Synopsis / Summary / Plot
This 1st issue of a new series is half a review of Tony Stark's history, including where the last series left him, and the other half a setup for the new ongoing plot.
It starts of course with creating the 1st clunky grey Iron Man armour in a cave during an unnamed conflict with help from unnamed Prof Yinsen. It mentions his deceased father Howard Stark and the highly successful Stark Industries, and we glimpse a more familiar armour, butler Jarvis, James Rhodes, his drinking and 1 of a succession of girlfriends/dates. Then we wander through his alcoholism, letting the Avengers use Stark Mansion but then having to sell it, his ultra-modern Malibu house being destroyed, losing Stark/Avengers Tower and (last series) divesting himself of his company Stark Unlimited. He now lives in an apartment in a New York brownstone which he owns. He's still an Avenger and he's still inventing stuff and enjoying what his protege Riri Williams/Ironheart is doing as a superhero scientist. But lately (the closing arc of last series) he's spent what remains of his fortune buying up dangerous super-weapons to keep them safe in a warehouse known only to Rhodey (and unmentioned Bethany Cabe).
We see Stark recently attending the 2nd Hellfire Gala (in its own 1-shot) where he met up with Emma Frost and Feilong (Kevin Heng), billionaire head of Feilong Industries. Feilong's plans to colonise Mars (which he had altered his body to survive on) had been ruined when the mutant nation on Krakoa island announced (at the 1st Gala) that *they* had claimed Mars and renamed it Arakko. Since then (in the current X-Men series) he has joined their foes Orchis and taken the moon Phobos. He blames the Avengers for abandoning Mars (after their 2012 series).
We also see Tony at work in his brownstone basement lab on the Model 70 armour, the only 1 he has left, carried over from the previous series. (He *does* mention another armour, but it might only be the knight's armour in the background.) We also see a large working arc reactor ... which suddenly explodes, wrecking much of the building.
Now the story really begins.
As Stark is taken away by paramedics he hears that 1 of his neighbours died in the explosion. Next he wakes in a hospital bed surrounded by Rhodey, Riri and Captain America (Steve Rogers). He claims that the reactor was corrupted by an outside agency, but Rhodey and Riri say they found no evidence of that. And even if there was no fault in the reactor design he'll be blamed for having a dangerous power source in a residential building.
Tony declines the offer to stay with Rhodey because he's convinced somebody's out to get him. He pays for the dead neighbour's funeral and sets out to avenge her. He tells his attorney Jennifer Walters (She-Hulk) to pay all claims even though she can show some of them are fraudulent. If he hasn't got enough money he'll have to invent something to make more. He has to admit that *he* couldn't find something wrong with the arc reactor, and he'd even called Reed Richards in to help.
He relocates his lab and stuff to an abandoned cab depot in Jersey City. He completes his repairs to the Mark 70 armour and takes it for a test flight as Iron Man. He asks his AI BOSS to find suitable cheap apartments for him to look at. But it can't find 1 he can afford with a sky roof exit nearer than Ohio.
Suddenly he's attacked in midair by an armoured foe who punches him into an office building. As the inhabitants complain Tony suddenly knows how Spider-Man feels. He jets out and accuses his assailant of blowing up his home and killing his neighbour. A modulation-disguised voice says that he did that himself, and also claims just to be a messenger. Who now throws IM through the tail of a helicopter. The Golden Avenger grabs the truncated tail to stop the chopper from falling. Then he swings the copter round so the rotor blades shatter against his foe. He fires missiles which gunk-up the bad guy's armour, and then he safely deposits the copter on the Daily Bugle roof. The occupants of course blame *him*.
Now he returns to his foe and drives him down to the ground. The voice claims he's going to kill Riri, but 1st wants to know if the teen is his ward or his girlfriend - "You never can tell with you capitalist pigs". Stark deduces that the armour is a remotely-operated drone and is about to smash it with his repulsors when something makes him hesitate. Instead he freezes the helmet's faceplate with liquid nitrogen which cracks it and allows him to remove it. Revealing that the armour has a human occupant who's sedated and intubated. Facial recognition identifies him as a man who was kidnapped 2 days ago. And a scan shows that the armour is laced with plastic explosive. He tells BOSS to jam any incoming signals and rips the man free and flies him away just before the suit explodes.
He takes the victim to hospital but notices that the stock price of his old company is plummeting. The remains of the man's armour yield no useful evidence. Tony eats a Chinese takeaway with a root beer in the ruins of his old apartment. He goes to an AA meeting but leaves without speaking rather than put *them* at risk. Then he seems to get drunk in a pub and staggers out to trip over some pavement uprooted by a tree. More staggering leaves him puking then collapsed in a pile of rubbish. With passers-by recording it all on their phones.