Issue One: "A New Mission"

[rapscallion86]

The Invincible Iron Man
Issue 1: "New Mission"
Written by Aaron Martel
Cover by Paul Johnson & Roger Price
Edited by John Elbe

Stark Industries, Executive Building


Tony Stark poured himself a scotch and slugged it down in two gulps as he put first the bottle and then the glass back in his bottom desk drawer. The President/CEO of Stark Industries was sitting behind the desk in his private office, brooding over the meeting that was about to take place in a few minutes. It had been ten months since he had actively participated as the head of his own company, and he was not looking forward to facing the executive board after all that time. Still, it was time for Tony to reemerge and take his life back, and the thought did give him a twinge of excitement all the same.

The intercom buzzed, and Tony heard the melodious voice of Virginia “Pepper” Potts, his executive assistant and all-around gal Friday. “Mr. Stark? Mr. Hogan is here to see you.”

Tony brightened. “Let him in.”

The door opened and Harold “Happy” Hogan, Stark Industries’ COO, entered, smiling and coming over to shake Tony’s hand. “Great to have you back, boss, been too long. You look like a million bucks.”

Tony was dressed immaculately in a black three-piece suit; his black hair and mustache trimmed perfectly, nothing out of place. By contrast, even though he also wore a suit, Happy had a somewhat rough-and-tumble appearance to match his more unpolished demeanor.

“I feel good, Happy. Great to be back,” Tony said. “And I can’t thank you enough for the job you’ve done. You didn’t run the company into the ground while I was gone.”

Happy laughed. “Yeah, that’s why the stocks are up ten points with the news of your return. No one can replace the man himself. Besides, you’ve been practically holding my hand through all this.”

Tony smiled. The two men had been in regular contact through most of Tony’s self-imposed exile, and Tony had given Happy sage advice as needed on how to run things. “Don’t sell yourself short, Hap. You’ve done just fine.”

There was a knock at the door. It swung open, and Pepper Potts poked her head into the office. Pepper, a svelte, ravishing redhead, was usually given carte blanche by Tony to enter his office unannounced if the situation called for it. And as she was close to both Tony and Happy, almost always aware of both of their agendas, Pepper felt no compunction about interrupting them now.

“The board’s ready to see you,” she said to both of them.

“Shall we?” Happy gestured to the door.

“Oh, let’s,” Tony answered sarcastically, and left the office with Happy.

*****************

Tony entered the boardroom to a standing ovation from the ten-member board, and he found himself somewhat embarrassed at the attention in spite of himself. He stood at his customary place at the head of the long meeting table, and the board members along with Happy took their seats. Tony cleared his throat, and the room quieted down.

“Hello, my name is Anthony Stark.” Laughter.

“It’s been awhile since we’ve gotten together, and there are a few things I’d like to go over with you, but first I’d like to say how proud I am of each and every one of you in this room. These are difficult, trying times, and Stark Industries has been weathering the storm far better than could be reasonably expected, thanks in no small part to your leadership. I feel confident that as we move forward into the future Stark Industries will remain the leader in cutting edge technologies and aerospace engineering...”

Tony paused. The board sensed something was coming, steeling itself for a major announcement.

“I’ll get right to it now. What I’m about to say next will probably be considered controversial, but bear with me and keep your minds open. There’s no other way to say it. Effective immediately, Stark Industries will no longer be in the business of manufacturing and distributing military weapons and munitions.”

There were gasps of astonishment. Happy leaned over and whispered in bewilderment, “Tony, what…?”

“I know you’re all shocked,” Tony continued, ignoring Happy. “And no, I’m not suffering from dementia. We will honor and fulfill all currently signed defense contracts, and I will personally review the pending ones. We will be instituting an incremental drawing down program until the weapons division has been phased out- yes, Tagge?”

The director of the weapons division, who now was extremely antsy, said, “But sir, weapons is the largest division of the company by far. How will we make up for the loss of revenue? And what about the employees? We’re looking at massive layoffs.”

