Howard Stark est un personnage de fiction appartenant à l'univers Marvel de la maison d'édition Marvel Comics. Créé par le scénariste Archie Goodwin et le dessinateur Don Heck, il apparaît pour la première fois dans le comic book Iron Man #28 en août 1970.

Biographie

The son of Howard Stark, Sr., Howard Stark was born in Richford, New York. An avid and brilliant inventor from a young age, he was a brilliant scientist throughout his life. He and his father worked on various projects, and later founded Stark Industries. Throughout his young adulthood, Stark worked on various government projects dating back to the World War I and World War II era, like the World War I Captain America project with John Crowe Ransom, which came to completion during World War II; the World War II Manhattan Project; and the "Arsenal" robots, hidden in a subbasement in his mansion. During the 1950s, Stark was an agent of the secret science organization known as The Shield, partnered with Nathaniel Richards.

Stark married Maria Collins Carbonell and together they had a son: Anthony "Tony" Stark. He constantly pushed Tony to be the best, telling him that someone must have "iron in their backbone" to be successful. Behind his heroic facade, however, he was an alcoholic who had a strained relationship with his son. Howard was capable of devotion and respect towards machines, but he appeared to have little to no interest towards his son. Due to his power as a businessman, Howard was offered membership to the exclusive Hellfire Club, but Stark seemed uninterested in anything other than the lavish parties the club threw. It is believed Howard was also a member of the V-Battalion. He was targeted by the Red Skull (Johann Schmidt), and is rumored to have met the Watcher, Uatu. Stark also prevented Obadiah Stane from taking control of Stark Industries at least once.

On the Ides of March, Howard and Maria were killed in a car accident. It has been hinted that the incident was not random and possibly arranged by the V-Battalion, but this has never been confirmed; earlier indications were that the accident was caused by Republic Oil, but this is also unconfirmed. Tony ran his father's company, started a charity in his mother's name, and later became Iron Man.

When Iron Man was briefly trapped in Hell by Doctor Doom, Iron Man faced what appeared to be Howard Stark as one of Mephisto's torments. The spirit "wore" a demonic version of Iron Man's armor and taunted Iron Man about emotional weaknesses. Iron Man rejected the spirit's reality when it claimed that he had been a disappointment to his mother as well as whatever problems there were with his father, Iron Man knew that his mother loved him unconditionally.

During the Original Sin storyline, a flashback revealed that Howard Stark first met Nick Fury following the death of Woody McCord during the fight against the Tribellians. Howard decided to show Fury the work Woody McCord had been doing as defender of Earth, neutralizing any potential threat for the planet, and offered him Woody's job. Fury accepted and over the next years would secretly fight different superhuman threats from aliens to Subterranean monsters and extra-dimensional beings, and those had been the corpses the different parties had found.

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