Sympathy for the Devil, Part 2

Tony Stark had returned home for a romantic evening with his girlfriend Rumiko Fujikawa, after destroying a falling satellite.[1] However, once he gets into the hot tub he finds Pepper Potts waiting for him instead. Tony is shocked to see her. Pep explains she that after Tony revealed Iron Man’s true identity to the public she realized anything is possible and left Happy Hogan to be with him.[2][3]

However, this all a life like illusion and Tony is still plugged into the machine that recharges his mechanical heart. Rumiko Fujikawa, worried about Tony, has come into the room and sees him in a trance. Unable to get him out of it, she yanks the charging cord from his heart. Snapping back to reality, Tony unintentionally slaps her away. Tony is freaked out and doesn’t know if what he is experiencing now is reality. Rumiko reminds him of the old lady he saved from muggers earlier that evening and the split lip he got as a result. Looking in the mirror, Tony sees the injury and this convinces him that he’s not in some other weird fantasy.

Wondering how he could have had this illusion, Tony deduces that somehow Tiberius Stone was affecting his mind with Dreamvision again.[4] He summons Friday, his AI assistant, to scan the the room and figure out how Stone managed to get at him with Dreamvision. Friday deduces that the building is still secure and the only way Stone could have gotten to him was somehow transmitting Dreamvision through the power grid. Tony has had enough with Ty messing with his life and decides to confront him once and for all. Rumiko thinks this is a bad idea, but Tony suits up as Iron Man and leaves.

Iron Man smashes his way into the Viastone building to find Tiberius Stone waiting for him in a twisted throne room created by Dreamvision. He confirms that he indeed transmitted Dreamvision through the power grid. It was a simple matter of infecting Tony with the nanite technology needed for Dreamvisio to work in this fashion by sacrificing one of his own satellites, knowing that Iron Man would stop it from crashing in the middle of Manhattan. Since their last battle, Stone has learned not to try and attack Tony directly and intends to use a combination of Dreamvision and real life threats to attack him, banking on Stark not knowing what is real and what is illusion. As Tony fights a heavily armed mech, Ty explains that this recent attack was brought on because Tony’s recent public revelation at the he was Iron Man overshadowed the announcement of the new Viastone satellite.

Meanwhile, Rumiko Fujikawa has taken a taxi to the Viastone building in the hopes of stopping Tony and Tiberus from killing each other. When she arrives outside the building she is shocked to see that Dreamvision is causing parts of the modern office building look like some medeval tower.

As Iron Man finished off the robot, Stone becomes aware that Rumiko is taking up the elevator to his office. He shows this to Tony before causing the cable in the elevator to break, sending Rumiko hurtling to her doom.

Recurring Characters

Iron Man, Rumiko Fujikawa, Friday, Tiberius Stone

Continuity Notes

1. Tony destroyed the satellite, which was owned by Viastone, last issue.

2. Tony, Happy, and Pepper have a long and complicated history together. At first, the trio were caught in a love triangle that started in Tales of Suspense #45. Ultimately, Happy won Pepper’s heart and the two were married in issue #89. The two were married for years, but they recently got divorced prior to Iron Man (vol. 3) #4. However, by issue #25 they had decided to give their relationship another shot.

3. Tony recently revealed his identity to the public in Iron Man (vol. 3) #55. It will remain public until issue #89, but be revealed to the public again in Civil War #1.

4. Tiberius Stone is an old school friend of Tony Stark. Recently, he returned from Europe and used his media empire. Using his new augmented reality technology — called Dreamvision — he tried to ruin Tony’s life. See Iron Man (vol. 3) #37-40.

Topical References

• Tiberius Stone states that he developed a way to transmit Dreamvision through the power grid because “not everyone has DSL”. DSL is short for Digital Subscription Line. It is a method of high speed internet. While the technology was first patented in 1979, it did not get widespread use until the early 2000s. When this comic was first published, DSL and other high speed internet options were not as widely used and many internet users still used dial-up internet. Hence, why Tiberius is making this distinction. According to statistics, about 30% of people still used dial-up internet in the early 2000s. This has dropped to less than 3% in 2013. It is quickly becoming an obsolete technology and this reference should be considered topical.

• When Tony is fighting Stone’s robot, Ty alters the room to look like a boxing arena. He then yells “Let’s get ready to rumble!” into the microphone. This is the catch phrase of boxing announcer Michael Buffer. He started to use it when announcing boxing matches in 1984. By 1992 he had the phrase trademarked. The phrase really caught on in the early 2000s and was aped and parodied incessantly during this period. While Buffer still announces as I write this (March, 2023) and still uses the phrase, it’s fallen out of popular use. At 78, Buffer probably won’t be announcing for very long either. At any rate, this should be considered a topical reference because it’s dated AF.