Tony put his hands up. “Relax, Tagge, no one’s getting let go. We’ll expand some of the other divisions and maybe even create new ones to accommodate the personnel shifts. We’ll find places to put everyone that utilizes his or her talents and will keep the company thriving. We’ll take an initial hit, I know, but once we get things really rolling I expect SI to come back stronger than ever.”

“May I speak freely, sir?” Tagge asked.

“Of course.”

“If we’re not going to be in the business of weapons, just what, exactly, are we going to be in the business of? Designing a new toaster? Building a better mousetrap? Mr. Stark, I don’t understand this decision. It absolutely makes no sense.”

The boardroom was in stunned silence.

“Let me tell you a story,” Tony spoke, his eyes hardening and voice rising. “You all know I was captured in Afghanistan, yes? It was by a terrorist group whose stated mission is to throw the world into chaos. Total anarchy. They were not particularly kind to me, and it was a miracle I escaped. And guess what I discovered while I was there? Do you know how they planned to create their chaos? By using weapons. Stark designed weapons. And they had quite a stockpile. Now, I know they probably obtained them illegally, but that’s not the point. They had them, and they intended to use them. They tried to force me to design a new weapon for them. And it got me thinking: how many other terror cells out there have our weapons? How much death destruction, and suffering have we inadvertently caused? That I have caused, since I designed or had a hand in designing most of them? I can’t live with that on my conscience anymore, people. I’ve always prided myself on being a futurist. And my future- this company’s future- will not be tied into weapons of mass destruction. And if that means we need to build a better mousetrap- then build one, dammit!”

The air was thick with tension after Tony’s outburst, and no one knew quite what to say. But then Tony took a few deep breaths, and when he spoke again he was calm and in control.

“All right, rant’s over. Let’s put our heads together and chart a new course to the future.”

*****************

Later


Stark Industries was an enormous, sprawling complex located roughly twenty miles outside Los Angeles, with numerous buildings and warehouses of various sizes making up the company’s many divisions. But one building in particular was off limits to all corporate and non-corporate personnel- the private laboratory of Anthony Stark himself. Besides being the chief executive of Stark Industries, Tony Stark was a world-renowned inventor recognized for his genius in designing and developing state-of-the-art technologies, and this building was where he did the vast majority of his personal work.

But unbeknownst to anyone was the lab’s secret sub-basement where Tony had been working on his latest and greatest invention, away from the prying eyes of the world, and he now was tinkering with the invention and speaking to Pepper on a headset telephone when the alarm sounded signaling he had a visitor. Tony looked at the view-screen to see who the visitor was.

“Just a minute, Pepper,” Tony said into the phone, switching it off and speaking into an intercom. “Come on down, Rhodey.”

After a few moments the sub-basement elevator door opened and James “Rhodey” Rhodes stepped out. Rhodey, a fit, athletic African-American, was Tony’s personal bodyguard, pilot, best friend and confidante, and was the only person Tony allowed to come down to the sub-basement. He smiled when he heard Tony’s end of the phone conversation.

“Yes, yes, I remember…” Tony said. “Pick up Natalie at seven, the premiere starts at eight. No, no, I think I can handle it…goodbye, Pepper.”

Tony took the headset off. “She’s like a mother hen,” he said to Rhodey. “I couldn’t forget about that Hollywood premiere tonight if I wanted to.”

“Wasn’t for her, you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself,” Rhodey said. “How come you two never hooked up? She’s really cute.”

“No, that could never happen. We just have a professional relationship and a close friendship. Besides, I think something’s going on between her and Happy,” Tony said, then added in a smaller voice, “She is really cute, though.”

“Pepper and Happy?” Rhodey said dubiously.

“They look at each other funny. I picked up on it today.”

“Oh yeah, I forgot,” Rhodey said. “How’d the meeting go?”

Tony made a face. “About what I expected. Catastrophic. I feel bad about Happy, though. I think he felt ambushed. I’ll have to have a talk with him and smooth things over.”

