Starboost: The closest thing we’ve seen to Iron Man’s Ablative Armor
I was watching Iron Man 3 again this week, and while it has its problems (none of which are the treatment of The Mandarin…as I now duck the beer bottles being thrown at my head), it’s a solid film and one that I enjoy. I’m a sucker for suits, so any movie that has 42 renditions is going to be okay in my book.
A couple of days later I got out my copy of The Art of Iron Man 3 and started flipping through it. I’ve never paid much attention to Starboost – aka Gemini – aka Mark 39 in the MCU - until I saw the concept art. It’s a fine design, but the white doesn’t do much for me. I read the little caption where the designer, Josh Nizzi, described it.
“Sections of heat resistant tiles protect the suit during re-entry and make a nice contrast material.”
Tiles? Outer space? Sounds familiar.
Is Starboost actually Axol?
Not in the slightest.
Why Not?
Let’s talk about the only two things that Starboost and Axol, the ablative armor, have in common.
Space - They’re both space suits. Unfortunately, The Art of Iron Man 3 labels Starboost as both a suborbital and a deep-space suit in different places. If it is deep space, then Axol and Starboost certainly have that in common; the ablative armor was made to study asteroids and comets. If Starboost is suborbital, then that’s completely different from Axol.
Can Starboost be both deep-space and suborbital at the same time? Maybe, but my gut says no. Deep-space vehicles have specific needs, such as steering ports in zero-gravity (which Starboost does have). But I can’t imagine any Iron Man suit getting up to 16,000 MPH to achieve orbit, so maybe it’s a suborbital suit. That would explain why the entire thing isn’t completely covered in black tiles; suborbital flights don’t need as much heat protection. However, to maximize aerodynamics (and reduce heat), it should fly back to Earth either head-first or feet-first, and I don’t think the gold helmet could handle that (and we can’t see the bottom of the feet). In other words…I don’t know which it is, and it really doesn’t matter much.
Tiles - The tiles on Starboost are completely different than you’ll find on the Model 23 Ablative Suit. Starboost’s tiles are tessellated six-sided regular hexagons, but they don’t cover the entire armor. These tiles are used to provide heat protection. (See that mess of a paragraph above.)
Axol, on the other hand, uses the tiles as a way of transferring energy away from the shell of the armor after it sustains physical impacts. Read more about ablation on the FAQ page.
Where has each armor shown up?
Starboost - Starboost showed up in the background of the House Party Protocol in Iron Man 3. It must be frustrating for the designers to spend dozens of hours on a fully fleshed out design, only to see it as a blur in a dark scene. And then become a firework…
But the design didn’t go to waste! Unlike some of the Iron Legion that never got a product, Starboost showed up in quite a few places. He got a 1/6 scale Hot Toy, a 1/12 scale die-cast from Comicave Studios, a 1/12 scare Marvel Legends Gamerverse figure, a Funko POP (where he’s called the Deep-Space Suit), a Pocket POP keychain, and a LEGO minifig.
The Ablative Armor - Two issues, an Iron Manual, and a cameo in a forgotten series. That’s it!
What about the original Iron Man Space Armors?
Space Armor Mark 1, Iron Man #142 (January 1981)
Sure, we can talk about those. Space Armor 1 is the original space armor from the Iron Man comics and first appeared in Iron Man #142 (January 1981). The arc reactor shape is not dissimilar from Starboost’s.
Space Armor Mark II debuted in Iron Man #278 (March 1992).
The Ablative (Model 23), while certainly a space armor, wasn’t specifically designated as one. It first appeared in Iron Man #416 (December 2003).
The three previous space armors appeared every 11 years, but it only took another 10 years for the Space Armor III to drop. This was Model 45 and first appeared in Iron Man Volume 5, #5 (March 2013). As Iron Man was hanging with the Guardians of the Galaxy at the time, it is definitely a deep-space armor.
(EDIT: It appears that there was yet another space armor, used in only one issue. Model 41 appeared in Iron Man #527.)
(EDIT EDIT: Apparently space armors are showing up even more often than I thought. The Space Ghost armor from 2006 was one of five armors Tony controlled remotely.)
(Thanks to Key Collector Comics for most of this “first appearance” information.)
So…definitely not Axol
Let’s be honest, the designers probably never even saw Axol. Then again, they probably had a copy of some Iron Manual around the office. Maybe they did…no, they didn’t. But what if…?
If anybody knows the designers of Iron Man 3, send them my way!
