Originally Posted by
Revolutionary_Jack
"Effort" is a word that is tricky and contestable.
Iron Man has been in continuous publication as an ongoing since the 1960s onwards. So Marvel certainly put effort on him which they didn't put behind Black Panther or Carol Danvers or any other female and POC heroes. In all that time, there's basically been just one or two major runs on Iron Man -- Michelinie/Layton's run from the late '70s and then their second run in the late-80s with Armor Wars, and Matt Fraction/Salvador Larocca's run on the character.
Iron Man is a classic example of how little "vote for your wallet" is observed in practice, where you have a white male superhero get endless second chances, endless chances for importance and no shortage of platforms even if he was largely seen as a mediocre character by comics readers for the majority of his publication history...all because Tony embodies a certain projection of a male fantasy -- rich playboy genius guy -- that creators/editors think has currency and value.
And even then -- nothing against Michelinie and Fraction -- but nobody would say that their runs on the character is on the same level as Frank Miller's Daredevil, Chris Claremont's X-Men, Walt Simonson's Thor, John Byrne's Fantastic Four, or all the great runs on Spider-Man (Lee/Ditko, Lee/Romita, Conway, Stern, Defalco, and of course Michelinie himself). Or to use more recent examples -- Grant Morrison's X-Men, JMS' Spider-Man, Bendis' Daredevil, Brubaker's Captain America, Fraction/Aja's Hawkeye. You take the best Iron Man story and it wouldn't be as good to qualify in the top-50 best Spider-Man stories, top-50 best X-Men stories...and that's just Marvel, let's not bring in the top 100 Batman and top 100 Superman stories.
So Iron Man embodies the principle that you can put all the effort in the world behind a character and still not put him over. Spider-Man's "lore" is bigger because his character design and concept is more universal and immediate, his character design and costume is simpler and effective and his original creator Steve Ditko created on his own an iconic rogues gallery that later writer/artists could cycle in and out easily.
Comics are tricky and alchemical. It's not a case that a writer can magically make a masterpiece out of anything. Concept, character, and powerset matter a great deal.