“Huh. Well, people fear change,” Rhodey said, and wandered to the mini-fridge, pulling out a brown bottle and frowning when he looked at it. “Light beer, Tony?”

“It’s Pepper’s,” Tony said.

“Uh huh.” Rhodey smiled. “You letting her down here, now?”

“No, she doesn’t know about this level. Only you. I brought the beer down because I had to drink something.” Tony’s closest friends- Rhodey, Pepper, and Happy- were the only people Tony saw regularly during his months of isolation. But only Rhodey knew about the sub-basement.

Rhodey took a pull on the bottle and said, “How’s the ‘iron man’ coming?”

*****************

Some nine months ago, in order to escape from his harsh imprisonment in Afghanistan, Tony constructed a makeshift suit of armor using metal scraps and weapons parts provided to him by his captors. The terrorists intended to force Tony to design and build a new “super-weapon” for them, but Tony cleverly deceived them and created his own means to get away from them. The armor was crude but effective against the conventional weapons of his enemies, and though it was eventually destroyed, the armor had functioned efficiently as an anti-terrorist apparatus. When Tony was rescued and returned to the United States, the prevailing wisdom was that he needed some time to heal his physical injuries and regain his mental stability before he could return to work. That was partly true, but as time went on the world wondered what exactly Tony was doing and why he was staying away from the public eye for so long. The answer was simple.

Tony knew he could improve the armor, and it developed into an all-consuming obsession.

Sequestering himself in the sub-basement, away from the prying eyes of the media (or anyone else), Tony began to work on designing and building more suits of armor, utilizing the latest up to date modern technology to make far superior creations than the clunky original one made from spare parts. Months passed, and Tony continued to make modifications and adjustments to his designs, often halting his work in progress and starting from scratch when a new and brilliant idea came to him. The sub-basement bore witness to Tony’s fixation- various discarded armor prototypes were stationed around the large room, ranging from one bulky, golden variation of the original armor to a more streamlined gray suit with large cannons mounted on the shoulders.

But Tony’s true masterpiece was the latest armor he was currently laboring on. Sleek and aerodynamic, the red and gold hued battle-suit possessed rocket jets in the boots enabling the wearer to fly at supersonic speeds, and housed a vast array of built-in, high-tech offensive and defensive armaments. Preliminary controlled field tests had proven that the armor was a successful and devastating force to be reckoned with, though it had yet to be tested in actual combat conditions. Rhodey, who was the only person besides Tony privy to the project, nicknamed the armor the “iron man” to Tony’s chagrin, as the armor was far too advanced and downright cool in Tony’s opinion to be referred to as mere “iron”.

*****************

“The armor’s pretty much finished,” Tony said, bristling. “The micro-solar cells seem to be functioning perfectly.”

“Those are the little solar panels?” Rhodey asked, finishing his beer.

“Actually, yes. Hundreds of them, enmeshed into the armor’s surface and connected to the electrical systems,” Tony said. “In sunlight the armor will remain fully charged at all times.”

“What about at night?”

“Well, in the unlikely event the armor loses power, Plan B is just to plug it right into a power source through the chest cavity,” Tony said. “And if that fails, there’s always this.”

Tony tapped his chest, where his electromagnetic arc reactor was visibly embedded. Back in Afghanistan Tony had been seriously wounded in an explosion, so he built the miniature grapefruit-sized reactor to prevent a piece of shrapnel from slowly piercing his heart. The reactor held the shrapnel in stasis, saving Tony’s life, and it became the inspiration and impetus for Tony to construct the first suit of armor. Upon returning to civilization, Tony hadn’t bothered to look into getting the shrapnel removed; in fact, he believed the life-preserving device he had invented somehow provided added energy to his body when he required it. This theory, however, had not been tested.

Rhodey was concerned about this. “I don’t know, Tone, you’d end up draining your heart if you powered the ‘iron man’ with it-“

“Wait,” Tony interrupted. “Look at this.”

Tony had various computer terminals and monitors placed throughout the sub-basement, and he always made sure to keep at least one monitor on a twenty-four hour news channel so he could keep up with current events. And there was breaking news from Los Angeles.

