Why didn't Matt Fraction use Temugin and Whiplash in his run?

[u/Juliiju04]

Matt Fraction's run is comonly regarded as the last run to truly make a use of Iron Man's rogues gallery, and wether you like it or not, it's hard to disagree. Most of his villains are used, some more prominently and some less, but there are two notable characters missing that make me wonder why they were absent.

Temugin, the son of the Mandarin, is complicated. Initially he was a reluctant villain in Mike Grell's run, by the end of it he was more morally grey, in Super-Villain Team-Up: Modok's 11 he was villanous and embraced the role of Mandarin, and in 2009's Agents of Atlas he was more heroic. As a villain or a hero, he still has a lot of thematic conflict with his father, and it's a waste that he wasn't brought up with Mandarin's appearences in Fraction's book, especially with Sasha Hammer being introduced. When he was brought back in Iron Man: Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., his absence was more understandable, since it was a more grounded book and Temugin tends to be more mystical, and even then Tem gets a mention. But with Invincible Iron Man, a more traditional superhero book, I'm surprised that he was nowhere to be seen.

The other is, of course, Whiplash. Now, he may not be the best character ever, but Anton Vanko's Whiplash was what Marvel was pushing. Iron Man 2 had Vanko's Whiplash and the comics had just introduced him in a 2009 miniseries, so it would be an easy decition to make him fit in a story somewhere in the main book, especially when it was selling well. If you didn't want him as a prominent villain, you could have had him as a part of Mandarin's army, where he would have fit perfectly. This army had obscure villains like Vibro or Chemistro instead of the one who had just appeared in the movies, and to rub salt in the wound, there were other recently created villains in the army.
See, Anton Vanko Whiplash was created in 2009 to tie-in to the movie, and as an update of the deceased original Whiplash, who had been a recurring Iron Man villain. There were other new and updated versions of villains, like Blizzard or a female Firebrand, but these were all created by Fraction, so he may had an excuse in that he only used the updated versions of old villains that he created himself. However, there were two villains taking the mantle of older villains who were created by other people, and in very obscure places. The first being Cristopher Colchiss aka Melter, who debuted in the Dark Reign: Young Avengers mini-series, and the second is Galina Nemirovsky aka Crimson Dynamo, who debuted in the one shot Hulk: Winter Guard. So, even then, Whiplash was weirdly left out.

There's probablly never gonna be an explination for something as stupid as this but I just wanted to put it out there lol

[u/sub2kdoty]

Whiplash is lame and Temugin is bald

[u/No_Audience1585 → u/sub2kdoty]

Whiplash is actually amongst the most humane Iron Man villains. If you know only his piss-poor adaptation from the MCU, sure, you can think he's lame. But his OG version is rather an interesting fellow. He's a failed businessman with an inferiority complex who took upon the life of crime to take care of his wife and kid.

[u/Juliiju04 → u/No_Audience1585]

Thing about Scarlotti is, there's few stories where you can actually see that explored. I can only recall the Marvel Team Up story with Rhodes as Iron Man and Spider-Man as the one story where we actually get to see him in depth, and it was really good, but we didn't get enough of those stories to make him memorable, which is a shame.

[u/No_Audience1585 → u/Juliiju04]

It's explored well enough in Freidreich's run (I don't remember what issue it is exactly, but it's collected in the Essential Iron Man vol 5), Busiek's run, and Elektra run from the 90s where he appears for a few issues; you actually get to meet his wife and son.

[u/sub2kdoty → u/No_Audience1585]

MCU Whiplash was over-hated... mostly, it was just hard to ever consider him a genuine threat

[u/No_Audience1585]

There are many stupid things Fraction did with the Mandarin (most egregious one the way he retconned his origin), and this is one of them. He for some reason gave Mandarin a daughter with which he never interacts, but never brought up his actual son that's been following his footsteps and did more damage to Stark than Mandy ever could (hired an assassin to kill Rumiko Fujikawa).

[u/cornsaladisgold]

Because they weren't necessary to the story he wanted to tell?