Iron Man #316
Triangle
Tony Stark had come to Russia in order for the grand opening of the first Stark Enterprise facility in the country. This has earned the ire of the Titanium Man who doesn’t like the current softened relationship between Russia and the United States. Attacking the opening, Titanium Man is opposed by his old foe Iron Man. Overpowering the hero, Titanium Man is about to rip him limb-from-limb when he is ambushed by the Black Widow. This allows Iron Man to break free and rejoin the fight.
The battle is being observed by military officials who debate how to act on the situation. They need to get Titanium Man under control and decide that their only choice is to call in General Valentin Shatalov, aka the Crimson Dynamo, for assistance.[1] Although Shatalov has been at odds with the current government in Russia, they are confident he will assist in this set of circumstances. Shatalov answers the call and as he suits up he thinks of all of his predecessors and how they can never understand the sacrifices he made to become the current Crimson Dynamo.[2]
Back at the scene of the battle, the Black Widow tries to reason with the Titanium Man, but he refuses to listen to someone who defected from her own country to work for the United States.[3] This refuses to work, but when Iron Man tries to tell Natasha to stand down, she won’t give up. That’s when the Crimson Dynamo ambushes them all as he arrives on the scene, leaving Iron Man and the Widow to wonder whose side he is really on.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, a group of Roxxon executives meet with Mycroft a high tech assassin. A brilliant man who is an expert in multiple fields, he knows why Roxxon has come looking for him. They wish to hire him to assassinate Tony Stark and he has already decided that he will take them up on the job.[4]
In Russia, the Crimson Dynamo tells Iron Man and the Black Widow to stand down as this situation is in his jurisdiction. The Dynamo then tries to reason with Titanium Man by relating with him. While he agrees with Boris’ political feelings, he asks him to step down and cease the violence or else he will have to follow orders. This only stop the battle for a moment as Titanium Man denounces the Crimson Dynamo as a lair and attacks him as well.
Stateside, Professor Ted Slaght refuses to acknowledge the fact that he is starting to suffer from a neurodegenerative illness. Resenting Tony Stark for revealing this to his employers causing them to scrap his experiment with parasilicate alloys. Refusing to believe that he is losing his mind, he decides to run an experiment with the alloy without authorization. However, he becomes forgetful of what he is doing in the middle of the experiment and the machine regulating the experiment begins giving an error message. When the whole apparatus begins to overload, Slaght races to the vat of experimental materials to try and initiate a manual shut down. Unfortunately, he is too late an the entire experiment explodes in his face.
While in Russia, Titanium Man is attacked on three fronts by the Crimson Dynamo, Iron Man, and the Black Widow. Outnumbered, Titanium Man swats the Dynamo and flies away, vowing that nobody can stop him. In the aftermath of the battle, the Black Widow checks on the Dynamo and they discover that he has suffered a broken leg in battle. Before Iron Man can take off after their foe, the Dynamo asks him to stop and listen to him for a moment. He insists that if anyone is to take down Titanium Man, for the sake of Russia itself, it must be the Crimson Dynamo. Since he himself is injured, Shatalov begs Tony to wear his armor in his stead. Stark is reluctant to do so, but Valentin reminds Tony that he kept his true identity a secret all this time and that he owes him for that.[5]
Tony caves and agrees to carry out Valentin’s request and once they retreat inside the Stark Enterprise facility, Tony suits up in the Crimson Dynamo armor.
Recurring Characters
Iron Man, Black Widow, Titanium Man, Crimson Dynamo, Ted Slaght
Continuity Notes
Here it is mentioned how Shatalov formed the renegade superhuman group called Remont 4. This happened in Soviet Super Soldiers #1.
Valentin Shatalov names off all of the other men who wore the Crimson Dynamo armor before him. They include:
Anton Vanko: Created the first suit of Crimson Dynamo armor back in Tales of Suspense #46.
Boris Turgenov: The second man to become the Crimson Dynamo. He only lived long enough to run one mission which ended in the death of himself and Vanko. See Tales of Suspense #52.
Alex Nevsky: Built his own suit of Crimson Dynamo armor between Iron Man #15-21. He was last seen in Iron Man #74. Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe: Deluxe Edition #3 states that he was later murdered by Russian agents for his past failures.
Yuri Petrovitch: Took on the mantle starting in Champions #7. After repeat failures of his own he ended up being shipped to a Siberian gulag as we’ll see in Captain America #616.
Dimitri Bukharin: The last Dynamo prior to Shatalov taking the title. He first assumed the role in Iron Man #109. Bukharin gave up the Dynamo identity to become Airstrike in Soviet Super Soldiers #1.
Natasha started her career as a Russian spy, and frequently attacked Stark Industries in its early days, starting in Tales of Suspense #52. She eventually defected from Russia in Avengers #30.
This is all we see or hear about Mycroft and Roxxon’s scheme to assassinate Tony Stark. This was due to the fact that Len Kaminski quit as writer on Iron Man as he did not agree with the editorial direction for the book moving forward. One could argue that this plot fell through after Tony was “killed” during Onslaught: Marvel Universe #1.
Shatalov discovered Iron Man’s secret identity when he and Tony experienced a body swap back in Iron Man #256.
Topical References
This story is framed as though the fall of the USSR happened a few years prior. The former Soviet Union dissolved in 1991. All references to that happening in the recent past should be considered topical. Modern readers should assume that Titanium Man is upset about softening relations between the USA and Russia that have nothing to do with the Cold War.
References in the present tense to the first Chechen War, which took place from December 1994 to August 1996, should also be considered a topical reference. Given the on going political instability of former Soviet states in the present day, modern readers should interpret this to be a war with a neighboring state rather than anything specific. While Chechnya might still be an independent state as I write this in August, 2022, that could possibly change given what Russia is up to these days.
The prognosis that Ted Slagh is suffering from an early on set of Alzheimer’s Disease, a neurodegenerative illness that is the most common cause of dementia in the elderly. While this is currently a major illness with no known cure as I write this (August, 2022) the reference to a specific real-world illness should be considered topical to account for future medical breakthroughs that might result in a cure for the illness and thereby unintentionally age this story. Modern readers should interpret Tony’s diagnosis to a unspecified neurodegenerative illness rather than a specific one.