“…Police have cordoned the block off from the building as the crowd is swelling to a huge size,” the on-screen reporter said into her microphone. “Repeating, a small group of terrorists have taken over the Gecko Insurance Building’s top floor, taking numerous hostages and threatening to kill them if their demands aren’t met. Just what their agenda is isn’t clear just yet, but it seems their demands are monetary in nature…”

“I hate terrorists,” Tony hissed under his breath.

“That’s not far from here,” Rhodey said, watching the screen.

Tony glanced over to the silent, gleaming armor.

“I can do something about it,” he said.

Rhodey’s head snapped toward Tony. “What? No! We haven’t done enough field tests!”

The reporter’s voice continued, “…Are now threatening to kill a hostage in fifteen minutes unless…”

“I gotta do something about it,” Tony said.

*****************

Los Angeles


Television reporter Rosa Vega was near the base of the Gecko Insurance Building, a thirty-five story skyscraper, as close as the police would allow her to come. She could hear snatches of conversation between the police captain and the hostage negotiator, who was speaking to the terrorists in the building through a walkie-talkie. Whenever she got good pieces of information (which was difficult considering the general pandemonium surrounding her) she would report them live on the air, and she could tell the situation was looking grimmer by the moment. Rosa looked at her watch. The fifteen-minute deadline given by the terrorists was up. She then looked up to the building’s top floor.

“Oh my God,” Rosa breathed. “Go live! Go live!” The cameraman panned up as Rosa spoke into her microphone.

“It looks like there’s a hostage being held at gunpoint by the window,” Rosa spoke, horrified. “The hostage is opening it up! He’s being forced to…he was pushed out the window! Ohhh…WAIT! Something caught him! Something flew out of the sky and caught him! They’re heading this way!”

Rosa stood dumbfounded as what appeared to be a red and gold colored…thing (robot?) flew gently down to the police captain with the hostage in its arms, fire blazing from the bottom of its feet. Rosa instinctively stuck her microphone out in their direction.

“Who the hell are you?!” the captain shouted as the robot put the hostage down.

<<I’m, uh…ah, Iron Man,>> it spoke in a metallic, electronically amplified voice. <<I’m here to help.>>

“What do you think you’re doing?!” the negotiator butted in.

<<Whatever I can,>> Iron Man said, and shot back into the sky with a powerful WHOOSH!

Rosa turned excitedly to the cameraman. “Did you get that? Iron Man! He said his name is Iron Man!”

*****************

Inside the armor, Tony contacted Rhodey back at the sub-lab via an ultra-powerful radio signal. “All systems online and working fine, Rhodey.”

<Great. Now what?> Rhodey’s voice came back.

“I’ve got a plan,” Tony said. “Stealth mode.”

At the verbal command the armor projected a hologram over itself so that the background sky it was flying through seemed to engulf the armor, making it nearly invisible to the naked eye. Iron Man flew to the top of the Gecko Building and came down for a soft landing on the roof.

“Stealth mode off,” Tony said. “MRI.”

Iron Man became visible again as magnetic waves emitted from his circular chest uni-beam housing, penetrating down through the roof and providing Iron Man with an x-ray-like image of the top floor beneath him, much like the magnetic resonance imaging used in hospitals.

“There’s only four of them,” Tony described to Rhodey. “Poorly organized bunch of hacks. They’ve got the hostages herded into a small cluster. I count nine hostages. Everyone’s in one room.”

Rhodey’s voice said, <What are you going to do?>

“Direct approach,” Tony replied.

*****************

The “terrorists” were actually four ordinary recently unemployed and uninsured men who intended to protest the recent price hikes by the “evil” Gecko Insurance Company and the state of the American economy in general. They hadn’t intended to hurt anyone, just send a loud message to corporate America and by proxy the government, but things had gotten wildly out of control. At this point they were scared out of their wits, and that made them dangerous. They knew there was no going back, no returning to their everyday lives, and they were losing all hope to get out of this situation alive. So they sweated under their ski masks and clutched their automatic weapons as they stood around the circle of hostages, debating among themselves what to do. Should they turn themselves in? Should they kill all the hostages and then themselves? They already killed one poor bastard by accidentally pushing him out the window (why did he lean so far out of it?). It was so bad they’d given up talking to the negotiator; the walkie-talkie was abandoned in the corner-


BAROOOOOM!


