Crash & Burn Part 6: Redemption

Tony Stark has a nightmare where his company, Stark Enterprises, is in shambles and his Iron Man armor in ruins. He is surrounded by the likes of Captain America, the New Warriors, the Hulk, Deathlok, and Venom. When he asks why they have caused all this destruction they accuse him of all the crimes committed by Stane International, a subsidiary of his company.[1] Tony is woken up from this dream by Bethany Cabe. She reports that she caught the hacker involved in the Stark Enterprise data leak. He is pleased and tells her to bring him in so they can have a little talk.

After Tony gets off his phone his girlfriend Veronica Benning warns him that he is pushing himself too hard and needs to slow down a little.[2] He tells her that he can’t as he needs to do damage control ever since acquiring Stane International. Even though the crimes committed by the company happened before Tony acquired it, it has still impacted public perceptions of his own company and he has decided that in order to recover from this he is going to have to rebuild Stark Enterprises from the ground up and make it a new kind of corporation in order to win back the public trust.

Tony then gets down to brainstorming ideas for a brand new company. He insists that all administrative positions familiarize themselves with the futurist writings of Alvin Toffler. He wants to incentivize whistleblowing, a restructured salary scale based on value rather than status, a civilian review board for new projects that would be completely independent from the company, and lastly a reinvestment program that would put a certain percentage of company profits into non-profit ventures.

Later that day, Tony meets up with Bethany Cabe, Abe Zimmer, and Felix Alvarez. While Felix takes issue with their apprehending Philip Grant on their own, Tony says it was necessary to get behind the leak. When Grant is brought in, Tony is in not in the mood to make any deals and warns Grant that if he doesn’t out who hired him, he’ll make sure Philip rots in prison for the rest of his life. Realizing that he has no wiggle room, Philip admits that he was hired by Marcy Pearson, a former Stark employee with an axe to grind.[3] Tony then goes into a private meeting with Felix and Abe to figure out what to do with Grant now that they have him dead to rights. Abe surprises them by suggesting that they hire the hacker onto their staff. This is because he is impressed by Grant’s work and with the proper guidance he could be a valuable asset and throwing him in prison would just be a waste of his considerable talents. Tony agrees and Felix is relieved he doesn’t have to take this to court since hacking crimes are always a nightmare. This just leaves them with Marcy Pearson to deal with.

Tony then calls Marcy under the pretense that he has a public relations nightmare that he needs her to help sort out. Marcy is pleased, thinking that everything is going according to plan and can’t wait to twist the knife deeper. However, when she meets with Stark he reveals that he knows all about her scheme.[4] Realizing that she is fucked, Marcy gives a sob story about a mystery voice that has been calling her with instructions to do what she has done. Stark doesn’t buy a word of it and had FBI agents listening in on the conversation. After she makes her confession, they reveal themselves and put Marcy under arrest.[5] With Pearson dealt with, Tony sends out an e-mail to all department heads to inform them of a mandatory meeting where he will outline the new changes that the company will be undergoing in the near future. When he meets with them, there are many protests against the new changes. Tony tells them that this opinions are moot since he has control over the company and if they have a problem with the way things are going to go moving forward they are more than welcome to resign.

With that out of the way, Tony makes his next big move and that is to hold a press conference to announce the changes to his company. Tony announces his new business plan as one that is more accountable than in the past. Sure enough, all of these changes are positively received by the public. The media also has a frenzy with your predictable analysis from credible news sources, to the tabloids absurdly accusing Iron Man of being a Skrull. At Roxxon a board meeting is called and the heads of the business decide to watch Stark Enterprises more closely and ensure the new plan fails before the public begins demanding they also undergo sweeping changes. Captain America watches the news coverage and finds that Tony Stark never fails to surprise him.[6] While somewhere in China, the family that has been caring for the Mandarin are listening to the story on the radio while sitting down to dinner. Hearing Tony Stark’s name causes the Mandarin to finally wake up from his months long coma.[7]

Later, SHIELD director Nick Fury calls Tony to congratulate him on hitting it big with his announcement. However, this call is also to ask Tony for assistance in dealing with War Machine, aka Jim Rhodes, who is causing problems for SHIELD in the Imaya region.[8] Stark tells Fury that there’s not much he can do about Jim since they are no longer on speaking terms.[9] Still, getting off the phone with Fury, Tony realizes that if Jim is misusing the War Machine armor he created then he bares some of the responsibility. However, he decides not to anything more than monitor the situation for now.

With one last task to accomplish, Tony heads out to his long abandoned mansion as Iron Man and destroys it, since he views it as a relic of the past. After cleaning things up, Iron Man watches the sunset over the ocean, looking forward to what the future might bring.

