Iron Monger

"We're iron mongers. We make weapons."

- Obadiah Stane

Obadiah Stane was the business partner of Tony Stark and a good friend of his father, Howard Stark. He later becomes an enemy and attempted to take Tony Stark's life in order to take control of Stark Industries.

Early Life
Obadiah Stane was a businessman who worked with Howard Stark during the early years of Stark Industries inception and took over as CEO after Howard's death. He later stepped down to become the firm's second-in-command when the young Tony Stark came of age. At some point Stane began cooperating with the Ten Rings terrorists in Afghanistan, contracting them to kill Stark so that he could resume control over Stark Industries.

The Capture of Tony Stark
The Ten Rings soon realized who their target was and felt they hadn't been paid enough to kill Tony Stark. They kept him alive to use to their own advantage by having him build them the Jericho missile. Following Stark's return from Afghanistan, Obadiah appears to assist Stark in his attempt to refocus the company away from arms manufacturing. However, while Tony continues spending all of his time working on his suit, Stane starts to take legal actions against Tony in an attempt to wrest control over Stark Industries. Around the same time it was revealed that he has been supplying weapons to both sides of the war for some time.

Iron Monger
"For thirty years, I've been holding you up! I built this company up from nothing! Nothing's gonna stand in my way - least of all, you!"

- Obadiah Stane to Tony Stark

After the Ten Rings found the remnants of the prototype armor Tony Stark used to escape, they attempted to make a new deal with Stane to hand over the prototype to him in exchange for creating an army of similarly armored soldiers for the group to use. Ultimately, Stane betrayed the group and had them killed, stealing the Mark I Armor for himself. While working to develop his own bigger, more powerful suit, he discovered that Stark's assistant Pepper Potts had found out about his plans so he stole Stark's Arc Reactor from his chest to power his new suit, leaving Stark to die.

Duel of Los Angeles
After Pepper Potts discovered his plans, she and a small group of S.H.I.E.L.D. agents went to arrest him but were no match for his new suit. As Stane was about to kill Pepper, he discovered that Stark was alive and had come to save Pepper. The two then engaged in a final battle over the Stark Industries Headquarters. In the final moments of the battle, with Stark's power supply running dangerously low, he had Pepper overload the prototype large-scale Arc Reactor located at the complex. When the reactor overloaded, Stane was knocked unconscious by the blast, and he along with his suit fell into the generator, causing an explosion that killed him and destroyed the armor.

S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson, who was working with Stark, later covered up Stane's death by explaining that Stane had disappeared in a private plane while on vacation.

Powers and Abilities

 * Expert Businessman: During his time as CEO of Stark industries, Obadiah maintained the company at a high economic standing, maintaining the success that Howard Stark had elevated the business to and slowly building the company's standing as a leading arms manufacturer, eventually becoming a trusted adviser to Tony Stark once he took his rightful ownership of the company. While Stane was revealed to be practicing "dirty ethics" and selling weapons to both sides of war fronts, he was still highly successful in his endeavors, remaining undiscovered for a lengthy, but undetermined, amount of time.
 * Expert Designer/Engineer: As a leading figure head in the market of weapon sales, Stane was a well versed expert in weapon design and weapons system engineering, though not a natural prodigy on the level of Tony Stark (He entrusted the building of a duplicate arc reactor to William Ginter Riva.). During the creation of the Iron Monger Armor, Stane served as the lead supervisor, overseeing and designing the majority of the suit's layout, capabilities, and integrated weapons.

Equipment
Obadiah Stane possess the Iron Monger Armor which derives from the Mark I armor he recovered from the Ten Rings. It has poweful conventional weapons at his disposal including: Obadiah was also known to carry around a sonic device that could be used to paralyze anyone exposed to it. Stane favored using this device as a means to hold people to his mercy, often paralyzing them before taking something of value from them for his own purposes, all the while taunting them before usually leaving them to die or be killed.
 * Minigun
 * Rocket launcher
 * Shoulder-armed missile

Relationships

 * Stark Industries
 * Howard Stark † - Friend and Business Partner
 * Tony Stark - Friend and Business Partner turned Enemy
 * Pepper Potts - Friend turned enemy
 * William Ginter Riva
 * Ten Rings - Brief Allies
 * Raza †

Video Game Only

 * Ezekiel Stane - Son

Trivia

 * In the comics, Obadiah Stane was the head of his own company and not a part of Stark Industries, and also the first colleague of Norman Osborn, the first Green Goblin.