The Big Bang Theory, Part 1

At Microware Corporation in Silicon Valley, some employees are about to go to lunch. One of them wants to check his e-mail before he goes. One e-mail contains an attachment and this moron opens it out of curiosity. The second he does, the entire building explodes.

The following day, Tony Stark wakes up at 7 am and gets ready for the work day. However, it’s not as Tony Stark. Fed up with all his recent negative publicity, Tony shut down his company, gave away his fortune, and developed a new identity.[1] Assuming the identity of Hogan Potts, he Tony has now begun working for Askew Electronics in New York. Tony is enjoying ever minute of it, although he is still struggling to figure out the New York City subway system.

On his commute into work, he notices another newspaper headline about a bombing at a tech company, the third so far. As he rides into work, his train suddenly grinds to a sudden stop. This is because the Shocker has forced the train to stop so he can rob all the passengers on board. This comes at a bad time as, after using older armors for months, he realized that he has to keep using the latest technologies, despite the risk of creating another sentient life.[2] As such, Tony has been building a new suit of Iron Man armor in his spare time after work. The problem is that it is still in the prototype phase. When confronted with an incomplete suit of Iron Man armor, the Shocker has a good laugh about it. Iron Man tries to turn things around by absorbing Shocker’s vibrations into his chest plate uni-beam and shooting it back at him, but misses. Knocked down, Iron Man gets annoyed by the Shocker’s constant banter. When the villain gets too close, Tony grabs both the villain and the third rail of the subway system. This sends enough electricity into the Shocker’s suit that it burns out all of his tech and knocks him out. With the battle now over, Tony wonders how he is going to explain to his bosses why he is late.

Meanwhile, Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan have been put in charge of running the Maria Stark Foundation. Regardless of this, the phones are rining off the hook with people who want to get in touch with Tony Stark. Unfortunately, neither Pepper nor Happy know where Tony went or how to reach him. They also get a call from Captain America, who wants to speak with Tony. Apparently, he hasn’t shown up for Avengers meetings since giving his entire fortune to the team. Although this is highly stressful, Happy figures that Tony will be back sooner or later once he has gotten sick of the 9-to-5 life of the working Joe.

By this time, Tony has arrived for work at Askew Electroincs, the perfect place to work since it allows him to continue developing his new armor using their SKIN technology.[3] When “Hogan Potts” shows up at his cubical, his boss arrives seconds later demanding to know why he was late. When “Hogan” explains he was on the subway train attacked by the Shocker, his boss understands and decides to allow his tardiness this time, but warns him to show up on time in the future or he’s fired. Once the boss is gone, “Hogan’s” co-worker Johnny Morley pops up and tells him not to take the threats seriously.[4] Potts is far too skilled an employee for them to get rid of. Saying their boss won’t do anything the CEO, Calista Hancock’s say so.

Tony is hard at work when he gets a call from Jocasta through his watch. She tells him that she received word that Trevor Donahue has died. Although Trevor was not one of his favorite people, Tony feels he owed him for opening his eyes to the fact that his old friend Tiberius Stone was secretly ruining his life.[5] Now that Donahue is dead, Tony figures he’ll never repay him now. That’s when Calista Hancock comes in to check on him. She wanted to ask him about the repairs to his computer. He told her he already fixed it, but that’s the point. Not only did “Hogan Potts” fix the computer, but he made it more powerful than anything commercially available. This has tipped her off to the fact that there is something about “Potts” than meets the eye and she warns him that she’ll be keeping a closer eye on him in the future.

That evening, Iron Man shows up to run some tests on the new SKIN component of his suit. The nanite-infused liquid metal easily bonds to the heroes body. The new material can shrug off laser barrages and gives Tony the strength to punch through omnium steel bars. With the test going off with flying colours. The scientists helping him then come down and fit the rest of Iron Man’s components onto his armor. That’s when the man who has been planting bombs in tech offices contacts Iron Man through his armor to inform the hero that there is a bomb in Askew Technologies. After ordering the building evacuated, Iron Man asks where the bomb is. The bomber says

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Happy Hogan, Pepper Potts, Calista Hancock, Jocasta, Shocker, “Johnny Morley”, Captain America

Continuity Notes

1. Tony was the victim of a smear campaign from his former private school chum, Tiberius Stone, in Iron Man (vol. 3) # 37-40. He decided to pack it in as Tony Stark in issue #41.

2. Tony has been avoiding using newer technology after his latest suit of Iron Man armor became sentient as seen in Iron Man (vol. 3) #26-30. He has been using older suits of armor until last issue.

3. SKIN is a nanite based technology that coats anything with a protective metallic layer. Askew Technologies has been working on it since Iron Man (vol. 3) #½.

4. We’ll learn that “Johnny Morley” is an alias for the corporate terrorist the Ghost, who is the one responsible for the bombings as we’ll learn in Iron Man (vol. 3) #45.

5. Tony was targeted by Donahue previously sent Whiplash to kill Iron Man in Iron Man (vol. 3) #26 and 28, leading to the villain’s death because of the whole sentient armor thing. Later, Donahue revealed Tiberius Stone’s hatchet job to Tony, see issue #37-40 (again).

Topical References

• The computers in this story are depicted as having big ass CRT model screens. This should be considered a topical reference as this is an obsolete technology.

• The computer virus that the Ghost uses to blow shit up in this story is called “You Da Man”. This story is based on the ILOVEYOU virus that was e-mailed to potential victims in the early 2000s. The spread of the virus was successful due to the fact that the creator used social engineering dynamics to trick people into downloading and running an attachment that would then infect their computer. This whole plot device is dated, from the virus-through-e-mail extension, the length of time it takes to download (this story was written when internet speeds weren’t that fast), even the phrase “You Da Man” is dated as fuck. Topical reference city. Modern readers, use your imagination to figure out how to view this in a modern context, they don’t pay me enough to do this kind of heavy lifting.

• The Shocker makes cracks about how “toyetic” Iron Man’s unfinished armor appears, wondering if it was made by Toy Biz. Then he mockingly calls him both Tonka toy and Erector Set. Toy Biz was a toy company that was founded in 1988. It was later purchased by Marvel Entertainment to make toys based on their properties in 1997. However, the company ended up tanking when Marvel signed an exclusivity deal with Hasbro in 2007. Tonka was another toy company, best known for its toy trucks that were made out of metal. Ironically it eventually became owned by Hasbro, in 1991. These days they mostly license out the property to other manufacturers. Erector Sets were building kits that used metal parts, since 2000 this toy has been owned by the Meccano company. All of these references should be considered topical as they represent real world brands and products.

• Tony almost blows his cover when Calista Hancock overhears him talking to Jocasta through his watch. While talking to an artificial intelligence through you watch might have seemed like science fiction in the year 2001 when this comic was published, we are living in this reality. She even refers to it as an “e-mail watch” because the term “smart watch” didn’t get coined until 2004. Granted, the AI’s we have now are not anywhere near as sophisticated as Jocasta. Modern readers could assume that rather than being surprised by a smart watch that uses AI, Hancock is giving him shit for goofing off with his smart watch when he should be working.