element and police (and everyone else) quickly got involved in an inventions arms race of sorts, plunging the city into chaos. Iron Man eventually fixed his mistake, but the reader noted he has a tendency to act first and think later.
In Iron Man #25, written by Christopher Cantwell with art by Angel Unzueta, the entire city is about to celebrate the annual Iron Man Day. A special appearance by Tony Stark as Iron Man is planned, and a massive stage is set up in the middle of a busy intersection. Instead of setting up a venue in Central Park, the city has seemingly allowed event planners to set chairs in the intersection itself, blocking off access to four major streets including 5th Avenue. Celebrity or not, most street closures are not this extreme in New York, nor do they last this long.
New York Rolls Out The Red Carpet For Iron Man
Meanwhile, Spider-Man isn't as well-liked by law enforcement officials and billionaires in New York. Iron Man, a fellow wealthy individual himself, is far more their speed (and the Daily Bugle's penchant to spread vile rumors about Spider-Man don't help his case). Spider-Man may be more well-liked by the average New Yorker, but Iron Man is loved by the wealthy and the establishment. It is even likely that Tony knows this, but doesn't appreciate his core audience.
New Yorkers have a love-hate relationship with their superheroes in the Marvel Universe. On the one hand, they often save the day from world-conquering invaders and monsters from other dimensions, but on the other hand, teams like the Avengers and the X-Men often make living in the city incredibly tense (when said teams aren't banned from active duty during Devil's Reign and Civil War crossover events, for example). Nevertheless, Iron Man and Spider-Man are fixtures of New York...even if one is more well-liked than the other.