LEVER TIME: How Marvel Helped Sell Us Forever Wars

When Iron Man hit theaters in 2008, it didn’t just launch the wildly successful Marvel Cinematic Universe — it also became, with the Pentagon’s help, a bombastic symbol of military might in the digital age. Now, can the same comic book character be used to critique the military-industrial complex and the War on Terror?

In a composite image, Marvel’s Iron Man is seen in the distance as U.S. servicemen salute. (Photo by Jon Furniss/Invision and Michael Probst/AP)

When Marvel wanted to make an Iron Man film in the early aughts, executives turned to a longstanding relationship between Hollywood and the Pentagon, allowing the Defense Department to approve the movie’s storyline in exchange for access to military equipment. The U.S. military was able to alter significant parts of Iron Man’s script, allowing the film to also serve as a marketing device for the military. 

Now, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Spencer Ackerman is flipping the script. A veteran war reporter, Ackerman is writing a new Marvel comic book series of Iron Man, in which he’s applying the lessons he learned over two decades of covering the War on Terror. Decidedly more critical of the military-industrial complex that the movies championed, the books are reshaping the iconic hero into a parable about the impact of excessive wealth concentrated in the hands of one billionaire, 

Today on Lever Time, senior podcast producer Arjun Singh sits down with Ackerman and Dave Gonzales, co-author of the book MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios and the host of the podcast Trial By Content, to discuss how the Pentagon pushed Marvel to use Iron Man as a piece of propaganda, and how events like 9/11 and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars influenced the way superhero is seen today.

To read a transcript of the episode, click here.

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