The Big Bang Theory, Part 3

After leaving his old life behind, Tony Stark has adopted the new identity of Hogan Potts. He was working at Askew Electronics while building a new suit of armor for Iron Man to wear.[1] That was until an mad bomber who has been striking tech companies across the country picked Askew as his next target. Luring Iron Man out of the building, the bomber succeeded in his appointed task. Returning to the ruins of the blown up building, Iron Man scans for the source of the bomb with his new armor’s drones. Jocasta — Tony’s AI assistant — collects the data. She determines that the bomber somehow managed to make a computer explode with enough force to take down an entire building.

Once he has the needed data, Iron Man leaves as he is running late for a meeting called by Askew’s CEO, Calista Hancock. The meeting is supposed to be at Club Twenty-One Twelve, one of the trendiest places in New York City. When Tony arrives in his new identity of “Hogan Potts”, the bouncer refuses to believe he knows Calista Hancock, much less allow him inside the exclusive night spot. When “Hogan” tries to tell the bouncer that he is really Tony Stark, he gets laughed at. As he leaves, “Hogan” runs into his co-worker Johnny Morley, who tells him that there was a mix-up. The real meeting is happening at a pub down the street. There, the Askew staff is told by Calista Hancock that the destruction of their head office was catastrophic to the company. The cannot afford to rebuild and they are now forced to sell the designs for SKIN. Everyone is now effectively out of a job. However, Calista tells them not to get down, and encourages everyone to celebrate new beginnings as she is picking up the tab.

The following morning, “Hogan Potts” is woken up by Calista Hancock, who went home with him the night before. She doesn’t know why or how, but something about “Hogan” turns her one, another part of his mystique she supposes. Tony is pleased that something from his old life have carried over to the new one. As Calista leaves to start her day, Jim Rhodes comes by for visit. Seeing the woman who is just leaving, Rhodey jokes about the fact that even as a “computer nerd”, Tony’s skills as a “ladies man” are still without peer. Getting to the point of the visit, Jim has begun to wonder if Tony’s sudden change in lifestyle — the Hogan Potts identity, giving up his fortune — were all suggestions implanted in his mind by Tiberius Stone while they were both trapped in Dreamvision.[2] Tony isn’t willing to intimate the possibility, but the seed of doubt was planted.

Thankfully an alert is coming in from Jocasta and Tony activates his hidden computer system. Jim is amazed by the sophistication of the set up hidden in his small apartment. Tony explains that even though he gave up his fortune, he kept enough money for himself to be able to keep Iron Man in operation. Jocasta informs Tony that she was able to determine that the bombs were somehow transmitted via e-mail and triggered via brain patterns from the bomber. She has almost tracked the transmission to its source. Coating himself in SKIN, Tony puts on the rest of his recently completed, brand new suit of Iron Man armor.

Downloading Jocasta into his new suit, she helps Iron Man track down the most recent e-mail bomb to have gone out. Using his onboard drones, Iron Man scans the office to narrow down which computer is receiving the e-mail. He manages to stop the user before they can open the file attachment and set off the bomb. While he stops the download from finishing, the probes are able to pinpoint the source of the e-mail bombs. Iron Man follows the trail to another office building which seems innocent enough. Still, appearances can be deceiving, so Tony activates his new cloaking device to sneak in unseen. Sneaking up to the main boardroom, Iron Man is shocked to discover that this company is really a front for Advanced Idea Mechanics and headed by their leader, MODOK.

MODOK can sense Iron Man’s presence despite the cloak and disables it with his mental probe. He then orders the suits in the board room to kill him. Iron Man quickly takes them out with a sonic blast from his uni-beam projector. MODOK is a tougher egg to crack than usual as he has been hooked up to a device that boosts his mental powers even higher than before. As he batters Iron Man around with mental blasts, he tells the hero how AIM is in the process of going legitimate. Admittedly, blowing up the competition is proof that some old habits are hard to break.

That’s when a spectral hand passes through Tony’s chest causing him extreme pain. As Iron Man collapses to the floor, MODOK introduces him to AIM’s latest partner, the Ghost.

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Jocasta, the Ghost, Calista Hancock, AIM (MODOK), Edwin Jarvis

Continuity Notes

1. This story follows the events of Iron Man (vol. 3) #37-40, where Tony was subject to a smear campaign orchestrated by Tiberius Stone. In the following issue he decided to leave his old life behind. Since issue #42, he has been working for Askew Electronics under the alias Hogan Potts.

2. We see a number of memories that Tony was forced to revisit while a prisoner in Dreamvision they are:

   • The death of his parents Howard and Maria Stark. Per Iron Man #288, Tony’s adopted parents died in a car accident. They aren’t his real parents, who were actually Amanda Armstrong and a guy named Jude as revealed in Iron Man (vol. 5) #17, and International Iron Man #5-7. It’s been suggested in S.H.I.E.L.D. #5 that the Starks death was faked, but as of this writing (March, 2023) this has yet to be independently verified as fact. Tony is depicted as a much younger man in this flashback than he was in most other flashbacks from this period, which usually depict Tony as a young man. One could assume that this is an error on the part of the artist.

   • Tony’s alcoholism: Tony has struggled with a booze addiction causing two major binges in Iron Man #120-128 and 167-182 respectively.

   • The time that Tony was crippled from Iron Man #242-248.

   • When Iron Man’s armor became sentient in Iron Man (vol. 3) #26-30. However, Tony wasn’t forced to relive this, but I guess we can cut him some slack for remembering it because it was something that happened more recently.

Topical References

• When talking about the bombing of the Askew Technologies building, Tony remarks “We’ve had enough explosions for one week, thank you very much…” This comic was published in September, 2001. Which makes it sound like this is a 9/11 reference. However, the story was completed months earlier. Direct editions of this comic would have gone out in July, 2001, two months prior to the infamous terrorist attacks. No, they didn’t predict 9/11, you’re an conspiracy minded idiot who suffers from Apophenia.

• When Tony tries to convince the bouncer who he really is the bouncer sarcastically says he’s Ivana Trump. Ivana Trump was the first wife of human shit-heap Donald Trump until they were divorced in 1990. This should be considered a topical reference since Ivana passed away in 2022.

• 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 computers in this story are depicted as having CRT model monitors. This should be considered a topical reference as this is now an obsolete technology.

• When commenting on how AIM is going “legit”, MODOK says that his organization is going to become the next Microsoft. Microsoft is a software company best known for their Windows operating system. When this comic was published, they were one of the largest companies in the world. While they are still a huge part of the computer market today, they aren’t even in the 10 ten most profitable anymore. At any rate, their corporate standing is irrelevant because this is a topical reference due to being a real world company.