The man that started it all, Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, is one of the most beloved characters in the MCU’s entire catalog of superheroes.
He has been there since the inception of the Marvel cinematic universe and was the most critical piece of the puzzle that made it possible for the MCU to even exist.
It would not be a stretch to say that if Iron Man had been a flop, then there would have been no MCU, and the world would be less desirable without the MCU superheroes.
Thankfully, Iron Man 1 was a massive success among Marvel fans, and we saw many superheroes joining Ironman in creating a multiverse of superheroes.
Tony Stark makes the best of being a wealthy genius and has made so many upgrades to his suits in the comics that the movies could barely scratch the surface of what his brains and money could offer.
Now with the release of Black Panther Wakanda Forever, the bitter-sweet phase 4 is wrapped up, and phase 5 seems hopeful.
It’s the perfect time to count down the best iron man suits that we would have liked to see on the big screen but due to the destined death of Tony Stark in the MCU; it might remain a dream.
But wait!
We are currently in the multiverse saga, and according to Marvel comics, there might still be a lot of Ironman variants that we may encounter in Marvel Phase 5 and 6 movies.
Marvel fans are all dearly missing their favorite O.G. superhero.
So without further delay, let’s check out our list of the best Iron Man suits that never made it to the MCU.
The Endo-Sym Suit
Making its debut in Superior Iron Man Comics Volume 1, The Endo-Sym Armor is a mixture of biological and symbiotic materials.
The building blocks of this Armor are made of the symbiote, and in its normal state, it stays in liquid form.
When Iron Man wishes, this Armor fully or partially covers his body, forming a solid armor that looks extremely cool and also has the power of symbiotes.
It’s a light blue color armor mixed with silver and black, giving it a sleek yet menacing look.
It looks pretty similar to other iron man suits till it enhances and becomes much more like the hulk buster armor. Even without its enhanced mode, it can destroy buildings with its punches.
Due to this Armor’s symbiotic nature, it has fast healing capabilities and telepathic capabilities like Bleeding Edge armor or nanotech armor from Infinity War.
It has standard iron man perks like repulsor beams, tasers, and shoulder rockets.
If you have read the Comics, you know that Ironman can be dangerous at times and superior Iron Man motives are questionable at best. He wants to infect the city of San Francisco with a version of his Extremis virus.
But sadly, we might never get to see a version of Superior Iron Man wearing his Endo-Sym Suit in the MCU.
Model Prime Armor
Have you seen tony stark using his excellent nanotech-based Armor that is controlled by his thoughts and can transform into shields, swords, and other weapons on the go?
Yes, we all saw this awesome Armor in Avengers: Infinity War. Well, this is his second Armor that uses nanotech.
Tony Stark needed Armor that could incorporate the abilities of all his special-purpose suits into one. This gave birth to this epic Model Prime Armor.
Considered by many as the best Iron Man Suit created by Tony, This Suit has a near-perfect stealth mode, an invisibility mode-where only the Armor becomes invisible and is used to scheme his foes to think that he is defenseless.
It can also turn into a hulk buster-sized Armor to deal maximum damage to his opponents.
Due to its invisibility mode, Iron Man can wear this Armor all day without being harassed by Pepper to take the suit off. This means he has a shield of Armor surrounding him 24/7 without anyone noticing it.
In comics, he injects himself with version 3 of the Extremis, granting him perks like enhanced speed, agility, reflexes, and even regenerating abilities.
He sure is overpowered with this Armor!
On the defensive side, Armor Prime comes with built-in energy barriers and energy absorption technology ( like the one we saw in The Avengers movie when he is fighting Thor).
What makes this suit even more remarkable is its unique ability to transform. Depending on the task, this suit can change its shape and color. All of this makes it a near-perfect iron man suit.
The Godkiller MK II
Also Known as the Anti Celestial Iron Man Armor, This suit has a long and fascinating past.
Initially created in ancient times by the Aspirants (basically good Celestials who wanted their creation to grow and evolve) to stop the Celestials (Powerful cosmic beings that have their selfish agenda) during a tremendous celestial war.
Inspired by the original Godkiller armor, Tony Stark designed his own Godkiller MK II armor, which was a substantial celestial-sized armor.
Godkiller MK II has not 1 or 2 but 8 different nuclear reactors powering it for maximum efficiency. With the help of his newly developed suit, Tony can even fight a dark celestial for some time.
Now that is something extraordinary!
If you don’t know how powerful and humongous a celestial is, watch The Eternals movie, and you’ll get an idea.
This Suit of Armor is even capable of interplanetary flights and can travel from Earth to Mars in a matter of minutes.
This crazy suit cost Tony a good 4 billion dollars to make, but it was worth seeing him take on a celestial for once.
This shows just how intelligently tony crafts his suits to go toe to toe with his opponents.
Even in the movies, He can be seen learning from his past mistakes and perfecting them in his newer Armor.
The Cold Iron Armor
Making its debut in Iron Man Volume 4 issue 24, this Armor is from the original 616 Earth.
Despite not being as advanced as some of the other Iron Man suits, the Cold Iron Armor is Tony’s first suit made out of Iron.
Even the suit that we see in the first Iron Man movie was made with a gold-titanium alloy.
Tony Stark pointed this out, so to see a suit made of actual Iron is unique for die-hard Ironman fans.
It looks somewhat like a mixture of Rhodey’s War Machine and Tony’s Mark I armor that he made when he was a prisoner of the ten rings.
It also comes equipped with massive blades on each arm and an excellent Canon on the rear side. What makes this suit so unique is its immunity against dark elves.
The suit is protected from the magic of dark elves, which provides Tony with the necessary prowess to deal massive damage to the dark elves.
The Sentient Armor
If you have seen Avengers: Age of Ultron, then you know just how reckless Tony can be.