It was all academic as Iron Man crashed down through the ceiling, startling (and terrifying) everyone in the room. There was a split second when all time seemed suspended- the terrorists and the hostages stared at the shining metal man in astonished disbelief- and then things moved rapidly. The gunman closest to Iron Man leaped forward, bringing his rifle up, but the armored figure knocked him out cold with a flick of a metallic finger to his temple. The other three gunmen came around the now forgotten hostages and opened fire, the bullets zinging off the armor as Iron Man sidestepped and turned his body, positioning himself so that the hostages wouldn’t be struck by any stray shots. Iron Man slowly raised his gauntlets up and opened his fists, revealing circular openings in his palms. The gunmen ceased fire, unsure of this development.

A nigh invisible force erupted from the gauntlets and struck the three gunmen, lifting them off their feet and driving them back roughly into the far wall, where they slumped to the floor in a heap, each one unconscious.

Iron Man turned to the petrified hostages, his voice modulator simulating a reassuring tone. <<You’ve nothing to fear now. You’re safe.>>

*****************

Later


Iron Man flew down through the secret portal that led back to Tony Stark’s sub-basement laboratory, where a smirking and clapping Rhodey was waiting for him. Iron Man flipped up his faceplate to reveal the sweat-drenched, but smiling, face of Tony Stark.

“See?” Rhodey laughed, gloating. “Iron Man! I toldja. It caught on like wildfire.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Tony admitted grudgingly. “Iron Man it is. And the repulsors worked even better than I envisioned- it took those idiots out. But I’ve gotta tell you something. The whole time I’ve only thought of this armor as an anti-terrorist weapon, so I could hunt down and destroy all Stark Industries-made weapons that have fallen into the wrong hands.”

“So?” Rhodey said.

“So did you see me out there? I was more than that. I was a hero. The crowd was cheering when I brought the hostages down safely. It was amazing. Makes me rethink my mission…or at least modify it.” Tony sniffed the air and scrunched his nose. “Speaking of which, I’ve got to work on the armor’s interior cooling unit. It’s hotter than hell in here.”

“Well, first you better go get cleaned up, stinky” Rhodey said, changing the subject. “We got to go to that premiere in an hour.”

“Ohhhhh @#$%,” Tony groaned.

*****************

Later, Mann’s Village Theatre


The blockbuster Hollywood premiere had ended, and the privileged, high society moviegoers were slowly filing out of the theatre into the street. As Rhodey carefully watched, Tony stood nonchalantly in the lobby, waiting for his date to return from the restroom, when he heard a voice calling out behind him.

“Tony Stark!”

Tony turned to see a dark-haired man approaching, hand extended and smiling widely. “Robert Downey, Jr.,” the man said.

Tony shook the actor’s hand. “Yes, of course. Pleased to meet you.”

“The same,” Downey said. “I was wondering if you’d be coming to the after party.”

“Oh, I can’t,” Tony said apologetically. “Long day ahead tomorrow.”

Downey’s face appeared glum. “I’m sorry to hear that. I wanted to discuss something with you.”

“What about?”

“Well…I’d like to produce a film about your life,” Downey said earnestly.

“Really?” Tony was piqued.

“Yeah. And I thought that I… would play you in the movie,” Downey said.

“Hmmm…sounds interesting,” Tony said thoughtfully, sizing the actor up.

Downey began to walk away, waving back to Tony. “I’ve got to run, but I want to set something up with you to talk about this. I’ll have my people call your people!”

“Sure, all right!” Tony waved back as Downey exited the theater.

And Tony thought: He’s a little too short to play me, but he’d probably do.



The Beginning...