Iron Man #331
Going for Broke
After Stark Enterprises was purchased by the Fujikawa corporation, Iron Man has joined forces with War Machine to destroy all of the adult Tony Stark’s surplus Iron Man armors before the company can get ahold of them.[1] However, this operation has been interrupted by the Stockpile a group of villains secretly hired by Tony’s cousin, Morgan Stark, to steal the technology.[2] In the opening attack, faithful Stark employee Abe Zimmer was killed.
What nobody knows is that the Stockpile member known as Brass is really a robot being remotely piloted by Morgan Stark himself. When the robot is damaged it feeds back through the telepresence link between it and Morgan Stark, causing him agonizing pain.[3] This causes a malfunction in the technology used to link Morgan to Brass allowing him to mentally connect to a number of Iron Man’s old suits of armor.[4] Which he uses to attack Iron Man and War Machine after they have dealt with the rest of the Stockpile. Hearing the Stockpile’s leader speaking through the suits of armor, Tony instantly recognizes it as the voice of his cousin, Morgan Stark.
Eventually, Tony manages to find a way to hack into the computer system and tells War Machine to evacuate everyone from the scene. Soon, Iron Man is swarmed by the autonomous suits that were built by his future self. Pinned to the ground, Morgan unmasks this new Iron Man and is shocked to discover that face of a much younger Tony Stark looking back at him. This distraction gives Tony the time he needs to sever Morgan’s connections to the suits and initiates their self-destruct sequences. As War Machine leaves with Abe Zimmer’s body, the entire facility explodes leaving Rhodey to wonder if young Tony made it out alive.
A few hours later, at Columbia University, Kris DeGann and Remmy Lawford are gossiping about Tony Stark. This bothers Benj Brennan, the jock who is currently dating Remmy. Since he can’t get any words in edgewise with the two women, Benj instead goes to Chap Walters and apologizes to him for being a jerk on sign up day.[5] Soon, a banged up Tony Stark shows up for class, causing Kris and Remmy to fawn over him. Tony decides to sit at the back of the class room, fearing that his teacher — Professor Meredith McCall-Alden — might recognize that she is his old boyfriend from the past.[6] When McCall arrives, Tony is somewhat relieved that she is still blind and needs a seeing eye-dog to get around so, at least she won’t recognize him by sight, however he still blames himself for her loss of eyesight.
Before classes can start, the power suddenly goes out and the ground begins to shake. Looking out the window, Tony is shocked to see the massive robotic foot of a mutant hunting Sentinel.[7]
Recurring Characters
Iron Man, War Machine, Stockpile (Brass, Joust, Sunstreak, Unicorn), Kris DeGann, Benjamin Brennan, Chap Walters, Meredeth McCall, Morgan Stark, Abe Zimmer (corpse)
Continuity Notes
This version of Tony Stark was pulled forward in time to help the Avengers stop his older self after he betrayed the team. It was a whole thing. See Iron Man #319-325, Avengers #390-395, Force Works #16-20, War Machine #20-23, Avengers: The Crossing #1, Avengers: Timeslide #1, Age of Innocence: The Rebirth of Iron Man #1 as well as Avengers Forever #8 to find out just what the fuck was going on. At any rate, this younger version of Tony comes from a divergent reality as a result, Marvel Legacy: The 1990s Handbook #1 identifies it as Reality-96020. Tony is said to be 19 at the time he was taken from the past and he was brought forward to the future by about 10 years. Per the Sliding Timescale this is not accurate at all. It would actually be closer to 14 years. See the Pre-Modern Age Timeline for more details.
Speaking of Dark Reign Files #1, that resource also gives the real names of Unicorn (Aaidan Blomfield), Joust (Boudica Gorman), and Sunstreak (Andrea Roarke).
Morgan Stark is all fucked up here because he survived a fiery car crash in Iron Man #292. He is using the same neural telepresence technology that Tony used to pilot his Iron Man armor from Iron Man #269 through 284.
Armors on display here are models 1 (in both grey and gold, Tales of Suspense #39-40), 2 (Tales of Suspense #48), 4 (Iron Man #85), and 7 (The stealth armor, Iron Man #152).
Benj Brennan started off as your typical jock stereotype and got a good laugh when his frisbee knocked Chap to the ground while he was carrying books and papers. See Iron Man #326 for that bit of one-dimensional dickery.
There is a lot going on with Meredith McCall that needs explaining here. The details:
When young Tony was pulled out of the past in Avengers: Timeslide #1, he was seeing Meredith McCall at the time. From his perspective he disappeared on her over a decade ago.
However, Tony’s fears that this Meredith will recognize him are unfounded since his disappearance now takes place in a divergent reality. While the Earth-616 Meredith McCall did date her reality’s Tony Stark (as seen in Iron Man #28) never would have had Tony Stark disappear on her when they were teens.
At any rate, Meredith was frozen alive by Frostbite and freed by Iron Man in Iron Man #327-328.
This is of course alluding to the upcoming Onslaught event. The titular villain took over America’s arsenal of Sentinel robots in X-Men (vol. 2) #46. Onslaught will begin his strike in Onslaught: X-Men #1 and unleash the Sentinels on New York in X-Men (vol. 2) #55. Tony/Iron Man gets involved in the Onslaught struggle in Avengers #400.
Topical References
War Machine quips that the Stockpile should cut a record and tour prisons with Johnny Cash. Cash was a country-western singer who often performed at prisons to entertain those incarcerated there. This should be considered a topical reference due to the fact that Johnny Cash has been dead since 2003.
