Iron Man (1998 series) #57

Tony Stark is having a romantic interlude with Pepper Potts in his hot tub—when Rumiko Fujikawa rips the cables out of the artificial heart to return him to reality. She reveals that he has been hooked to the charger for an hour; Friday has detected a signal that traveled through the power grid and Tony deduces that Tiberius Stone is the culprit….

Iron Man pays Stone a visit in a throne room that echoes the work of H.P. Lovecraft. Stone has managed to turn the power grid into a transmitting system and could play with Tony’s mind while hooked to his charger. Shellhead attacks him but he was merely a hologram; a giant boulder rolling at him a la Indiana Jones is real. Shellhead dodges but the floor turns to liquid occupied by vicious zombies. Stone reveals that the images are playing off of Tony’s fears—followed by a confrontation with the Creature from the Black Lagoon, the whole building being a hologram projector that dulls Iron Man’s sensors. Iron Man can interact with what he sees but not control it, and not everything is an illusion as he is attacked by a very real ED-209 from ROBOCOP….

Rumiko arrives at the building which has now taken on the semblance of an evil Gothic cathedral. As Iron Man battles the huge robot, Stone shows him Rumiko trapped in an elevator—but Tony won’t believe it, thinking it is just another illusion. In the furious battle, the elevator cable is severed and the car, with Rumiko, plunges down….