The Iron Man Encyclopedia

Mark 1

(Iron man depicted in Tales of Suspense #39 1963)

Backstory-
Ingenious engineer Tony Stark suffered a server chest injury, due to triggering a booby trap over seas in Afghanistan. This injury knocked him out and lanched shrapnel into his chest, where It started  slowly crawling its way towards his heart. He was kidnapped and was taken by the forces of Wong-Chu, a Vietnamese war Veteran and later referenced as "super villain." Wong-Chu learned that this man was famous weapons inventor, Tony Stark by reading his civilian papers while Tony was unconscious. Knowing this, his captors tried to force him to disighn and build them a weapon of mass destruction. With the supplies they provided to him he instead constructed a powered suit of armor to save himself and escape captivity. This was the Mark 1 the first of the IronMan armors built by Tony Stark. It made its debut in Tales of Suspense #39 (March 1963).

While there, fellow prisoner Ho Yinsen, a Nobel prize winning physicist helped him with his injury. Yinsen built a magnetic chest plate to stop the progression of the shrapnel in Tony's body. Yinsen also helped Stark design  the suit for their escape but he never got to leave. Yinsen sacrificed himself to distract the captors providing Tony enough time to recharge the suit. Using the newly made Mark 1 Tony takes reveng on Wong-Chu's forces and then escapes. While heading back to join the American forces he arrived with Tony comes across a wounded Marine fighter pilot name James "Rhodey" Rhodes.

(Upgraded Mark 1. The suit remains Gold to this day)

General overview-
Later Stark augments his suit with weapons and various other technologies he disighned through his company, Stark Industries. Originally the suit was equipped with rocket boots, a flamethrower, and a manually controlled rocket. With the upgrade the armor was made much more powerful, and durable. In the (2009) Armor Wars the armor was shown with the suits standard Repulser Rays, Unibeam, and thrusters. It's not as linked together as the other armors and can be taken apart the easiest. The armor-plating itself has been shown to be extremely durable and resilient to damage and penatration. It can tank military grade rifle, machine gun, and pistol rounds almost indefinitely. It has even taken a tank missile without any visible damage to the armor itself (but the thrusters were damaged by the attack). Like many of his older suits the Mark 1 is lacking any type of technological hud, display screen, or menu. It's eyes are empty slots that Tony can see out of, it is later revealed that these seemingly empty sockets are in fact covered by strong, transparent Plexiglass. The armor is overall restricting and posses no metal-fabric, no honeycomb armor, no liquid smart metals, no skin technology, or just about any convenient flexible material aside from a leather suit Tony wears while inside the armor. It is composed of mild-steel and an Iron-Copper-Magnesium alloy with battery life that changes with the convenience of writing (Its inferable that the golden upgrade is made of a different, more powerful material as it can protect against much more). Its inferable that the suit can lift over 350,000 lbs. but it's top flight speed is very hard to infer.

Interesting side notes-
The suit hasn't seen much action in recent years but has made occasional appearances. Tony Stark recovers the Mark 1 first when all of his suits were stolen in the (2009) "Iron Man Armor Wars." After retrieving his suit from a Russian criminal he uses it to hunt down the next armors that he finds. While wearing it Tony Stated "This old armor's not as quick and sophisticated... But it's by far the strongest." This statement was even made with the incredibly powerful Hulk Buster armor in mind. The golden Mark 1 can also be seen, along with most of the other Iron Man Marks attacking Tony while he's in his Endo-Sym armor in the "Superior Iron Man" series. The Endo-Sym makes short work of the Mark 1 after it failed to do any visible damage to It, it dismantled the Mark 1 in a single move while fighting off drones of the other Marks.

(Marvel Cinematic Universe Mark 1 armor as depicted in Iron Man- 2008)

In the Cinematic Universe-
The MCU version of the Mark 1 is very similar to the canon origin. Appearing in the Iron Man movie series, the suit was only worn in first Iron Man film. It's depicted looking very similar to its comic counterpart, and it keeps many similar features. The main difference between these versions being the suit's lack of Repulser Rays, instead it has wrist mounted flame throwers. It also has  thrusters that can achieve flight, but shortly after their use the Suit was destroyed under the pressure. In the movies the suit was later reconstructed but it was only for displaying purposes and it didn't recieve any noticeable enhancements. The models and blueprints of this Mark 1 were enhanced and built upon leading to the creation of the super villain the "Iron Monger." This story is heavily similar to the "Death in a Bottle" story mentioned previously.