This Year’s Model

Thawed out of crygentic suspension, Tony Stark has been implanted with a chip that will re-write the technogranic virus attacking his body into a new artificial central nervous system.[1] Allowed to interface with the chip directly, Tony is able to write all the code himself at the speed of thought. Overseen by Erica Sondheim — Stark Enterprise’s resident doctor — Tony only suffers a minor stroke before the process is complete. The doctors then examine him and determine that he’ll live. However, it is unknown if Tony will be able to move on his own again and Erica warns him that he might be paralyzed for life.

Left in his room for the night, Tony can’t sleep as his mind is consumed by the possibility he might be unable to move for the rest of his life. This is even more maddening since the new artificial nervous system gives Tony an awareness of his body down to the cellular level. Trying to put his mind off things, Tony tries to call Jim Rhodes in order to apologize for not telling him the truth after he faked his death until after he recovered. He gets Jim’s voice mail, which already has a message telling Tony to drop dead. Listening to the message on his end, Jim becomes enraged when Tony tries to apologize and throws the phone to the ground.

Tony then decides to stop wallowing in self pity and begins taking steps to adjust to his new situation. He calls Abe Zimmer and has him rig up a neural interface for Tony’s lab so he can build things remotely from his hospital bed. Zimmer warns Tony that this isn’t what the neural access port in his head was built for and tells him to be careful. Tony promises to do his best and over the next few weeks he spends the time between medical tests designing and building a brand new suit of Iron Man armor.

Meanwhile, Osamu Moroboshi — unaware of the recent changes as Stark Enterprises — is continuing his plot to oust Jim Rhodes as CEO of the company. He has deemed Tony’s cousin Morgan as useless and tells his co-conspirators that their benefactor has decided to use more specialized agents moving forward.[2][3]

Moments later, the front gate of Stark Enterprises is attacked by a high tech tank and drone plane as well as an army of battle robots. Seeing this as the opportunity to test out his new autonomous Iron Man armor, Tony remotely pilots it to the scene and orders the attackers to stand down. They, naturally, attack him instead and Tony discovers — rather painfully — that any damage to his new suit sends feedback that registers as pain in his own body.

Struck with missiles, the robots assume Iron Man has been destroyed. However, the blast only temporarily disabled the armor. Tony mentally re-routes the suits power and reactivates it and returns to the battle. Activating the armor’s built in weapon systems Iron Man quickly downs the drone and crashes it into the tank. When the land vehicle survives the blast, Tony is surprised by its durability and wonders who made it.

Meanwhile, a second team of robot assassins have pulled up outside of Jim Rhodes’ house in a van. When Jim exits his home the robots come rushing out to eliminate him.

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, War Machine, Osamu Moroboshi, Erica Sondheim, Abe Zimmer, Morgan Stark

Continuity Notes

1. After Tony was shot in the spine he had a bio-chip implanted in his body. A rival business then hacked the chip replacing his central nervous system with a technoganic virus that was killing him. Tony was secretly put in suspended animation until a potential cure could be developed. See Iron Man #242, 248, 258-266, 284 and 289 for the harrowing drama. Tony will be fully back on his feet in issue #300.

2. Osamu Moroboshi’s employer is the artificial intelligence known as VORTEX. It is targeting Stark Enterprises in an act of preemptive self-preservation. See Iron Man #307.

3. Everyone presumes that Morgan Stark is Tony’s biological cousin. Years later, it is revealed that Tony was adopted by Howard and Maria Stark as a baby. This would mean that he and Morgan are not actually blood relatives. See Iron Man (vol. 5) #17 and International Iron Man #6-7 for the details.

Topical References

• Jim Rhodes’ telephone is depicted as having a built in answering machine that records messages on cassette tape. This should be considered a topical reference as voice mail has rendered such technology virtually obsolete.

Supplementary Material

This issue also features a 7 page bonus feature detailing the technical specifications of Iron Man’s new armor.