The Treasure of Red and Gold

Iron Man has dumped his spare suits of armor in the Atlantic Ocean, prompting SHIELD Director Nick Fury to race out in a new experimental ship called the Splash in order to claim them.[1] Flying over the area where the suits splashed down, Fury uses his craft’s onboard sonar to try and find them and is surprised by what he finds.

Meanwhile, back on the mainland, Jim Rhodes and Morely Erwin are debating what to do after Fury informed them he was going after the armor.[2] Jim figures that Tony Stark — if he was still sober — wouldn’t want his technology falling into the wrong hands.[3] Changing into Iron Man, Jim flies off to prevent SHIELD from recovering them.

While far below the ocean, in the kingdom of Atlantis, Warlord Krang is informed about the armor’s appearance. He decides to claim it for himself so that he and his armies can use it to take over the surface world.

By this time, Iron Man has arrived over the spot where the armors splashed down. This leads to a clash with Nick Fury. The SHIELD Director unleashes all of the weapons on the Splash, but Iron Man is able to fend most of them off. Hit with a smoke screen missile, Iron Man then dives into the ocean to get clear of the obscuring smoke. Venturing to the ocean floor he is surprised to discover that the armor landed at the site of a sunken Spanish galleon full of treasure. However, before he can act, Fury attacks again, this time gaining the advantage thanks to the Splash’s aquatic capabilities.

While the pair are too busy fighting, Krang and his men show up and steal all of the armor from under their noses. When Iron Man realizes what’s happened he follows after the Atlantean warlord, but soon his suit’s internal oxygen supply begins running out. Returning to the surface so he can breath, Iron Man calls Morley back at Stane International and asks him how he can replenish his oxygen supply. At that moment, Morley is being visited by his sister Cly and getting her up to date on what’s been going on. When Jim calls in for help, Morley tells him that the armor he is wearing should have automatically started replenishing its air supply when he returned to the surface.

Iron Man then works with Nick Fury to track down Krang and his men. However, by the time they find the Atlanteans, they have put on the armor. Iron Man tries his best to fight them, but they outnumber him. Asking Morley for help, Erwin remembers that the remote control devices are still attached to the armor. With that, he causes the Atleanteans to fly into the air where they cannot breath, forcing them to strip off the armor in order to get back into the water.

Seeing that the suits of armor are not safe anywhere, Jim realizes that there is only one solution. Taking two fusion pods from Nick Fury’s Splash craft, he blasts them with his laser, causing an explosion hot enough to melt the armor down to slag. As he tows Nick Fury back to the mainland, Fury is convinced that Iron Man’s changed.

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Warlord Krang, Morley Erwin, Cly Erwin, SHIELD (Nick Fury, Jasper Sitwell)

Continuity Notes

1. Iron Man’s suits of armor were dumped in the ocean last issue to keep them out of the hands of Obadiah Stane. Stane had just succeeded in a hostile take over of Stark International that ran from Iron Man #162 to 173.

2. Here, Jim states that Tony and SHIELD had a falling out recently. Back in the day SHIELD got weapons exclusively from Stark when their latest incarnation went public in Strange Tales #135 until Tony’s company stopped making weapons in Iron Man #46. The spy agency has been trying to secure majority stock in the company since issue #119. They succeeded and took control of the company in issue #129, but were forced to sell back their shares when the entire Stark staff threatened to walk off the job, making the company worthless.

3. Tony had been clean and sober since issue #128. He was driven back into drinking again in issue #167 and will be on a bender until issue #182.