Iron Man #237
Star Hunter
Iron Man has arrived at a government owned space station where they have been hard at work creating an organism that can destroy rogue satellites. When he arrives at the station he is horrified to see that they have been slaughtered by their own creation. As he observes the carnage, he thinks back to how he got into this situation…
Earlier, Tony had met with his lawyer Bert Hindel, to express his displeasure with his handling of Stark Enterprises’ current legal woes and fires him on the spot.[1] That’s when Tony is visited by representatives of the State Department. They had come to enlist Iron Man’s aid to investigate the situation on the space station. If he assists the government, they will make all the lawsuits against Stark Enterprises go away.
… Now on the space station, Iron Man checks the computers to learn what he was up against. He learns that the creature was biologically engineered to live in space and can adapt to any threat. He tracks the monster back to the long abandoned Stark Enterprises space station that Tony was forced to shut down when it was infected with a deadly bio-weapon by Advance Idea Mechanics.[2]
There, he finds the monster and discovers that it is not only incredibly fast, it is able to adapt to Iron Man’s attacks. With his armor taking serious beating, Iron Man realizes that the only way to stop the monster is to reactivate the space station’s environmental system so the dormant virus comes back to life. Sure enough, the virus instantly begins infecting and killing the monster. Iron Man is surprised when the monster reveals that it can talk. When it asks why it is killing him, Iron Man points out all the people it murdered. Before dying, the creature says that it was only doing its job.
With his mission over, Iron Man prepares to head home. He thinks about how dangerous the monster but not as chilling as the people who created it.
Recurring Characters
Iron Man, Jim Rhodes, Bambi Arbogast, Bert Hindel
Continuity Notes
When Tony discovered that his Iron Man tech was stolen and being sold to other armor users, Iron Man went on a mission to destroy this technology. It made Iron Man very unpopular and resulted in a lot of lawsuits from the individuals he assaulted and the government agencies he attacked. See Iron Man #225-231. Hindel specifically mentions Tony’s attack on the Vault’s Guardsmen which happened in Iron Man #228.
Tony began building his space station back in Iron Man #205. It was rendered inhospitable by the AIM bioweapon in issue #215.
