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You know, I'm always out to restore peace when I'm in the armor. But if we're being totally honest...I'll confess to some violent impulses. 
Appearing in "The Stark-Roxxon War - Part Two: Move Fast and Break Things"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- Tuatara (Araoha Tepania)
- Iron.GPT (First appearance)
Antagonists:
- Stark Unlimited
- A.I.M.
- Force (First appearance)
- Scientist Supreme (Dr. Monica Rappaccini)
- Doctor Druid (Anthony Druid) (Controlled by A.I.M.)
Other Characters:
- Roxxon (Mentioned)
- Justine Hammer (Mentioned)
- Avengers (Mentioned)
- Orchis (Mentioned)
- Feilong (Kelvin Heng) (Mentioned)
- Jack Kooning, Sr. (Mentioned)
- S.H.I.E.L.D. (Mentioned)
- Whiplash (Marco Scarlotti) (Mentioned)
- Force (Carl Walker) (Mentioned)
- Frank Gehry (Mentioned) (Topical Reference)
- Howard Stark (Vision or hallucination)
- Captain America (Steve Rogers) (Vision or hallucination)
- White Queen (Emma Frost) (Vision or hallucination)
Races and Species:
Locations:
- Earth
- United States of America
- Chihuahuan Desert
- New York
- New York City
- Manhattan
- Hell Gate Bridge (Cameo)
- Wall Street (Mentioned)
- Washington Square Park
- Manhattan
- Pentagon, Virginia (Mentioned)
- New York City
- Colorado
- Alaska (Mentioned)
- Sea of Japan (Mentioned)
- United States of America
Items:
- Iron Man Armor
- Iron Man Armor Model 74 (Improvised Armor) (First full chronological appearance)
- Iron Man Armor Model 29 (Extremis Armor) (Photo)
- Stark Sentinels (Mentioned)
- Force Armor
Events:
- Skrull Invasion (Mentioned)
- Fall of X (Referenced)
Synopsis for "The Stark-Roxxon War - Part Two: Move Fast and Break Things"
Iron Man is shown building something in an abandoned house in the Chihuahuan Desert, juxtaposed with an earlier meeting between himself as Tony Stark and Jack Kooning Jr. in the latter's high-rise office in New York City. As Iron Man, Tony is wearing a new and crude Improvised Armor. As Tony Stark, he tries unsuccessfully to convince Kooning to vote against A.I.M.'s acquisition of Stark Unlimited. He argues against A.I.M. and Roxxon's immorality and warns about the oil mogul's financial instability, since they are taking on debt to finance the acquisition while possessing infrastructural vulnerabilities which could affect their solvency. In the desert, Iron Man rendezvouses with Tuatara and hands her tanks. Shapeshifting into her giant repitlian form, she plants them on a Roxxon pipeline, making it explode. Later on, Tony meets with Melinda May at her office. Denying the accusations that he orchestrated the explosion, the juxtaposed scenes show Tuatara handing him over shards of the destroyed pipeline. May promises Tony to rein in Roxxon and A.I.M., citing her past efforts to contain Feilong's cruel ideas when he put her in the Board of Directors. Tony chastises Melinda for not actually helping take down Orchis and staying idle during their mutant genocide.
In Aspen, Colorado, Iron Man arrives at a mountainside A.I.M. facility and warns its employees to evacuate before he destroys the laboratory. He is attacked by a new Force, but Tony struggles in the fight as his repulsors malfunction. Their encounter is interrupted when Monica Rappaccini's scheduler invites Iron Man for lunch on behalf of her boss. Inside Rappaccini's high-end executive atrium, Tony sits at a table with Monica while they discuss the acquisition, and she tries to convince Stark to join her. Before lunch begins, Tony recognizes his server is Anthony Druid. Flippantly, Monica explains that Roxxon provided him to A.I.M. for their magic virus that locked Tony out of his armors. Materializing his sorcerer garments, Doctor Druid apologizes to Tony as he clarifies that he is not in control of himself. Druid's cloak turns into a mist that burrows into Iron Man's armor, plunging him into a psychedelic nightmare.
