The Secret Origin of Tony Stark’ continues! In the last issue, Iron Man tried to give in to 451’s demands and pilot The Godkiller. Only it didn’t work. For some reason The Godkiller wouldn’t acknowledge Tony being plugged. 451 didn’t know this, so he still has The Godkiller set to destroy Earth in order to force Tony to work.
This issue starts with Tony prepping for war. Death’s Head was able to track Tony down by having his Armory track him. So, he made his way to the armory to stock up on weapons. While Death’s Head was ejected from the ship and is now floating who knows where in the cosmos (hopefully to return soon, yes?), it’s up to Tony to talk some sense into 451 and save the day.
Talking sense into an android who would destroy an entire species to get what he wants? That’s going to work well.
Thankfully stocking up on weapons shows that Tony really was prepared as he’s got a slew of armor sets with him. How is he going to prepare them for battle with someone who can hack his systems at will? Someone who has been manipulating him since before he was born and has been planning 100’s of years in order to take control of The Godkiller? Easy, he turns off all of the networking and connects all of his armor to his own through cables.
A fight ensues and the two go at each other. Once 451 realizes he can’t easily hack Tony’s systems he instantly attacks Tony’s armor itself. If it’s taken out the rest will fall. As he nears getting into Tony, his own armor is able to determine where 451’s hacking unit is and take it out. Once Tony is clearly winning, he can finally get 451 to listen to reason. He explains he can’t control The Godkiller. The plan has failed.
In a last noble gesture, 451 has the giant behemoth change course and not destroy the Earth.
451 is a sore loser though and if he can’t have his giant robot no one can. He commands The Godkiller to port them into another universe so no one can have access to such a powerful weapon. With the machine, 451 and Tony are to be ported as well. While Tony demands to be released, 451 goes into a self deletion mode and deletes his memory.
Great, an easy way out. Also a shame as 451 was quite an interesting villain that Tony really had to think creatively to get out of the mess he was in.
While we know Tony is going to live (this takes place before ‘Infinity’) the question is, how? I suspect Death’s Head will show back up in order to collect the bounty on 451 and save the day. He’ll lose out on the bounty as 451 will have erased his own memory. I’m hoping this leads Tony on his journey home and at long last we can see the flashback that was hinted at in ‘The Avengers’ about a certain universally important character he finds dead that hasn’t been discussed at all yet.
I suppose we’ll see how it plays out next issue when we get what I’m pretty sure is the stunning conclusion to ‘The Secret Origin of Tony Stark’. I’m still unhappy that this story had to be told and I hope they make a reference to some other past story arc to explain why Tony was changed in order to not pilot The Godkiller. I’d love if they somehow tied in the Extremis armor into the mix to explain it away. That did make a few changes to Tony’s cellular makeup.
IRON MAN #15
Writer: Kieron Gillen
Artist: Carlo Pagulayan
