Sky-Die

Tony Stark has just returned home from his Caribbean vacation to find that things have gotten chaotic at Stark International in his absence. One major concerns is from Vic Martinelli, the head of security, who tells Tony that SHIELD has commandeered the analytical lab complex under an emergency contingency they made with the company years ago. Tony wants to know why his secretary, Bambi Arbogast, let things get this bad and she reminds him that her authority has limitations. She angrily tells him that if he wants her to do more he is to make her vice president of the company, along with all the pay increases and perks the position entails. Tony agrees that she is right and promises to ease her current job for her in the future.

Deciding to find out what SHIELD is up to, Tony goes down to the lab and find out directly. There he is allowed to meet with Director Nick Fury. He tells Tony about how the entire population of Allantown, Iowa, was killed by some mysterious force. They have determined that the cause killed everything in a perfect five mile radius but don’t know what could have caused it. Seeing how serious the situation is, Tony agrees to give Nick the full cooperation of Stark International.

After dealing with this, Tony sees Bethany Cabe and Ling McPherson off and agrees to meet up with Beth for dinner. As she departs, Tony realizes how much love he has for her and begins contemplating taking the next step in their relationship. Heading back to his office, Tony is told that Senator Chad Mounteback is waiting to meet him.[1] Chad knows about the Allantown situation and asks Tony if he could keep quiet about it as any negative publicity would impact certain interests. When Chad then tries to bribe Tony to shut out SHIELD by guarenteeing the approval of some government contacts for Stark International, Tony smells a rat and orders the Senator out of his office. Tony realizes that there are some powerful people involved in whatever is going on, but decides that this is entirely Nick Fury’s problem and goes about catching up on his work.[2]

Meanwhile, Bethany Cabe and Ling McPherson return to their security firm office to find a stack of mail waiting for them. Bethany assumes they are all bills until she finds a letter addressed to her in her married name of Van Tilberg, which makes her feel like she’s seen a ghost.[3]

Back at Stark International, Michael Trudeau is contacted by his handlers who inform him that Senator’s Mounteback’s efforts to stop SHIELD’s investigation has failed and they want him — their sleeper agent — to deal with matters. Trudeau reluctantly agrees to do as ordered. To this end, he ambushes Scott Lang and takes control of the recently rebuilt Jupiter Landing Vehicle in order to attack the research lab where SHIELD is still hard at work.[3] This attack sets off the alarms, prompting Tony to quickly change into Iron Man and investigate its source. Iron Man quickly works to disable the lander and is shocked to discover that it is being piloted by Mike Trudeau. Unfortunately, Trudeau refuses to speak without a lawyer present.

However, this attack convinces Tony that he should get involved in solving the mystery of the Allantown deaths. Deducing that whatever caused such widespread destruction must have been beamed from space, Tony decides to take out his newly built suit of armor that was specially created for space travel.[5] Flying to Allantown in this new armor, Iron Man is able to detect traces of microwave radiation and uses his internal sensors to triangulate their source in space. Reaching escape velocity, Iron Man begins searching the area where the transmission came here. There he narrowly avoids an impact with a communications satellite. As his orbit passes into the path of the sun, Iron Man is shocked when the solar rays illuminate a massive space station owned by Roxxon.

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Bethany Cabe, Nick Fury, Scott Lang, Bambi Arbogast, Vic Martinelli, Arthur Pithins, Michael Trudeau, Jonas Hale, Ling McPherson

Continuity Notes

1. Tony recalls how he last met with Chad at the Carnelian Embassy. That was in Iron Man #117.

2. Tony begins dictating a letter address to Yvette Avril. She is the manager of Stark International’s operations in France, as seen in Iron Man #119. The letter Tony is crafting is inviting her to come work for the head office as Tony’s new vice president. Yvette will take on this job in issue #146-147.

3. Bethany feels like she’s seen a ghost because Van Tilberg. Prior to meeting Tony Stark, she was married to Alexander Van Tilberg an Ambassador to Germany with a pill popping habit. At the time of this story, Bethany believes that her husband is dead after he drove his car off a bridge while on a bender, as detailed in Iron Man #128. In reality, his death was faked by Russian operatives who sought to learn what he knew about NATO sleeper agents that were operating in Europe. See Iron Man #152.

4. The Jupiter Lander was trashed during Iron Man’s battle with Count Nefaira and the Ani-Men. See Iron Man #116.

5. Stored with the new space armor is at least one more identifiable suit of Iron Man armor. The model 2 armor that Tony wore from Tales of Suspense #66 through Iron Man #85. The other suit is unidentified (even in Official Index to the Marvel Universe: Iron Man). It could be any of the iterations of the model 2 and model 3 suits of armor. To me, it just looks like a spare set of model 3 but that’s just my opinion.

Topical References

• Here, Tony states that it has been about a year since the party at the Carnelian Embassy. This seems more like a measurement of time from when Iron Man #117 was published and when this issue was written, which would have been about a year of real time. This should be considered a topical reference. Per the Sliding Timescale, at most, only a few months would have passed between these two stories.

• Later in the story, Tony is depicted dictating a letter onto a tape recorder for his secretary to type out later. This was a common practice back when this story was published in 1981. However, this should be considered a topical reference because nobody uses tape recorders anymore — especially for dictation. The need for dictating a letter for someone else to type also seems like it’s something that’s less common thanks to speech-to-text software.

• The letter addressed to Bethany Van Tilburg was mailed using a 15 cent stamp featuring Abraham Lincoln. The cost of postage has increased exponentially since then and 15 cent stamps are not longer sufficient for general post. For example, at the time of this writing (January, 2022) the cost for a single stamp for postage within the United States costs 58 cents.

• When Iron Man collides with the communications satellite in this story, it affects television transmissions on Earth. As a joke, there is a two panel bit where a man blames the bad reception on his TV on his neighbor’s CB radio. This whole gag should be considered topical for a number of reasons. The primary one being that they are watching TV on a CRT television that uses an antenna to pick up television transmissions. Back when this story was published, television transmissions could be interfered with by just about anything. Conflicting radio signals, turning on a vacuum cleaners, blenders. However, since then, the technology used to receive television broadcasts have become a lot more stable since this story was published. A CB radio would not interfere with somebody’s reception. So I guess you’ll have to use your own imagination to explain this one off joke.