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Iron Man: Legacy #9

Dec 2010
Fred Van Lente, Steve Kurth

Story Name:

Bunker mentality


Synopsis

Iron Man: Legacy #9 synopsis by Rob Johnson
Rating: 4 stars
Tony Stark and James Rhodes/Iron Man are having a chat in the home of Tamara and Tyree Robinson. Rhodey wants to know where Tony's been, and why did he disappear after telling him and Clytemnestra and Morley Erwin that he was going out to get some spare parts. Tony says he had to prove to himself that he could make it on his own.

Jim is worried about him. But also about what he's stirring up in this neighbourhood. He saw the gunmen that tried to disrupt the meeting last issue. Tony can just leave when he wants, but the folks around here will have to live with the consequences.

Tamara interrupts to say Tony might have to ask for help anyway. Over half the people at the meeting donated money, but they're still a long way short of enough to get Imperio Techworks up and running. And we saw last issue that no businessmen in Los Angeles will invest in Stark the bankrupt drunk. Rhodey suggests that Iron Man's boot jets give him a longer reach.

Later Tony and Tamara nearly share an intimate moment but they are interrupted by the arrival of the Fantastic Four's robot HERBIE. The voice of Reed Richards tells them that Iron Man has told him what's going on. He wants to make a large investment - everybody needs help from his friends. (We see Reed surrounded by the FF, currently with She-Hulk instead of Thing.)

But when Stark goes to get permission to use the nearby derelict factory he's told that there'll be a lot of hoops to go through 1st. And the guy privately admits to him that word has come from the highest levels that permission is not to be granted. This confirms the suspicions Tony had last issue that he's being deliberately obstructed. (We know it's The Pride, but Tony still thinks it's Obadiah Stane behind it.)

So Stark decides on direct action and reopens the abandoned factory with a bolt cutter. Strangely it still has working electricity. And he invites all the owners/workers of the prospective co-op inside.

Meanwhile Tokyo has been invaded by 2 giant monsters. 1 is Tim Boo Ba who has somehow expanded up from his microverse world. The other is the giant insect Grottu who the Japanese have unwisely released from their giant monster museum to fight him. Iron Man (Rhodey) turns up to save the day.

The Imperio Techworks factory is up and running! Producing the automated pillbox Tony and Tyree invented in #7-8. The people have agreed to work a week with no pay until the overseas orders come in. (The orders Stark lied about last issue.) But cautious Tony has also laid in supplies and bedding for a siege.

And he was right because the LA police surround the place in riot gear. But the arrival of TV news vans makes them hold back. Tony thinks that's a stroke of luck, but Tamara says she alerted them to the story. They finally get their kiss.

Geoffrey Wilder of The Pride rages at the LA Mayor because he was supposed to shut the factory down immediately. But the Mayor reminds him of their agreement. The Pride get control of the Imperio district as long as they guarantee its votes for him. But The Pride are losing control. And no amount of votes are worth the bad press if the police violently stop a predominantly non-Caucasian group from setting up a small business in their poor neighbourhood.

Tamara's brother Tyree realises he's left some of his meds at home. His madness returns and he hits Tamara before running out of the factory. Tamara follows him. But their minds are taken over by Alice Hayes of The Pride, 1 of the Outcasts couple of telepathic mutants. They are rendered unconscious and taken away by Frank Dean of the alien Colonists couple.

Tamara wakes to find herself separated from her brother and in the presence of someone she doesn't know is Geoffrey Wilder. He says they're using her as bait to catch Tony Stark. And afterwards they will sacrifice her to the Gibborim as they do every year with a girl from Imperio.


 

Review / Commentaries


Iron Man: Legacy #9 Review by (June 6, 2016)
An editorial comment says this story arc happens somewhere about IM#188. There's a gap of a week within #188, and another after #188 which includes Annual #7. In our #6 The Pride didn't know that any IM was in Los Angeles, which fits with either of these because the events up to and including #188 happen outside LA while in the Annual and #189 Iron Man fights in the city. At the beginning of #188 Stark arranged a continuing deal with a source of spare parts. Here Rhodey says that Tony "left to pick up spare parts" and then didn't come back.

Whichever the choice, their new Circuits Maximus company has been set up and Tony walks out after designing their 1st circuit for them. So maybe he felt they didn't need him anymore, at least for the moment. As he says here he needed to do something by himself.

It's still true that there's no sign of Tony having the old Iron Man suit in his own series, but we'll just have accept that. At the end of #188 he starts building a version of the bulky grey original armour out of spare parts. There too he says he's just doing it to prove he can. It still doesn't explain why he chooses to wear that armour in some later issues rather than the better suit in the golf bag.

HERBIE is a robot that looks after Reed and Sue Richards' son Franklin. He's not the original which was created by Mr Fantastic and a Xandarian scientist to search for Galactus. But he got infected by Dr Sun, and destroyed himself to kill the villain. The replacement cute HERBIE's design was taken from the 1978 animated Fantastic Four series where he was used instead of Human Torch.

She-Hulk joined the FF from the Avengers after Secret Wars I because Thing stayed behind on the Beyonder's Battleworld.

Tim Boo Ba ruled a micro-world in Amazing Adult Fantasy #9 (which was flooded by a freak accident involving an interdimensional wormhole and a glass of water on Earth). The Marvel Monsters handbook says he survived and determined to get revenge on Earth. Now he's somehow got himself here and become giant-size.

Grottu was an ant mutated by a Soviet nuclear test in Kenya to an intelligent giant size. Marvel Universe #4 revealed that it was actually Ulysses Bloodstone that defeated Grottu, and #7 explained that the Deviant Kro was behind the creation of the monster. The Elder of the Universe called Collector added Grottu to his museum of mnosters but Mole Man freed them in Marvel Monsters: Monsters On The Prowl. They were subdued by various 'monstrous' heroes, and banished to the Negative Zone by Mr Fantastic.
I don't know how Grottu escaped from the Negative Zone into the Tokyo Monster Museum, but that museum (minus Grottu) features in FF & IM: Big In Japan.

Iron Man is greeted in Japan as Mighty Atom, the Japanese name for Astro Boy. Nothing alike!

We see some Gibborim behind Wilder on the last page, but I think they are symbolic rather than actual.


> Iron Man: Legacy comic book info and issue index

Elektra

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Characters

Listed in Alphabetical Order.

Iron Man
Iron Man

(Anthony Stark)
Mr. Fantastic
Mr. Fantastic

(Reed Richards)
She-Hulk
She-Hulk

(Jennifer Walters)
Thing
Thing

(Ben Grimm)