Little does he know that he is being observed by a mysterious machine. Pleased by how Iron Man’s current trials and tribulations have gone so far, it is ready to initiate its final plan.[10]

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Marcy Pearson, Philip Grant, Veronica Benning, Bethany Cabe, Abe Zimmer, Felix Alvarez, Bambi Arbogast, Jim Rhodes, Captain America, Nick Fury, Mandarin, VORTEX

Continuity Notes

1. This whole mess stems from Stane International’s shady business dealings. Stane International was previously Stark International, Tony’s family business. It was stolen away from him by Obadiah Stane during a hostile take over in Iron Man #173 and renamed after himself. After Obadiah’s death in Iron Man #200, the company eventually ended up in the hands of Justin Hammer who sold it back to Tony for a dollar in Iron Man #283. During its operations Stane International got involved in a lot of shady business that just came to public attention in Iron Man #300.

2. Veronica is concerned about Tony’s well being because he has just recently gotten over total body paralysis thanks to her work as a physio-therapist. This has been a long runnin issue for Tony since getting shot in the spine and having a hackable bio-chip implanted in his spine that ruined his entire central nervous system requiring an artificial one to be built to take its place. See Iron Man #242, 248, 258-266, 284, 288-289, and 300.

3. Marcy has been seeking revenge against Stark Enterprises since Jim Rhodes — during his brief tenure as CEO — fired her in Iron Man #284. What is is unaware of is that she is merely the pawn of VORTEX, an artificial intelligence that is targeting Stark Enterprises in an act of pre-emptive self-preservation. See Iron Man #307.

4. Here, Marcy states that she is surprised that Tony wanted to meet with her after their last meeting. That was in Iron Man #292. At the time, Tony had discovered that Marcy tried to frame Jim Rhodes for murdering Tony during the period everyone thought Stark was dead between Iron Man #284 and 289. She planted false evidence to frame Jim in Iron Man #287.The plan didn’t pan out since Tony was revealed to be alive shortly thereafter.

5. Depending on your sources, this is the last appearance of Marcy Pearson. A character by that same name shows up as a reporter counter to Trish Tilby in Fear Itself: The Home Front #1. I’ve presented my case to the Marvel Chronology Project here.

6. Cap wonders if their recent chat had anything to do with this announcement. The two talked about their futures in Iron Man #303-304.

7. The Mandarin has been in this coma since his last defeat at the hands of Iron Man during the Dragon Seed Saga. See Iron Man #270-275.

8. Jim Rhodes, as War Machine, has been leading rebels in Imaya in a fight against their despotic ruler Eda Arul. See War Machine #1-4.

9. When Tony faked his death in issue #284, he kept it a secret from Jim. When Jim learned the truth he quit on the spot in Iron Man #288. He had his final straw with Tony when he was roped into helping stop Ultimo in Iron Man #299-300. After the battle, Jim told tony to never contact him again.

10. This mystery machine is VORTEX and its final scheme will be initiated in Iron Man Annual #15 and next issue.

Topical References

• Tony’s new business model is based on “Toffler’s Third Wave”: This is in reference to futurist and author Alvin Toffler and his book The Third Wave, wish was published in 1980. The book itself presents a vision of the future at a time when society was transitioning out of the post-industrial era and into the “information age”. Prior to The Third Wave, Toffler also published Future Shock and would later publish Powershift and lastly Revolutionary Wealth. The point of all of these books is that in order for society to transcend its current status quo, old methods — left overs from the industrial era — need to be abolished and new and more progressive systems need to be put in place. Stark — a futurist himself — looking to Toffler for inspiration wouldn’t in and of itself be considered topical. What would be topical is the fact that he is referencing The Third Wave, given that his two later books expanded upon the concepts laid out in that book.

• Tony also references Shockwave Rider a science fiction book written by John Brunner that was inspired by the works of Toffler. References to the book here shouldn’t be considered topical given the context. However, seeing if he can hire Brunner to consult for them should be given that the author died in 1995.

• Also part of the business plan is to reinvest 10% of profits into non-profit ventures. This is inspired by Ben & Jerry’s, the ice cream company, that used to do that with 1% of their profits. Not sure if that’s still the case anymore or not, but since this is referencing a real world company you could technically consider it topical. I’m not that well versed in finances but there might be better real-world examples of reinvestments plans of this scope out there since 1993.

• The date of Tony’s big press conference is listed as Wednesday, May 18th, 1994. The date here should be considered topical as it is relative to the date of publication.