Wanting to create a suit of Armor, he accidentally made a crazy sentient being called Ultron, and Sokovia was destroyed.
In the comics, he created a sentient armor, and this Armor also became mad, and then what? He fell in love with Tony! Comic book stories can surely be crazy at times.
Tony Stark decides to create a backup suit, and soon he has a heart attack due to a critical blow from Whiplash. He wakes up only to find that his Armor has become sentient.
The suit and Tony have a brief conversation in which the claim tells him that he has downloaded his consciousness and can act freely of his own will.
It has most of the original capabilities of a standard Iron man suit, such as enhanced strength, durability, speed, flight capabilities, repulsors,unibeam, and energy shields.
The Deep Space Armor
In comics, there was a time when an iron man joined a group of superheroes famously known as guardians of the Galaxy.
To travel to the infinity of space, Tony Stark created a sophisticated suit capable of exploring the vastness of infinite space.
Just imagine if our MCU Stark had created this suit he wouldn’t be stranded in the middle of space with Nebula in Avengers: Endgame.
Armed with multiple repulsors tech core, it is equipped with his latest companion A.I- P.E.P.P.E.R.
With the help of this suit, he can even control his other armors on Earth while he is on a space quest.
This suit is also very versatile as it can attach and detach its different parts to handle encounters with foes with different abilities.
It has a psionic shield, repulsors, force shield, and other cool stark gadgets.Since this Armor is also compatible with Iron Man’s mobile armory, it can use explosive launchers and amplified back thrusters.
With the help of this Armor, Iron Man can also do interplanetary travel and use an extended armor called Saturn V Armor that grants him approximately six times more power storage than a regular iron man suit.
The Godbuster Armor
With its debut in Tony Stark: Iron Man #10, The Godbuster Armor can take down humongous god-like foes.
The true strength of this Armor is still unknown, but when Ironheart scanned this Armor, she was shocked by the amount of energy The Godbuster Armor radiated.
Tony Stark had created a new Virtual Reality Program, and he made this beastly Armor using this technology.
The V.R.’s operation system malfunctioned and turned rogue.
Tony is trapped inside a virtual reality, and to stop the antagonist; Tony develops The Godbuster Armor.
As we all know, Tony has a suit for every possible situation; Tony instantly built The Godbuster Armor in real life to destroy the motherboard.
Since this Armor was so overpowered and dangerous, Tony Stark decided to destroy it.
The MCU Stark could have learned a lesson or two from his comic book counterpart and destroyed Ultron earlier.
But then we wouldn’t have gotten to see the great fight at the end of Age of Ultron.
The Virtual Armor
In one of his recent comics, Tony Stark manages to make yet another overpowered armor.
The Virtual Armor is made entirely out of solid holograms. Tony, himself, regards this Armor as his greatest among all.
It was designed using the resources from the Thirteenth Floor. To stop his brother from enslaving mankind using a mind-controlling device, Tony designed his new suit of holograms.
Iron Man suits are usually made up of gold alloys or nanotech, but this Armor is unique. Wholly made of complex light holograms, it is almost indestructible.
It is also invisible in its natural state, but when Tony needs to use a specific part of his Armor, it becomes visible to the naked eye.
Tony uses his imagination to conjure up weapons; thus, the limits to this Armor are only Tony’s imagination.
This makes it a creative and effective weapon against his foes.
The YT1 Armor
This is yet another one of Tony’s nearly indestructible Armor.
The helmet of this Armor can quickly transform the sound around Tony to form his Armor.
This strange suit was designed by a teenage version of tony stark and was used for the first time in a fight against his foe-Frostbite.
This Armor is not that pretty looking, and the upper section is considerably disproportionate compared to the lower half.
But don’t get fooled by its look; it has extra large blasters around the chest and arms, which can deal some heavy damage to anyone unlucky enough to cross paths with him.
This suit also comes equipped with all the standard Starks weaponry and also has an additional freezing blast thrown in there for good measure.
Hard-Light Hologram technology is also used in the gold parts of the Armor to give it some extra perks.
The Iron Sorcerer Armor
Coming from the What If..? issue #113, this Armor is made from unknown materials provided by the Vishanti (a trio of god-like entities who act as protectors of the Earth).
Once upon a time, tony stark became the sorcerer’s supreme of Earth, and to defeat and banish Dormammu created this unique Iron Sorcerer Armor.
Tony Stark eventually manages to defeat Dormammu, but the Armor is inevitably lost in a different dimension.
Just like Dr. Strange, Tony wears the Eye of Agamotto on his chest, enhancing and adding magic to his suit abilities.
This suit is a brilliant mixture of technology and magic and manages to store many spells inside the main computer.
Replacing Stephen Strange in a parallel universe, drunk Tony Stark got his hand crushed and eventually became the sorcerer’s supreme.
Since Season 2 of “What If..?” It is supposed to make its debut in early 2023; keep an eye out for this crazy iron man suit.
Vespa Suit
Last but not least, Iron man model 60, also known as The Vespa suit. Why? Because it’s a red and gold Italian scooter!Well, only in its transportation mode.
This Vespa scooter can easily shape-shift into a fully functional high-tech Stark suit that is complete with iron man’s original armory that he uses to fight off his foes.
Handlebars of the scooter can be used as swords, and the helmet also transforms into a fully protective typical iron man helmet.
The wheels are the only part of this scooter that are ditched when Tony chooses to wear his Armor.
Just like a regular Iron Man suit, the Vespa suit can also fly and deal some heavy damage to his enemies.
This suit made this list because of how versatile it is. He created this suit to go on a date with Janet Van Dyne and traverse the streets of Manhattan.
At the same time, he can also do some crime fighting!
Featured Image Source: Genk