Iron Man #234
Fallout
Stark Enterprises is one of the companies with a display at the 31st Annual Conclave of Electronics Engineers and Innovators being held in New York City. Here, Tony Stark shows off his new Iron Man. However, since he can’t appear as both Stark and Iron Man, he demonstrates his alter-ego’s capabilities with a holographic projection of Iron Man in action. This impresses representatives from Pendyne Inc. cementing their decision to become the east coast headquarters for Stark Enterprises.[1]
Although the conclave is closed to the public, Peter Parker is able to get inside thanks to his press pass, giving him access to check things out.[2] By this time, Tony and Jim Rhodes are looking at the other booths and Tony is taken a bit aback to see a Stane International booth. There, a representative named Chen Lu is giving a demonstration of Stane’s new neutron grenade launcher. Tony is not surprised that the company is still in business despite the death of its owner, Obadiah Stane, but is still troubled that his old company has gone back into weapons manufacturing.[3]
Little does anybody know that Chen Lu is secretly the criminal known as the Radioactive Man. While he is giving his demonstration he suddenly feels a strange biological radiation source and wonders where it is coming from. This is from Peter Parker’s blood and has he walks past the Stane booth his spider-sense begins going off, but he can’t isolate the danger.
Meanwhile, Tony and Jim bump into Vic Martinelli his former head of security who remained at Stane International when most everyone else quit out of solidarity to Tony. Tony tells him that there is no hard feelings.[4] When Vic shakes Tony’s hand, he slips a note for him to read. Leaving the convention for the day, Tony bumps into Kathy Dare a young woman who he met the day before in Los Angeles. She convinces him to go out to dinner together. Jim tells Tony to have fun, claiming that he is going to go hook up with the Rockettes, but really he wants to go back to his hotel and call his current girlfriend, Marcy Pearson.
That evening, Chen Lu is packing things up lamenting how he had to take the Stane International job in order to fund his continued experiments. That’s when he senses the strange radiation source he picked up earlier has returned. This is because Peter Parker has returned as Spider-Man to find out what set off his spider-sense earlier.[5] Spotting the wall-crawler, Chen Lu transforms into Radioactive Man and confronts the hero.[6] Unfortunately, the Radioactive Man is able to sap Spider-Man’s power and when Vic Martinelli arrives with a security detail, the web-slinger is too busy keeping them safe that he is knocked and taken prisoner.
The following morning, Jim Rhodes goes to Tony’s hotel room to wake him up and discovers he spent the night with Kathy Dare. Ignoring this, Jim tells Tony that there was a situation at the expo overnight, reminding Tony that Vic Martinelli passed him a note during their meeting. It warns Tony that something is going down at Stane International and asks Tony to meet with him at noon in Central Park to talk about it. When Kathy Dare returns to the room, Tony tells her that he has plans and that he’ll catch up with her later. When he meets with Vic, he learns that Chen Lu is the Radioactive Man and that he was responsible for the Stane satellite that fell out of orbit. Despite his reservations, Vic agrees to help Iron Man rescue Spider-Man from the Radioactive Man and stop whatever he is planning.
That evening, when Iron Man breaks into Stane International, Vic makes sure the security is shut down. He finds Radioactive Man in one of the labs about to cut open Spider-Man and figuring out the secrets to his radioactive blood. While Iron Man and Radioactive Man fight it out, the web-slinger breaks free and is able to shield himself from Chen Lu’s power draining aura by putting on a radiation suit. Working with Iron Man, the wall-crawler keeps Radioactive Man busy until they can cover him in a freezing chemical. With the Radioactive Man defeated, Iron Man and Spider-Man hightail it out of Stane International.
The following morning, Tony and Jim are watching the news and hear how Radioactive Man was arrested for his illegal activities. Hearing the news gladdens Tony, who is pleased to know sometimes heroes do win.
Recurring Characters
Iron Man, Spider-Man, Radioactive Man, Jim Rhodes, Bambi Arbogast, Kathy Dare, Vic Martinelli,
Continuity Notes
Here, the Pendyne reps state that they would have not considered selling to Tony when the “old” Iron Man was on a rampage. When Tony discovered that his Iron Man technology was stolen and sold to questionable sources he went on a crusade to shut them all down. This resulted in Iron Man being demonized for his heavy handed response, particularly seemingly unprovoked attacks against government agents. Since the general public is not aware of his double identity, Tony later faked Iron Man’s death and has told the public that a new individual is in the armor. See Iron Man #225-231.
Here, Peter Parker states that he is planning on going back to college. He dropped out of his graduate studies back in Amazing Spider-Man #243. He will return to his studies in issue #310 of that series.
A bit of history behind Stane International is explored here:
The company was once Stark International, Tony’s family company. While it used to produce munitions it got out of the weapons making game back in Iron Man #46.
Later, the company was part of a hostile take over by Obadiah Stane who took control of the company in Iron Man #173 and renamed it Stane International.
Obadiah Stane later committed suicide after losing a battle with Iron Man in issue #200.
After the Stane take over of Stark International, Vic Martinelli was one of the few who stayed on the job. He explained in Iron Man #174 that he did so because he had bills to pay.
Here, Peter states that his wife is out of town. He is referring to Mary Jane Watson. At the time of this story, Peter had just recently gotten married in Amazing Spider-Man Annual #21. However, years later, Peter and MJ’s marriage was erased from existence by the demon Mephisto in Amazing Spider-Man #545. In the new timeline, Peter and MJ are not married, but in a common-law relationship.
Spider-Man and Radioactive Man act as though they have never met before. However, they did in Untold Tales of Spider-Man #16. This omission is due to the fact that Untold Tales was published years after this story.
Topical References
Jim is depicted using a flight simulator created by the Douglas Aircraft Company. This should be considered topical because Douglas is a real world company. He also name drops the movie Top Gun, which I guess you could consider topical.
The Stane International display has two massive CRT televisions. This is obsolete technology.
Iron Man and Spider-Man use freon to freeze Radioactive Man. This should be considered topical as the use of freon has been banned due to its negative impact to the environment.
Tony is depicted wearing a New York Mets t-shirt. This should be considered topical as this is a real world sports team.
