Tony Stark: role model?

Do you have a superhero role model?
Lots of kids pick superheroes as role models. Whether the choice is made consciously or not, it makes far more sense, if you work out the pros and the cons, to aspire to be Superman or Wonder Woman or Batman than to wish you were a police officer, copyright lawyer or exactly like your parents. But, just as not everyone can be an astronaut, there are most probably important differences between your role model’s backstory and your own that make it impossible to achieve these goals. For example, likely you are not the sole survivor of a distant planetary explosion, or the Amazon princess daughter of a Goddess. And, although your parents may have died before you finished puberty (a basic requirement for becoming a superhero), it’s highly improbable that you witnessed their violent murder in an alleyway.
Now, when I was a kid, we had the Greatest American Hero, which was kind of a shaft as far as superhero role models went. Grey pyjamas and ineptitude are not as inspiring now as they seemed then. Maybe this is why the world is a glut of network administrators, call centre employees and bloggers today.
By the time I was purchasing my own comic books, DC Vertigo was in its prime. If only the world could be saved with monologues, Molotovs, magic and methamphetamines! All that produced was a lot of high-school students wearing crushed velvet skirts and fishnet everything else. Oh, and trenchcoats.
Having seen Iron Man reminded me that there’s one superhero role model we all seem to have forgot: Tony Edward Stark.
Tony Stark lost his parents at an early age (and for those young people reading this, killing your parents doesn’t seem to have the same effect, so don’t try), but instead of reacting by wearing a lot of spandex and adopting sleep deprivation as a life philosophy, he did what the rest of us would do: turned to liquor and loose women. Despite this, he was able to hold down a day job. Like Bruce Wayne, he was a capable scientific mind with a home lab. Unlike Bruce Wayne, he did not adopt stray cats that lost their parents in circus tragedies. He gambles, drives his own car sometimes and shows up late to important events.
In essence, with an absolute minimum of lying to oneself, it’s very easy to identify with him.
Normally, this sort of person would not get to be a superhero without a severe accident involving nuclear radiation (Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four, Spiderman, etc.), but Tony Stark achieves superherohood by virtue of his own hard work, to get out of a personally dangerous situation, and only uses his powers altruistically as an afterthought.
Maybe I’ve finally found a viable superhero role model. Of course, my parents are still alive, so I’ll never actually be a superhero. But there’s a bottle of Jack Daniels in the kitchen, and I think I have just about enough parts in the spare room to make a flying robot suit, if I’m not overcome by fumes in the process.