It all started when I gave an interview with Playboy back in the mid-80s. This was when I was still drinking, before the Armour Wars began, and I was asked what I thought of Bill Gates who was fast on his way to becoming the world's richest man as Microsoft took over the computer world.
I was quoted as answering, I don't fully recall what I said since I was on my third or fourth g&t at the time but I trust Hugh so I'm sure this is what I said, "Bill Gates is the least interesting man to ever amass a fortune. He seems to have no personality at all."
Later as part of my journey to sobriety and on the advise of my AA sponsor I publically apologized to him, but by then it was too late and the damage had been done. Though we move in similiar circles, we rarely see each other and we never talk. We just don't have a lot in common. Richard Branson and me, we're tight. I might find ballooning around the world a bit to slow for my tastes, I perfer to take the Iron Man suit past the sound barrier, but Rick and me kick it together a lot. Heck he was in that Superman movie and he was going to donate 3 million dollars to keep that Star Trek show with the Quantum Leap guy going for another season.
That my friends is how you spend a fortune.
Even Microsoft's Paul Allen is a bit more lively with his money buying sports teams and starting that music project boondoogle that he's got in Seattle, so don't think I'm just jealous that Windows crushed my own operating system Stark OS (SOS) in the market place.
Now since the interview Gates has turned a new leaf and started using his money to help the poor in Africa, and he's hanging out with Bono. That's a laudable use of cash. Sure he might not have saved the world from being destroyed in the Kree Skrull War, or helped defend Midgard alongside Thor the Norse God and Son of Odin, but some people have to do the boring stuff like give mosquito netting to Africans to prevent the spread of malaria.
So Bill, let's bury the hatchet. Now that you're retiring from your daily duties at Microsoft why not take a job in SHIELD? We could use a really good head of IT.
As you might have heard I'm going to be refroming the Champions as part of our push to have a superhero team in every state of the Union. They're going to be protecting California andI could not be more pleased about it. It's going to be something a bit different than the typical hero teams we've come to know. It's not going to be a family like the Fantastic Four are, or were now that Reed and Sue are taking some time off, nor is it going to be a collection of earth's mightest heroes the way the Avengers were and will be again now that I'm setting up a new team. Nor is it going to be two X-Men, a Greek god, a Russian spy and a demon on a motorcycle like the last team known as the Champions.
I can't get into too many of the fine details until it's all up and running but basically I'm looking to gather a really unique collection of humans together, some of which have less than stellar pasts, and create the ultimate team for a new generation. This will be run like a business, some of the others have been comparing it to a baseball team but I don't have much time for sports so I'm more comfortable with the business analogy. These guys will be the top in their field, and if someone isn't performing well enough they'll be replaced. Don't make your sales quotas then you're off the sales floor. Don't smack Doctor Doom with a big hammer hard enough then there's always someone else to take your spot.
I'm so excited, this is going to change how the public seems heroes. It's going to let the public become heroes if they have the desire and drive, while giving some others a chance for redemption the way the Avengers allowed Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch turn their lives around. Now we're no longer waiting on heroes to be created through freak accident or giving any mutant who shows up with laser beam eyes or wings a spandex outfit and the right to destroy half of New York State.
As a note we decided against holding American Idol style tryouts in shopping malls across America. It seemed like a good idea, but then it was pointed out that most of the people who audtion at those things are fourteen years old.
No 42 is the number of ideas that Reed Richards (pictured to the left), Hank Pym and I came up with following the events at Stamford. We rejected 41 ideas before we came up with throwing our friends into a prison in a desolate alternate dimension and building a robot Thor. If you think those are bad then you should have seen other ideas.
The first five ideas that Pym through out had to do with hitting his wife Jan. I'm not kidding. You think I'm the jerk but his second idea consisted of calling a big press conference, presenting some sort of fabricated evidence that Wasp was behind the whole thing and then getting her in front of the cameras and slugging her. He kept staying it would offer the nation the cathartic release it needed.
Yes that's right, you read correctly Reed Richards is secretly a demented furry [wp]. No wonder him and Sue keep breaking up, that sort of depravity must be hard on a marriage. After I learned this I tried to have Sue over for some "therapy" Stark style but when she asked if she should bring the suit with the blue fuzz or the orange fuzz I got so disgusted that I hung up. I think it was that night that she switched sides.
My ideas tended to be a bit more direct and practical. For example I offered to bribe all the survivors of Stamford to go in front of the media and pretend they never had children. Miriam Sharpe however wouldn't be bought off, so we had to keep thinking. I also thought we could out-source superhero work to China and have all our super powered battles there but once again that just did not seem workable.
Instead we got a mix of all three of our ideas. Reed got some sort of high tech sci-fi thing in by sending everyone to an alternate dimension, Pym got our promise that we'd let him hit Jan if she defected over to the resistance and I got to make tons of money and make out with Tigra before we sent her to spy on Steve.
As it turns out my dignity. I do not sound like that at all. Though I do admit the theme song is pretty slick, but as usual it's only Parker's that anyone actually remembers. Did the Ramones cover mine? Hell no.
Watching this today is probably like what the Coke people feel like whenever someone brings up New Coke. Christ look at this, it makes South Park look sophisticated. I'm going to have to go and buy YouTube from Google just so I can get this crap off the internet.
As you might have seen on the news the other day the superhero Civil War is finally over. It pitted friends against each other, hero against hero all over the idea of whether or not heroes should have to register their identities with the government. Some heroes, like Captain America were against the idea. He was able to get a lot of the so called urban heroes over to his side, guys like Luke Cage followed him.
Anyway I won because I knew that Rogers would eventually get all weepy and turn into a big girl, because he's like all old people that way. Now he can spend the next few years in my inter-dimensional prison eating mushy peas and whining about how much better things were under Roosevelt like my grandfather used to.
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Ken Hataw said:
[this is good]Congratulations on winning the war and on your new promotion, Mr. Shield Director Stark! Please keep us continue to keeping... read more
on I won the Civil War, suck on that Rogers
on I won the Civil War, suck on that Rogers