When Maria and Harold Stark were informed that their unborn child would not survive the pregnancy there was a desperate race to save his life. Harold placed a deal with an alien race known as the Greys to recover the Regellian Recorder 451. The baby was born healthy with alien genetic manipulation but with a kill switch inserted for when the boy reached maturity. When Harold discovered this he inserted his own counter measures to reverse it. Shortly after the baby's health declined and he was hospitalized. Doctors stated that Arno Stark would not be able to live without constant medical assistance. Howard feared that the Greys would be angered by his meddling and so they adopted a healthy son of the same age as a decoy.
That boy was named Anthony Edward Stark.
This origin is one Tony wouldn't know until MUCH later...
Growing up Tony found that his parents were interestingly distant -- particularly his father. Maria cared for him and often did what any natural mother should -- to the point where he love for him became genuine even though he was not hers. However, Howard was cold and calculating and refused to express any love or liking for Tony at all. The male figure he credits as a father was the household lead butler by the name of Edwin Jarvis, who was the foundation for a great deal of his development. By age four he had built his first circuit board. By middle school he had created the core programming for his AI assistant. His likeness was based upon his butler and so he made sure to mold a means to name it J.A.R.V.I.S. And so the AI that followed Tony's life was affectionately based around his butler's young self as "Just Another Random Virtual Intelligence System."
By Tony's preteen years he was enrolled in the Mathematics and Science Academy and Charter school where he began testing to bypass high school entirely. It was during this time that he built his two long term robotic assistants named Dum E and U. This was also a phase in his life where Tony sought challenge and so he hacked into the Pentagon on a dare. Soon after he graduated from the Academy with honors, only to be sent right into college at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Tony graduated at the top of his class at the age of fifteen with Majors in physics and electrical engineering. This was also where Tony met his best friend James Rhodes and the two became inseparable.
Having graduated so early Tony had a great deal of free time on his hands. As a result he grew into a life of luxurious spending, partying and sexual temptations. He became well known for his playboy antics and swings with alcoholism all the while still maintaining his reprisentation as one of the brightest minds on the planet. Its was in December 1991 that Tony's parents were killed in a car crash and Stark Industries was temporarily placed in Obadiah Stane's hands until Tony was official to inherit the industry at age 21. Under his command the company boost in net worth and became the leading support of power for the United States Armed Forces.
Tony continued to build the company up and enjoyed the playboy lifestyle until the year 2009 when he developed the Jericho missile. The debute presentation for the missile was a personal one, much like all of Stark's work, located in Afghanistan for the US soldiers fighting abroad. However, the caravan transporting Tony afterward was attacked with Stark Industries own weaponry and Tony was kidnapped by a terrorist faction called the Ten Rings. Ransom was demanded but never acted upon and in the meantime Tony was suffering shrapnel injury to the chest. An engineer and doctor named Ho Yinsen treated Tony by planting a magnet in his chest to stop the shrapnel from piercing his heart. The terrorists demanded that Tony produce the Jericho missile for them in exchange for his life. The process took three months but Tony conducted his own operation to outsmart his captors with Yinsen's help and escape back to the United States. This was also where he invented the miniature Arc Reactor to use in his chest instead of the magnet -- which was a development he made sure stayed personal and never released to the public upon returning home. The investigation revealed that Obadiah Stane had staged the attack with intent to kill Tony so that the company would fall back to him but the terrorists grew their own agenda upon realizing who their target was.
With the weapons and manufacturing branch of Stark Induatries shut down and the elimination of Obadiah Stane, Tony began a revolutionary path in which he swore to better the world. Hating that his work became part of a system that held itself with no accountability, he started the Iron Man project. Building many suits over the coming years for his own personal use, Tony took it upon himself to protect the people where the military and government could not. A project that he took with him as he joined the Avengers and still maintains to this very day....