Controlling Interest

Iron Man is attacked at the home of Tony Stark by a cyborg calling itself Berserker 7. As Tony remotely pilots his suit from a hospital bed, two enthralled medical staffers tranquilize him. This causes the Iron Man armor to suddenly stop working and fall into the ocean. When Tony finally wakes up, he finds himself in an underground complex where enslaved drones are kept in line by an army of cybernetic warriors. He is soon taken to their leader, who he is shocked to discover is Basil Sandhurst, aka the Controller. Even more surprising, Sandhurst has somehow managed to heal his horribly scarred body.[1]

Realizing he is in big trouble, Tony tries to grab for his telepresence headset so he can reactivate his Iron Man armor.[2] Unfortunately, his weakened body can’t react fast enough and the Controller plugs into his mind. While the Controller believes that he has full control over Stark, Tony realizes that this isn’t the case thanks to his new artificial nervous system. In fact, this connection has given him a backdoor to control the Controller’s network of slaves. Before this can be discovered, Tony wills one of the enthralled doctors to get his telepresence headset and place it on his head so he can reactivate his Iron Man armor.

However, as he is doing so, the Controller enters Tony’s mind and begins probing it for secrets. That’s when the Iron Man armor comes crashing in through the wall of the Controller’s hideout demanding to know where its “boss” Tony Stark is. Iron Man then has to fight his way through not only Berserker 7, but an army of Controller created cyborgs.

Meanwhile, the Controller continues to try and probe Tony’s mind. However, Stark has full control over his entire body thanks to his new artificial nervous system. Through sheer force of will he is able to fight off the Controller’s mental probe. This causes feedback that shuts down all of his slaves and Berserker cyborgs. With the battle over, Iron Man goes looking for the man who appeared to be Basil Sandhurst and discovers that he was yet another puppet of the Controller. Scanning the room, he finds a secret door and rips it open revealing the real Controller. The villain’s body has heavily deteriorated over the years and now requires sophisticated machinery to keep himself alive.

He explains that this all happened after Iron Man had burned out the circuits in his original exo-suit some time earlier.[3] He had hoped by kidnapping Tony in order to learn the secrets about the process that saved his life so that Sandhurst could use it on himself. When Iron Man offers his aid, the Controller flat out refuses and threatens to activate the self-destruct system in his hideout if he doesn’t leave. Iron Man agrees to go, but promises that he’ll be back to settle things once and for all. The Controller knows this and assures Iron Man that next time he’ll be ready.[4]

Back at Stark Enterprises, Bambi Arbogast is grilling the guards stationed outside Tony’s hospital room, demanding to know how they managed to lose Mr. Stark. That’s when Iron Man arrives with Tony in his arms and assures Mrs. Arbogast that “Tony” is fine. Putting himself back into bed, Tony decides that he doesn’t want to end up like the Controller and has his Iron Man suit collect the rubber ball off the floor and puts it back in his hand so he can begin the long and painful road to rehabilitation.

Several days later, Tony meets with his lawyer, Felix Alvarez, who tells him that taking Basil Sandhurst to court is going to be a difficult prospect. Tony tells him to try his best and then appoints Felix as the new Vice President in charge of operations for Stark Enterprises, effective immediately. Tony explains he needs someone he can trust to run his company’s day-to-day operations while he works on getting out of blasted hoverchair.

Meanwhile, at the Stark Enterprises space station, currently on loan to Cauwfield Multichemical Corporation, things have gotten dire.[5] One of the crew is fleeing from a pair of technorganic creatures that have been pursing him non-stop. Resistance, you could say, is futile as these beings manage to corner him and assimilate him into their collective.

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Controller, Berserker 7, Bambi Arbogast, Felix Alvarez, Cal Oakly, Sheila Carter

Continuity Notes

1. Sandhurst was caught in an explosion when one of his own inventions went haywire. It left him horribly burned and needing to wear an exo-skeleton in order to move. He augmented his strength with slave-discs that put people under his control and allowed him to sap their physical strength. See Iron Man #12-13 for all the nitty gritty on that.

2. Long story short: Tony was shot in the spine and crippled. He had an experimental bio-chip implanted there. It was hacked and his nervous system ruined by enemies. He then went into cryo-stasis for a time until a cure could be fashioned. He was thawed out but lacks full mobility at this time. 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.

3. Iron Man burned out the Controller’s exo-suit back in Iron Man #225.

4. This re-match will take place in Iron Man Annual #15.

5. Tony leased out his space station to Cauwfield Multichemical to use to experiment with new chemical compounds as seen in Iron Man #256.

Topical References

• Here, Tony states that the Conteroller’s network of slaves take up all of his RAM. RAM, or Random Access Memory, is currently an integral component to computing as this is where all of the real-time processing of applications takes place. How fast things load and how many programs you can run usually boils down to how much ram you have on your computer. While this is the standard type of component for such functions now, this might not be the case at some point in the future potentially making this a topical reference.