Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Justine Hammer of Hammer Industries, daughter of the late Justin Hammer, unveils Detroit Steel in a presentation to US military brass. It is a large armoured suit worn by Doug Johnson III, who is also training other wearers to form Steelcorps. Justine's daughter Sasha has developed the cybernetic interface. Justine hopes to sell the suits and/or services to the military. But their response is that Tony Stark is now back, and they'll continue with him. Their leader Gen'l Babbage privately tells Justine that the military won't buy weapons from females. But the Hammer girls aren't worried.
Tony is still in Broxton with Pepper Potts, Maria Hill and James Rhodes. Pepper has recovered from the events of Stark Disassembled, but Rhodey is still recuperating from being stabbed by Ghost. Tony himself seems physically mended, but his reloaded brain is still missing everything since he underwent the Extremis process in Iron Man (2005) #4.
Tony's been reading up on events since that period. Pepper lets him know the current state of his company. In The Five Nightmares Ezekiel Stane used Stark-tech to cripple Stark Industries. But Stark completed the job himself with an e-m pulse that took down Stane's forces at the cost of wiping out all of his own technology worldwide. At the beginning of World's Most Wanted he gave Pepper the job of closing the company down.
So Tony tasks Pepper with starting up a new company, while he goes to see Reed Richards of the Fantastic Four about a new Iron Man armour.
Tony tells Reed about the current state of his body. The Extremis process altered his body so that the Extremis armour was an integral part of him. But it also altered his brain so that using the armour was automatic, like breathing. His mind reload in Stark Disassembled was from a backup before Extremis, and that version is incompatible with the Extremis mods. So his chest implant is now running his body's autonomic functions.
Tony uses Reed's facilities to create a new Extremis armour, better than the previous one.
Pepper is meeting with Babbage and the other brass, to confirm that a Stark company will soon be back in business. But Stark arrives (with the implication that he's flown here by Iron Man), to tell them that he won't be making weapons any more. Babbage accuses him of being a traitor. He's not mollified by the concession to let Col James Rhodes still use the War Machine armour.
Justine is going round buying up old HAMMER hardware, and having the logo changed to Hammer.
Stark gets a visit from Thor. Tony apologises for things he did but can't remember. But he says, from what he has read, that he did what he thought was right at the time, and so would probably do them again. Thor welcomes the man of principles he used to know. Whilst things are not completely mended between them, he offers Tony Asgardian treasure to finance his new company. But Tony turns him down. Building a fortune from nothing will be a new challenge for him.
Stark invites billionaire industrialists (and the military) to a large meeting, where he proposes to make use of the one asset he has left, his chest implant. It's Repulsor technology is a secret he has kept guarded, despite many attempts to steal it. But now he is going to offer it to the world. It is a perpetual clean power source which he intends to use to power the future. He invites them to buy licenses to use it from his new company Stark Resilient (and of course fund that company to develop the technology).
Pepper thinks he's mad. She, Jim and Maria take a helicopter home. And we get our first look at the new armour, again stored within his body, as Tony follows them under his own steam.
Babbage calls Justine Hammer to tell her he wants to do business. But she's already negotiating with terrorists.