Stan Lee based Tony Stark on the billionaire-industrialist and notorious recluse Howard Hughes. And coincidentally, named his father Howard Stark. Writer Gerry Conway said, "Here you have this character, who on the outside is invulnerable, I mean, just can't be touched, but inside is a wounded figure. Stan made it very much an in-your-face wound, you know, his heart was broken, you know, literally broken. But there's a metaphor going on there. And that's, I think, what made that character interesting."
When the Mandarin forges a transmission from Iron Man vouching for the Swordsman, he is accepted onto the team. Soon after joining the Avengers, however, he reveals his true intentions, planting a bomb to destroy the mansion.
The team made its debut in The Avengers #1 (Sept. 1963), created by writer-editor Stan Lee and artist/co-plotter Jack Kirby.
Vision is not a robot, but a synthezoid, meaning that he is human in every physical way except that he was artificially constructed.
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