So, the Serenity prayer may not have been written for Alcoholics Anonymous, but people sure connect the two. Kinda like Aretha Franklin and “R.E.S.P.E.C.T”, which is originally written by Otis Redding, if you wanna pocket that piece of trivia. This is the final post having to do with a character directly from the comic event Civil War. I broke down Captain America last time, so it’s only fair I focus on the champion of the opposing side, Iron Man!

Rivaled only by Barney Stintson in terms of suit accrual.

Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, caught a piece of shrapnel near the heart during some battle, depending on which continuity you want to follow the most. To keep the bit at bay, he made a glowing heart-magnet that doubles as a battery. He also made a giant suit of armor with weapons on it to break out of the enemy’s hold. He then took his weapons company and started working to better man kind in other ways, most notably by building a more impressive suit of armor and doing battle against bad guys. As time went on, the suits get more impressive as do the bad guys. He becomes a charter member of the Avengers, charter Illuminati, S.H.I.E.L.D employee then director, etc. He’s been around. Interestingly, he started and maintained a rather mediocre status as a super hero until one day, Marvel decided to make a movie company all their own. An amazing script, direction, production, and a high risk, stroke of brilliance move in casting Robert Downey Jr. brought this so-so character to the spotlight.

This is a very interesting post to me, so let me start by saying, if you have only watched the movies and then locked yourself away from the comic life of Tony Stark, you may not know that he is a recovering alcoholic. If you have known a recovering alcoholic, you may know that a) they are still an alcoholic, they have just gotten really good at not drinking all the time and b) if they refer to themselves as a recovering alcoholic, they’ve probably been through a 12 step program, probably Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). All true in the case of Tony Stark. That leads us to this weeks post.

He does begin to look at powers as an intoxicant, and you may see why. People cling to them, use and abuse them to a point that they are more destructive than beneficial. Now, as of 1984, Tony has completed the the 12 Step Suite, and now he is looking to “carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs” (you’ll see). So, as a bit of a guide, imagine every time it says “higher power” or “God” in this case Tony means the government, specifically the SHRA, or he could mean the future, as he is an American futurist atheist. He doesn’t see the government as infallible by any means or even as necessarily good. It is greater, though. Heroes submit to its authority. It is the reason they fight. Also, alcohol is a 1-to-1 swap with powers.  So let’s look at the 12 steps that guided Tony out of the bottle and back into sanity and how they may still be influencing his actions.

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.
Tony approaches the Illuminati and essentially tells them tragedy is going to happen. They can’t stop it any more. One way or another, they are going to lose control of the situation. Then they do lose it. Tony even refers to the Stamford incident as a “moment of clarity”. Actually, even better, he says the incident is “what alcoholics refer to as a moment of clarity”. Then he gave $5000 to the man holding him at gun point before quitting his job as a mob enforcer and becoming head of S.H.I.E.L.D.  Maybe that last part was someone else… someone with snakes on something…

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
As previously mentioned, that’s the SHRA to Stark, and he bought iiin. I will say, he treats it as it should be treated, if you are going to buy in. Stark uses this line, essentially, to reel in as many people as he can; “They don’t trust us any more. This is how we gain it again”. It isn’t a magic potion, it’s a process and one that will take some time, but first you have to get on board. Or wagon.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
He doesn’t just accept the SHRA, he oversees its implementation. He organizes others to do likewise. They bring in the good guys and the bad. He creates an impenetrable prison in an alternate dimension to house them. He genetically resurrects a clone Thor (!). It’s the law now and he will abide by it. He will ensure others abide by it. He talks with the president. He shoots commercials. He meets with officials. He does all he can to become the government’s right hand.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
The reader finds Tony constantly asking himself if what he is doing is right and going back through his reasoning to make sure he still lines up on the right side. I would say it counts as fearless since it put him at odds with the entire Illuminati (minus Reed Richards) and half the heroing community.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
He literally stands in front of all the cameras and says “My name is Tony Stark and I’m an alcoholic. Now its time to come clean”. Even more than that, there is a mother who lost her son at Stamford and blames Tony. He works to better the community in general, but she is the individual he focuses on.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
Well, that is what the act is attempting to do. By removing his mask, admitting who he is, he is prepared to give accountability to all his actions and the actions of those who the SHRA.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
This can be seen in a few ways. Most literally, an important part of the act entails training the supers in how to be heroes. Also, the act itself is meant to restore faith and trust in heroes, according to Tony.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
HAHAHAHA! Make amends, nanobot enforced slavery, same diff. It isn’t what the steps are talking about, but Stark and Richards do indeed implant supervillains with “motivational” robotics to ensure their help. Here, the step is more talking about the aforementioned mom. Well, you’ll see in the next step… As for a literal list, there is a reason that the prison is called “42” and is has nothing to do an exodus of dolphins. Richards and Stark have made a list of 100 things to make the state of heroes better, and the prison is number 42.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
Directly, he does things with Ms. Sharpe in mind like build a memorial garden. He creates super hero teams that will be stationed across all of the USA. He also goes to war, let’s not forget. He hasn’t wronged the people he’s fighting in his powers eyes, let’s also not forget, so the only amends he needs to give them are hauling them in and getting them to sign up.

10. Continued to take moral inventory and when we are wrong promptly admitted it.
Not a lot of instances to call this out directly. The best instance they could have had for this was the Thor clone gone crazy, and it doesn’t seem like that does too much to him beyond paying for the funeral costs, which, admittedly, were hefty since Goliath couldn’t be shrunk down. Obvious caveat: they’re at war. War has causalities. He brought a faulty tranq gun full of neurotoxins instead of knock out sauce. Oops. On the one hand, death is going to happen if you fight a serious fight and call it a “war”. On the other hand, he wasn’t looking to kill and he screwed up. Blame Reed Richards all you want to, it was Stark’s fault in part.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
The meeting with Sal Kennedy and Happy exemplify that. He takes his doubts out there and they help him through. He doesn’t pray, but he does “meditate” in front of a television for awhile. His friends call him out then pick him up. He is restored and ready to fight another day.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
Yup. Cap and all the unregistered. Straight forward, that one is.

All that to say this: to Tony Stark, the SHRA = sanity. He isn’t super gung-ho about it in an “Oh man! This is great! This is a great life ahead of us!” because he has been there before and knows that it isn’t going to be fun or easy. But the result is the only life a man can lead. He hates it the same way a cancer patient hates chemo. It distorts and destroys so many other parts of life while doing its best to grant something less than a guarantee of life. To Tony, all Cap hears is “We have to flood your body with poison”. Or, more to the point, like an alcoholic hearing “Booze has been banned and is being rationed by the government”, as though being good was something that had to be legislated.

Tony wants to save his comrades from the downward spiral of super heroics while still allowing them to practice those things within it they love. War is kind of an extreme intervention, but it is literally an intervention. He tells The Sentry that his goal is to capture Captain America and make him admit his problem and make him get better. There is an issue here. Tony Stark was an alcoholic who sought help. Captain America is a solider fighting who never asked for anything. There is an interesting dynamic about this:

Tony can’t be trying to help Steve directly. He must trying to break him down to rock bottom.