Iron Man has some of the most high tech and advanced suits in the Marvel Universe. With every suit of armor he’s built, Tony Stark has added upgrades and equipment that helps him save the day no matter what the situation. However, it’s safe to say that the villain Scorpion has a suit that is far deadlier, as its features and subsequent upgrades are much more deliberately lethal than anything Tony Stark would ever be willing to add to his own suits.
Scorpion’s first appearance was in 1964’s Amazing Spider-Man #19, created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko. Mac Gargan first began as a simple private investigator, who was originally hired by the Daily Bugle’s J. Jonah Jameson to find out how Peter Parker got such great pictures of Spider-Man. Jameson quickly enlisted Gargan to be the subject of an experimental process that will turn him into the natural predator of the spider: the Scorpion. What Gargan didn’t know at the time was that the process would damage his mind, causing him to go insane and turn to crime, believing himself to have become a monster who could never take his suit off. As such, Gargan is almost always wearing his deadly armor, hating both Spider-Man and Jameson equally.
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Originally, Gargan wore a durable suit that also featured a long, club-like prehensile tail. However, Scorpion would continue to get upgrades over the years from various criminals and organizations seeking to make use of his talents. For example, Tony Stark’s longtime rival Justin Hammer contributed to modifications to Scorpion’s suit, and the Tinkerer himself even gave Scorpion’s tail some improved modifications in Alpha Flight #79 during the “Acts of Vengeance” crossover event. He’s also received upgrades and modifications from Norman Osborn, the corrupt corporation Roxxon, as well as the nation of Latveria. Quite recently, the Scorpion received a pretty significant upgrade from Alistair Smythe, getting large pincers to go along with his upgraded tail and carapace in Dan Slott’s Superior Spider-Man #12. However, a whole new mech apparatus was just teased in Ravencroft #5 as well.
What initially began as a simple durable suit and club-like tail has become something much more sophisticated and lethal. Now, his tail can whip enemies at 90 miles an hour, containing a deadly spike at its tip. It can also fire a variety of projectiles such as acid or plasma energy. The suit itself has also essentially become a full-on cybernetic battlesuit complete with his new massively strong pincers. His suit is also insulated from energy attacks and linked to Gargan’s mind, granting him a sort of “scorpion-sense” to rival that of Spider-Man’s.
Thanks to all of these impressive upgrades and modifications, Scorpion’s suit is as incredibly advanced as it is deadly, even in comparison to Iron Man’s. It’s fair to say that Iron Man still has the more advanced armor – and would probably even win a fight between the two – but Tony’s efforts have gone into search and rescue, propulsion, and non-lethal combat. In his standard suits, Tony carries very limited supplies of potentially lethal armaments, after which his full-strength repulsor blasts just aren’t as versatile as the Scorpion’s array of killer weapons and super-enhanced strength. Added to this is the fact that all of Iron Man’s suits of the modern era are so complex that they depend on either the DNA-rewriting Extremis virus (which Tony has sworn off) or an AI with partial control over the suit and anti-lethal programming (as an AI Tony explains to Riri Williams in Invincible Iron Man: Ironheart.)
Anyone but Tony Stark would struggle to operate the suit, and even Tony would find his AI pushing back against lethal measures. In short, the world’s greatest criminal inventors have collaborated on a suit meant to be as deadly as possible, and the world’s greatest heroic inventor has spent his adult life working on a suit intended to make lethal action unnecessary. In the deadly Scorpion suit and the versatile Iron Man armor, each has been successful.
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