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It’s a story driven not just by Stark’s heroism but also by his selfishness and obsessive personality.

For those who don’t know, it’s the story of how Tony Stark has his armor plans stolen and duplicated, as well as the dubious measures Stark takes to stop the copycats.

It’s a great story. It was great in the comics, great when Iron Man: TAS did its version and still impressive now.

First and foremost, the creators of this show don’t try to shoehorn the entire saga into a single episode; but it includes the key character points.

It shows how Tony isn’t just getting rid of these copycats for altruistic reasons. He’s also mad that someone else is playing with his toys. (Rightfully, it’s Rhodey who calls him out on this. Rhodey is the superego to Tony’s ego and Pepper’s id.)

There’s still some nonsense plotting here that Armored Adventures can’t seem to escape – Obadiah Stane hires felons to operate his Iron Man knockoffs when he could just as easily get a law-abiding citizen to use them – but this is a good episode.

Some fans of Iron Man – the character, not necessarily any one version of him – may have been turned off by Armored Adventure’s Tony-in-high-school gimmick; but even the nayest of sayers would have to acknowledge that this is the hero they love done well.

One final note on this episode: Armored Adventures has struggled with its soapy teenage romance subplots. Tony and Whitney have as much sexual chemistry Killer Shrike and Unicorn. But “Armor Wars” does have a cute Pepper/Tony moment that gets it pretty too close to right.