Iron Man (vol. 3) #24
Ultimate Fury
Warbird (Carol Danvers) wakes up with a splitting headache. She barely remembers clashing with her old foes Golden-Blade and Sapper alongside Iron Man (Tony Stark). This is because she is wasted.[1] Thinking that Tony was making her look bad, Carol pulls a bottle of liquor from her desk drawer and chugs it, vowing to go back and show Stark who is the amateur.
At that moment, aboard the SS Joseph C. Gillis, Rumiko Fujikawa and Morgan Stark are learning a potentially deadly lesson. Having recovered the massive robot known as Ultimo, they tried to hook it up to the battleship as a power source. Unfortunately, the robot has suddenly sprung to life. Below deck are Golden-Blade and Sapper who are waiting for the right moment to break free. As Rumiko tries to stop from falling overboard she pulls out her cell phone to call Tony Stark for help. Unfortunately, the ship lurches again and and she ends up dropping it in the water below.
Meanwhile, at Stark Solutions, Happy Hogan has walked in on Tony and Pepper kissing one another. He decides to slink out of the room without saying another word.[2] Moments later, Tony and Pep pull away and start laughing. They both realized that they no longer have romantic feelings for one another and that they are better off as friends. This moment is interrupted when Warbird arrives and begins attacking Tony’s home.
Getting Pepper to cover, Tony orders Jocasta — his personal AI assistant — to activate the security and defense systems. This seals off all the exits to the mansion behind blast proof shutters. Tony’s remote control armor then appears and folds onto him. Using the underwater exit from his island estate, Iron Man is able to ambush Warbird from behind. As the pair fight it out, Tony notices that Carol is slurring her speech and realizes that she is completely wasted. Things go from bad to worse when Warbird crashes into a power station. Not only does this knock out half the power in Seattle, but super-charges her energy powers.
Back aboard the SS Joseph C. Gillis, Golden-Blade and Sapper manage to break free from their cells. To the surprise of Rumiko and Morgan, the two alien beings begin saving the ship’s crew and getting them all onto lifeboats. As the Coast Guard arrives, the ship finally sinks as Ultimo stands up right, sloughing off the vessel from his back.
Jocasta detects that Ultimo has awoken and reports this to Iron Man, who is still in the middle of his brawl with Warbird. The call distracts him enough for Warbird to hit him hard enough to send him flying into the air. To his horror, Iron Man ends up smashing through the wing of a passing commercial airliner, sending it into a tailspin. Seeing what she has done sobers Carol up enough that she puts aside her differences with Iron Man and helps him prevent the plane from landing. Working together, they are able to get the plane to land safely at the Sea-Tac Airport. Once emergency crews are on the scene, Iron Man confronts Warbird about her drinking problem. Refusing to believe that she is an alcoholic, Carol powers cut out and she passes out. Tony can tell that she is suffering from alcohol poisoning. Informing the EMTs, Iron Man leaves Carol in their care as he needs to stop Ultimo.[3]
When Iron Man arrives on the scene, he tries attacking the massive robot, but Ultimo easily swats him away. The massive entity then sinks to the ocean floor and makes its way to shore without further interruptions. Iron Man then turns his attentions to Golden-Blade and Sapper, accusing them of freeing Ultimo. However, Rumiko comes to their defense, saying it was because of the two aliens that they were able to survive Ultimo’s awakening.
In fact, the pair know all about Ultimo as Sapper in particular has encountered the creature in the past. Acting as translator, Golden-Blade explains that nobody knows where Ultimo came from, but he became a bane to space-faring races.[4] Sapper’s people, the Rajak even had their homeworld attacked by Ultimo. The survivors took to the stars in the hopes of hunting down and destroying Ultimo to avenge their people. Engaging the giant robot over the planet Earth, the Rajak ship was shot down. It ended up crashing in the Pacific Northwest a few hundred years ago. The only witness to this crash was a lone fur trapper working the area.[5] Sapper was the only survivor and has spent the years since trying to steal the energy needed to revitalize their ship to leave Earth. In hearing all this, Iron Man theorizes that Ultimo crash landed in China and shut down until he was found and reprogrammed by the Mandarin.[6]
Sapper now tells them that Ultimo has detected the location of their ship and is heading that way to destroy it. With some hesitation Golden-Blade imparts the location of the ship. Iron Man pulls up a map of the region and is horrified to discover that Ultimo will need to cross through the town of Spokane to get there, putting countless lives at risk.
Recurring Characters
Iron Man, Warbird, Ultimo, Rumiko Fujikawa, Morgan Stark, Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts, Jocasta, Sapper, Golden-Blade
Continuity Notes
Warbird and Iron Man fought Sapper and Golden-Blade last issue. Carol has been struggling with alcoholism since Avengers (vol. 3) #4. She will struggle further until she agrees to start attending AA in issue #26 of that series. The whole Golden-Blade/Sapper/Ultimo plot began last issue.
Back in the early days, there was a love triangle between Pepper, Tony and Happy. Starting in Tales of Suspense #45. Eventually, Happy won Pepper over and the two got married in issue #89. They were married for years until Pepper cheated on Happy, leading to the couple getting divorced in Iron Man (vol. 3) #4.
Iron Man can spot alcohol poisoning because he is a recovering alcoholic himself. He has suffered two particularly bad benders in Iron Man #120-128 and 167-182.
Ultimo’s origins have been further explained in Iron Man (vol. 6) #10. He is part of a race of similar beings. The purpose of their creation, however, has been lost to time.
This is only part of the Rajak’s tale. Next issue we learn that they had transferred their minds into digital storage space. Some, such as Sapper were transferred into robot bodies. Golden-Blade is the trapper referred to here, have been transformed into a robot as well in order to assist Sapper on their mission to leave the Earth.
The Mandarin first started using Ultimo in Tales of Suspense #76. At the time, he claimed that he created the robot. We’ll find out that many of his claims are full of shit, as seen in Invincible Iron Man Annual #1.
Topical References
Rumiko’s cell phone is depicted as being a flip phone with physical buttons and an antenna to pick up signals. This should be considered a topical reference as these types of cell phones are now obsolete.
