Iron Monger

Obadiah Stane was the son of Zebediah Stane, a drunkard who was a failure in making a career for himself. One night, when Obadiah was only a child, his father returned to the hotel room where they were staying, having just won a great deal of money gambling. Apparently overjoyed, the elder Stane told Obadiah that his luck had changed, and to prove it, Zebediah played Russian roulette with himself, loading a single bullet into a gun, spinning the chamber, and then firing the gun at his head. The elder Stane thus killed himself with his first shot, traumatizing young Obadiah. Later, Obadiah decided that his father had realized that the world was his opponent against which he could not succeed, and had therefore intentionally committed suicide. Now orphaned, Stane was raised in a succession of foster homes.

By his eighth birthday, Obadiah Stane was completely bald as a result of the shock of witnessing his father's death. Ridiculed by his classmates for his baldness, Obadiah became introverted. He became fascinated by games of chance, especially chess. Obadiah believed that life was itself a game at which his father had lost, Obadiah determined that he himself would never lose at anything.

One of Stane's fellow students at his school, Bernie Devlin, was a better chess player than he. Devlin bested Stane in the penultimate match of a school chess tournament. The winner of the next game would win the tournament. Stane secretly slit the throat of Devlin's beloved dog, Ruffer, and hid the dog's corpse in Devlin's school locker. After finding Ruffer's body on the day of the final game. Devlin was so distraught that Stane easily won the tournament. This episode was the first major example of Stane's use of psychological warfare in order to get what he wished: Stane would discover his opponent's weakness and then exploit it. Stane became an international chess champion while in his teens.

Stane decided to create a team of special bodyguards for himself, the Chessmen, whose costumes and identities derived from Stane's love of chess.

Stane attempted to form an organization of European and Oriental industrialists, led by himself, that would act in defiance of antitrust laws, and even attempt to usurp power from the leaders of certain nations. Anthony Stark, the president and chairman of the board of Stark International, a leading American-based electronics and manufacturing corporation, opposed Stane's efforts to form such an organization. Stane had been seeking a worthy opponent against whom to compete in a new "game" of business maneuvers, and decided that Stark was the man he sought. Stane also knew Stark's principal weakness: Stark was a reformed alcoholic. At this point Stane had not yet realized that Anthony Stark was secretly the costumed champion Iron Man.

First, Stane employed an agent codenamed Tattoo to bring about widespread sabotage at Stark International's Long Island headquarters. Iron Man thwarted Tattoo,but the latter died, having secretly been poisoned by Stane. Another of Stane's secret agents, a woman named Indries Moomji, encountered Stark and encouraged him to fall in love with her over the following weeks.

Seeking to destroy the new Iron Man, Stane dispatched the Circuits Breaker, a device with which he intended to kill Rhodes and the Erwins. Both garbed in Iron Man armor, Stark and Rhodes went into action against it, and Rhodes destroyed the weapon. Stane then realized that one of the two Iron Men who had attacked the Circuits Breaker must have been Stark.