Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-1477036-20130529030726/@comment-1477036-20130529204438

Yes, but I'm pretty sure that they were referring to the armor itself when they talked about strengthening his suit. The prototype was the replica shield in Tony's lab. I believe that Tony stripped it down of any vibranium it had and used it in the construction of the Mark 2 armor. Besides that, that comic was set during Iron Man 1. Tony doesn't rediscover the mystery element until Iron Man 2, where Tony says that he's tried every known element and Fury tells him that what he needs for a new power source isn't a known element. If it was Vibranium, I'm sure S.H.I.E.L.D. could have gone to Wakanda to recieve a small amount to power Tony's suit. In fact, in Fury's Big Week, Fury says that by having Tony finish his father's work he invented a new element on that could "be extremely useful in reigniting the Tesseract." This points to a link between the Tesseract and the new element. Vibranium might be a rare element, but it is known. The Tesseract and whatever it's made of is not. We know that Howard Stark found the Tesseract after World War 2, but you're going to tell me that we would never study it and try to recreate it?