Originally posted by comicfan11
Cool
We agree on his stock dropping
But as you yourself said"I guess I'll take Stark's words coupled with the fact that this was one of Thanos' lower showings as means to POSSIBLY explain why things went down the way they did."
It's still just a possibility and until proven it will remain just that.
That's indisputable.
To say otherwise would mean that every hypothesis a scientist made in comics is also correct which obviously is not the case
Meaning it doesn't bear any significance.
It's just an opinion
That's a rather arbitrary treatment of on-panel evidence. And character statements are on-panel evidence. Character statements may not be definitive proof, but they are not so bereft of probative value that they bear no significance. A random theory by a reader supported by no on-panel evidence would bear no significance. The only time a character statement bears no significance is if it is completely outweighed by on-panel actions and feats, e.g., "
That blast will kill me," and upon getting blasted, he survives. That's when character statements are meaningless.
Here, a super-genius extrapolating data he's collected and telling other characters his assessment of the situation is not meaningless. That statement by Tony was not accidental. Writers can be fairly criticized for style, but in no way should we approach the comic's specific script as being careless or unintentional. There's a reason the writer had Tony say that.
More importantly, within the four corners of the comic book page, Tony was more than well-equipped to make such statements as he had the original schematics of the faux cube, had continued collecting data directly from Thanos, and was able to utilize the data to enact countermeasures to ultimately defeat him with the Elders' aid. He didn't make this statement in a vacuum. And this statement wasn't made by Hawkeye mouthing off about crap he could never understand.
It is true that there isn't concrete evidence to corroborate Tony's theory, as using Thanos' ignominious defeat itself as evidence would be self-serving. But that doesn't mean you dismiss this possibility. As it stands, Thanos' defeat is quite aberrational based on his entire history (an extensive one at that). There's a possible explanation for it provided by the comic. Without anything to contradict that evidence, we should accord it some faith and credit and adjudge that possibility as being the probability.
Besides, there were several instances where Thanos clearly lost control of the faux cube accompanied by blatant "oh sh1t" faces. And the faux cube was, in fact, a dangerously unstable prototype. It's possible Thanos took no damage (or only incidental damage) when wielding the faux cube's energies, but that's not likely from the plain reading of the comic and, moreover, completely unsupported.
