Tony Stark, age 18, is the only child of rich, if somewhat distant entrepreneurs. They are not actually millionaires, but definitely well off enough that they can afford a large Brooklyn brownstone, and their son had never lacked for anything he wanted. Of course, they had to travel a lot, creating and upholding StarkTech, and so Tony was mostly raised by nannies and other paid help. It doesn't help that the most important in the line of his surrogate parents, Obadiah Stane, had tried to run away with the patents for the latest StarkTech designs.

Tony had always been very intelligent, and he had always been a problem child. His father gave up trying to control him around age 14. Afterwards, Tony drank far too much, had too many one night stands to count, and far worse than that, he was an incurable show-off. The only person who had some measure of control over him was Rhodey, his much more level-minded best friend. Rhodey always tried to steer him away from self-destruction and towards the other thing Tony was good at – inventing and building things. His other friend was Pepper, an astoundingly level-headed girl in the year above his, who was just as unwilling to put up with his shit as Rhodey.

After a particularly terrible argument with his father, which was followed by both his parents moving out for a half a year, Tony went spectacularly off the rails, even more so than usual. Among other things, he taunted motorcycle gangs into racing him, and on one occasion, suffered a near-fatal accident. Due to massive chest trauma, he had to have heart surgery. He spent months recovering in a hospital, and in the end had to miss an entire school year. This experience left Tony changed. Outwardly he is more collected and responsible, applying himself to new projects, such as designing and marketing the 'Jarvis' app, a diary/calendar system with never-before-seen efficiency and politeness. Internally, he is panicked. He keeps missing his medical check-ups, because he doesn't want to face the possibility that the surgery didn't work and he is dying, he thinks it's all his fault for getting into the race, but he doesn't dare talk about this with his friends, and he obsessively hides his surgery scar.

As a way to deal with his fear and anger, he built a new, better motorcycle out of scratch, and painted it red and gold. He started roaming the city at night, and making street art. He is better at design than at figure drawing, so he mostly paints slogans and quotes on walls: his favourite is 'have you lost your mind, can you see or are you blind?'. He can weld his own metal stencils, and is innovative about the technical side of street art.

Tony is bi, and at different times in his life, he dated both Rhodey and Pepper. They were together with Rhodey when they were about fourteen, for a few months after they figured out that having sex with each other was an option, and before they realised that just because it was an option, they didn't necessarily have to do it. Tony dated Pepper for a while after his accident, but they both knew that Tony was incapable of talking about his fears, and this eventually drove them apart. While cooperating on the Jarvis project, Rhodey and Pepper got to know each other, bonded over their long-suffering, annoyed love for Tony, and eventually started dating. Tony gave them his blessing, and is genuinely glad that they are together – he is more worried about the fact that they are planning to go to different colleges. Pepper wants to study business at NYU, Rhodey applied to West Point, and Tony has no idea. They keep telling him to apply to MIT, but he isn't sure he will get in, or even that he wants to go. This is when he is recruited by SHIELD, to handle the technical aspect of their street art project, as well as do some of the groundwork.