The Five Nightmares, Part 3: Pepper Potts at the End of the World

Zeke Stane has sent suicide bombers to a Starkdynamics gala event in Taiwan. The resulting explosion causes debris to fall to the streets where Tony’s long time friend, Pepper Potts, is buried alive. Tony manages to survive the blast by using Extremis to summon his Iron Man armor to form around him in seconds. Tony can see Zeke in the blast laughing at him and he swears he can almost hear it.

However, his concern is for Pepper’s safety and he quickly flies out of the raging inferno and begins scanning the area. Thankfully he is able to get a ping from her Stark Industries ID badge, but is concerned to see that the signal is coming from under tons of rubble. He manages to dig Pepper out and luckily she is still alive. However, her injuries are severe and she is quickly rushed to a nearby hospital. As Tony tries to figure out his next move he is shocked to discover that Zeke Stane also survived the blast and is being taken away in another ambulance. The twisted freak makes eye contact with Tony and grins.

Tony quickly gets on the horn with Maria Hill at SHIELD and tries to arrange for Zeke Stane to be arrested. Unfortunately, because the incident happened in China, there is not much the spy agency can do unless they have concrete proof that Stane was responsible for the bombings. However, Hill is able to which hospital he is staying in via a spy satellite. However, that’s about all she can do for him. For Tony, that’s enough and he speeds off to the hospital.

At that moment, Zeke Stane wakes up in the hospital and hopes that Sasha is at their rendezvous point since he is running short. As he leaves his hospital bed a nurse tries to stop him but he incapacitates her with a repulsor blast from his finger tips. He then blasts his way out of the hospital and finds Sasha waiting for him outside. As they flee in her car, he tells her that everything went according to plan. The only draw back is his body is vulnerable to the excess heat caused by his weapon implants. However, he is already thinking of a design for a suit he can wear that will be able to protect him.

Meanwhile, Tony is at the hospital where Pepper has been taken. The doctors have taken an x-ray and discovered that there is shrapnel lodged near her heart. It is too dangerous to perform surgery to remove it and they don’t believe that there is a way to help her. However, Tony’s seen injuries like this before and knows of a procedure that can save her life, but he will have to talk to her about it first.[1] When he wakes Pepper up, he tells her that he can save her life by installing the same device in her heart that he once used to save his own life from shrapnel years earlier. Stane was a business rival that once came after Stark’s business. At the time, Tony had fallen off the wagon and was on a downward spiral into alcoholism. Stane was able to take Stark International and cut Tony off from his fortune. Stark lived on the street for some time. Tony later learned that Stane was a strategic mastermind since the age of nine. After his father — a compulsive gambler — committed suicide, Obadiah Stane was determined to never lose. Once as a child, he killed the pet of an opponent in an upcoming chess tournament. The boy was so distracted by his recent loss, Stane easily won.

Eventually, Tony crawled his way out of the bottle and realized that he was the only one who could stop Stane. The two fought, pitting armors against one another. However, in the end, Tony was the victor. Rather than face defeat, Obadiah committed suicide, just like his father years earlier.[2] Tony also shares this information with SHIELD in the hopes they can find anything on his son, Ezekiel. Unfortunately, there is not much that Maria Hill or Dum Dum Dugan can dig up.[3] Tony tells them to keep digging while he goes to investigate the site of the bombing.

At the scene, Iron Man begins scanning the rubble until he finds an arc reactor that one of the killers used to turn his body into a living bomb. His investigation are interrupted by a trio of Chinese officials in upgraded Raider armor.[4] They inform him that China does not recognize SHIELD’s authority and orders him to surrender as he is under arrest as a the prime suspect in the bombing. Tony, naturally, refuses and takes off. As he flees he determines that these aren’t men in suits of armor but robots that are being remotely piloted. Using Extremis, he interferes with the connection and then unleashes the full force of his built in weapons to blast the Raider robots to pieces.

By the time that Tony Stark gets back to the hospital, the surgery to implant a new arc reactor into Pepper’s chest is a complete success. Although the doctor didn’t like implanting the device, Pepper’s body responded well to the procedure and she is expected to live. Tony is pleased and heads into her room to see how she’s doing. Pepper wakes up and tells him that she feels invincible.

Meanwhile, Zeke Stane is working on a new body suit to regulate his powers and protect him from the tremendous heat generated from his implants. However, this has used up the last of the extant Iron Man armor that he has spent a fortune to procure and reverse engineer for his suicide bombers. Still, it won’t matter for much longer because soon Tony Stark will be dead.

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Pepper Potts, SHIELD (Maria Hill, “Dum Dum Dugan”) Zeke Stane, Sasha Hammer

Continuity Notes

1. This is of course because Tony himself received just such an injury years earlier. It was the inciting incident that led to him becoming Iron Man to begin with, as per Tales of Suspense #39. However, here Tony makes reference to the “updated” origin that was told in Iron Man (vol. 4) #1-6. See below for more details. Tony’s heart had shrapnel in it until Iron Man #19, when he underwent surgery to finally have it removed. Tony has had heart problems ever since, until his body was completely repaired by Extremis in Iron Man (vol. 4) #1-6.

2. Obadiah Stane destroyed Iron Man’s life over the course of Iron Man #166-173. This included a hostile take over Stark International and pushing Tony to start drinking again. Tony eventually ended up homeless and almost died from his bender, but decided to get clean again in Iron Man #182. He went on to start a new company, making him a target of Stane once more. Their final conflict took place in Iron Man #198-200, ending with Stane’s suicide.

3. The man who appears to be Dum Dum Dugan here is actually a Skrull spy sent to infiltrate SHIELD ahead of a planned invasion of Earth. See Secret Invasion: Prologue #1 and Secret Invasion #1-8.

4. The Raiders were mercenaries-for-hire whose armor was developed by Edwin Cord, as seen in Iron Man #145.

Topical References

• Sasha Hammer’s car is depicted as a Mercedes sports car, probably an early 2000s model. This should be considered a topical reference as this is a real world brand.

The Iron Man Origin

Here, Tony states that the injury that led to his becoming Iron Man happened in the Middle East. This is contrary to the origin told in Tales of Suspense #39 and most other retellings of Tony’s origins which state that the incident actually took place in Southeast Asia. However, Iron Man (vol. 4) #1-6 told an alternate origin that was set in the Middle East. This was an attempt to try and update Iron Man’s origins for a modern audience. Since then, the origin has been returned to its original location starting with Invincible Iron Man Annual #1.

As such, modern readers should ignore any references to the origin taking place n the Middle East.