Tony's armor melts away, engulfing him as he is tormented by zombified visions of Howard Stark and Captain America. He jolts when he suddenly finds himself back in his armor, tied to a chair and his mouth slit replaced by a zipper. A vision of Emma Frost sneers at him as she wraps her arms around him and chokes him with a belt. She transforms into diamond and slams her fist into his helmet. Jolted again, Tony finds himself years younger, standing in front of a mirror with his Iron Man helmet and a bottle of whiskey before him. A self-loathing monologue taunts him, and his reflection morphs into a demonic version of Iron Man, overwhelming him as it extends him the bottle. Defiantly rejecting the taunts of his dark reflection, Tony lunges at it. Breaking free of the spell, Tony wakes up to find himself still in the atrium. With only forty-five minutes left before the board vote, the new Force stumbles into Stark and attacks him. Tony takes cover behind a corner as Force mocks him. Iron Man reaches behind his back and unsheathes a weapon crafted from the retractable steel plating of Roxxon's pipeline: a massive protractible sword.
Solicit Synopsis
MAN VS. MONGER!
The return of the Iron Monger! Roxxon’s revealed their latest C-suite recruit. Who’s in the suit? And does the appearance of the new armor have anything to do with the absolute destruction of every. Single. One. Of Tony’s own suits? Forced back to basics in an offline clunker, Iron Man’s reduced to raw firepower and sheer force of will. And now…A.I.M. is going to strip that away too. Another familiar face wields the knife that’ll take Tony down. Iron Man is no longer invincible. Part Two of “The Stark-Roxxon War” by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Spencer Ackerman and extraordinary artist Julius Ohta!Notes
- Like most Marvel comics released on November 2024, this issue opens with a tribute to John Cassaday, a prolific comic book artist who passed away on September 9 at age 52.
- When he is discussing Roxxon with Tony Stark, Jack Kooning Jr. recalls that they publish comics now. Roxxon purchased the in-universe Marvel Comics in Immortal Thor #4.
- Tuatara is a character whose first and only previous appearance was in Iron Man (Vol. 3) #6. Writer Spencer Ackerman has cited Kurt Busiek's run in Iron Man (Vol. 3) as one of his own run's inspirations.
- This issue establishes thaat Melinda May was already a member of S.H.I.E.L.D. as far back as circa The Initiative, when Iron Man was director of one of the organization's previous incarnations, despite first appearing in 2014's S.H.I.E.L.D. (Vol. 3) #1.
- During their meeting, May accuses Tony of being "the director who left S.H.I.E.L.D. vulnerable to the Skrull invasion." She is referencing Secret Invasion, in which the Skrulls uploaded a virus into Stark Industries' entire computer network, resulting in a cascading failure due to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s reliance on Starktech. Tony Stark was also blamed in general for being blindsided by the alien invasion.
- Tony's piercing question to May, "Where were you when their babies were burning?" is an explicit callback to an exchange between Emma Frost and Tony Stark in Civil War #2. When Stark visits Emma to enlist the X-Men to his side of the superhuman Civil War, she asks him this question with regards to the Avengers' absence during the Genoshan genocide by Cassandra Nova in New X-Men #115. The callback is also visual, as Tony mirrors Frost's pose and placement in the panel as well.
Trivia
- In Taurin Clarke's variant for this issue, Tony Stark is wearing a T-shirt with the old school Avengers logo. Clarke contemplated recreating the '70s corner box art or making it a black T-shirt that read "Jan & Hank & Bruce & Tony & Thor & Steve" in the style of the "John & Paul & Ringo & George" Beatles shirt designed by Experimental Jetset.[1]
- The title of this comic's story is "Move Fast and Break Things," a phrase coined by CEO Mark Zuckerberg and used as the internal motto of Facebook until 2014.[2]
- In this issue, Iron Man debuts a chatbot for his Improvised Armor called Iron.GPT in lieu of a proper AI assistant. The chatbot is a parody of ChatGPT. Iron.GPT's constant falsehoods (like identifying Force as Whiplash and claiming he has mind-control powers) are a reference to AI hallucinations.
- When invited to Monica Rappaccini's executive atrium, Tony asks her if it's "a Frank Gehry," as in, designed by contemporary architect Frank Gehry.
- The final segment of Tony's magic-induced nightmare is a reference to Iron Man #128, the first time Tony Stark confronted his alcoholism. Stark is drawn in a style mimicking John Romita Jr. and Bob Layton's artwork, and the panels of him looking at himself in the mirror are a recreation of the cover for that issue. This segment is also rendered with flat bright colors and faux Ben Day dots to mimic older comic books, and even Tony's clothing is reflective of that era.
See Also
Links and References
References
- ↑ Clarke, Taurin (July 8, 2024) Taurin Clarke on X: "@ronmarz Haha! Thanks man! It was either this, ... X. Archived from the original on December 8, 2024. Originally retrieved on December 8, 2024.
- ↑ 'Move Fast and Break Things': Pros and Cons of the Concept MasterClass. Archived from the original on October 3, 2024. Originally retrieved on December 8, 2024.