The Controller Lives!

Feeling through the forest, Meredith McCall is trying to escape from town to warn Tony Stark that the Controller is back. Unfortunately, her pursuer manages to find her and threatens to place one of his mind-control discs onto her.

Not far away, on a rainy stretch of road, Tony Stark and Jasper Sitwell are heading for town after Tony received a panicked phone call from Meredith. It’s an awkward car ride as Jasper Sitwell believes that he and Tony are in competition with one another for the love of Witney Frost, aka Madame Masque.[1] As such, Sitwell is planning on asking SHIELD to reassign him. That’s when a tree-stump ripped and tossed away by the Controller lands in the middle of the road.

When Jasper exits the car to investigate he hears a woman screaming in the forest and races off to investigate. Left alone, Tony is able to change into Iron Man so he can do his own investigation. Spotting Iron Man, the Controller abandoned Meredith, who has passed out, so he can keep his return a secret. When Iron Man finds her she is muttering about how the Controller is setting a trap for Tony Stark at the nearby Pinewood Mental Health Facility. When Jasper arrives and Iron Man tells him what he learned, Sitwell dismisses this since he had heard reports that the Controller’s health deteriorated further since his last battle with Iron Man and the idea that he is a threat sounds far-fetched.[1]

Iron Man hands Meredith to Jasper and takes off so he can double back and change out of his armor. When Jasper returns to the car he finds Tony Stark waiting for them. As they drive to Pinewood, Tony explains that he got a call out of the blue from Meredith, who is now working at the facility. Jasper brings up the fact that Tony and Meredith once had a romance. This was many years ago when both were just seventeen.[2] However, the whirlwind romance came to an abrupt end when the couple learned that their fathers were business competitors and forbade Tony and Meredith from seeing each other. Not long after this, the teens were shipped off to different private schools and eventually drifted apart.[3]

When they arrive at Pinewood they are greeted by the director, Doctor Eric Thorne and his massive assistant, Hugo. Thorne reveals that Meredith doesn’t work at the facility, but is a patient there and has Hugo take her back to her room. When Tony inquires about Basil Sandhurst — aka the Controller — Thorne dismisses Meredith’s claims as preposterous. To prove this, he takes them to see Sandhurst, who is catatonic and confined to his bed. When Tony decides to stay the night and wait for Meredith to wake up, Jasper dismisses himself since he doesn’t feel he’s needed anymore. After the SHIELD agent is gone, Tony is allowed to look at Meredith’s file and he is shocked to discover it’s her record of employment. That’s when “Hugo” strips off his disguise revealing that he is the Controller. Slapping away Tony’s briefcase, the Sandhurst then drags Stark into his lab. There he reveals that he has enslaved everyone in the facility and lured Tony into a trap so the inventor can make the necessary adjustments for a helmet that can regulate his slaves so he can finally do away with the massive machine he needed in the past. Without his Iron Man armor and Meredith in danger, Tony has no choice but to do as he is told.

Meanwhile, Jasper cannot shake a nagging suspicion in his mind and decides to go back to the scene where he and Tony found Meredith. There, a random flash of lightning draws Sitwell’s attention to the control disc that the Controller dropped as he fled the scene. Realizing Meredith was telling the truth and that Tony is in danger, Jasper heads back to Pinewood. He arrives just as Tony finishes the control helmet. With the device, the Controller’s strength is boosted by the mental power of his slaves. When Jasper tries to stop the villain he is quickly overpowered and has a control disc planted on his head. This distraction allows Tony to escape, recover his briefcase and change into Iron Man.

Although the Controller is far more powerful than Iron Man, the hero goads his foe into using his new helmet’s ability to fire blasts of mental energy. Iron Man counteracts this with his repulsor rays keeping them into a stalemate until the Controller’s helmet overloads and shorts out. As it turned out, Tony intentionally did a shoddy job on the helmet to cause this very thing to happen. Without the power of his slaves, the Controller collapses to the ground, ending his threat. The following day, Tony and Jasper hit the road for home. Along the way, Jasper is curious to know why Tony didn’t meet with Meredith or try to rekindle their long ago romance. Tony explains that when he was looking over Meredith’s file he discovered that she is happily married.[5]

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Controller, Jasper Sitwell, Meredith McCall, Howard Stark (flashback)

Continuity Notes

1. Whitney Frost was the leader of the Maggia who was trying to learn Stark Industry secrets by seducing Tony Stark starting in Tales of Suspense #98. She found Jasper an easier mark until she was exposed as the Big M and was forced to flee. Tony and Whitney — now Madame Masque — had a brief romance in Iron Man #19. Jasper only recently found out about it in issue #24.

2. This is one of many references in this story to Iron Man’s last battle with the Controller. This clash took place in Iron Man #12-13.

3. Per International Iron Man #7 published in 2016, Tony Stark is said to be about 37 years old. Per the Sliding Timescale, that would make him roughly 25 at the time of this story, making the flashback seen here having taken place roughly 8 years prior to this story, and five years prior to the start of the Modern Age.

4. This marks the first appearance of Howard Stark, the man that Tony thinks is his father. It’s later revealed in Iron Man (vol. 5) #10-11. Tony’s biological parents were revealed to be two SHIELD agents, Amanda Armstrong and a man known only as Jude as detailed in International Iron Man #6-7.

5. Meredith’s married name is not revealed here. In later stories she is revealed to have been married twice. Iron Man Annual #14 revealed that she was married to Richard Stevenson, who was already dead at the time of that story. Later in Iron Man #326 she was married to Sloan Alden, who later went on to become Frostbite. Presumably she was married to Stevenson at the time of this story. The Appendix takes a weird stance by suggesting that she was a bigamist. Probably meant as a joke, and not a very good one. Leave comedy to the professionals.

Topical References

• Pinewood is referred to as a sanitarium, which is a dated term for a mental health facility.

• This story states that Meredith McCall uses her maiden name as her working name. This story was written at a time when, typically, a married woman would take on the last name of her husband. The idea of Meredith having a “working name” is also kind of a dated term unless you are a sex worker of some kind, people don’t really do that anymore.