Iron Man: Legacy #7: Review

Oct 2010

Fred Van Lente, Steve Kurth

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Story Name:

Mother necessity

Review & Comments

Rating:

Iron Man: Legacy #7 Review by Rob Johnson (May 31, 2016)

The cop who finds Hangman hanging in his cell presumably saves his life because he's supposed to die in Bizarre Adventures #31.

Alex Wilder will be the oldest of the Runaways. But still, having him a teenager at this point in Marvel history is probably stretching it a bit, even with Marvel's sliding timescale.

The biggest problem with this story as a continuity implant is that the Serpent Society shouldn't exist yet.
In Marvel Two-In-One #64-66 Sidewinder led Anaconda, Black Mamba and Death Adder as the Serpent Squad (all 4 were new characters) as a mercenary team. He took the money for the and left the other 3 who will track him down in a cameo in Captain America #307 and confront him in another cameo in #308. He will give them their money and persuade them to go along with his next plan. In 3 more cameos in #309 they will recruit Cobra, Princess Python and Constrictor (all these 3 are old chars). Then in #310 we will see the 1st meeting of the Serpent Society. All the earlier mentioned chars are present (although Constrictor decides not to join) plus Asp, Bushmaster, Cottonmouth, Diamondback and Rattler (all new chars).
But the positioning of this story arc puts it between the MTIO and CA issues.
A Marvel Chronology Project thread here discussed how to make sense of that, but many of the subtleties can't be shown in the resulting chronology timelines. However the simple placement of these issues without any enhancement to the rest of the timelines does suggest that some of the thread's suggestions have been ignored which could have been implemented. (I hasten to add that I myself didn't contribute to this thread.)

To explain why Anaconda is working happily with Sidewinder here we would have to make the Squad cameos in CA#307-308 into flashbacks which then can be inserted before this arc where Sidewinder has already started to build his Serpent Society. Black Mamba and Death Adder could be on some other job at this time. There's nothing to say that Diamondback and Rattler weren't recruited earlier than their 1st apps in CA#310. To have Cobra here we should change his cameo recruitment to a flashback too. The last cameo with Constrictor is better kept where it is because it leads to him being introduced to all the others in #310. Princess Python's app in between can go anywhere.
Puff Adder is a different problem because his original debut isn't until CA#337, where he and some other serpent villains commit robberies to get themselves noticed and accepted by the Society. But they are actually part of Viper's plan to take over the group.
I suggest that Sidewinder drops Puff Adder after our story because he was particularly ineffective. This could motivate his later treachery. (But it doesn't explain why in #338 he has to tell Sidewinder who he is.)

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Iron Man: Legacy #7 Synopsis by Rob Johnson

Tony Stark tangled with Hangman last issue and now the villain's in jail. Now he's visited by 3 of the Pride women who want to know all about his encounter. The telepathic mutant Alice Hayes extracts the info from his brain - that he fought Iron Man and heard him take Tyree Robinson home to Imperio (which is where the Pride's henchmen found Stark's golf clubs). This increases the Pride's conviction that Stark and Shellhead are after them. Catherine Wilder is incensed that Hangman tried to hang a black man (Tyree) and gets Hayes to make the perp hang himself. Janet Stein doesn't contribute much to the proceedings.

Last issue we left Tony Stark dying because his artificial heart had been zapped. Now he wakes up alive in the home of siblings Tamara and Tyree Robinson. He's still got his old Iron Man chestplate on and Tamara has figured out who he is. She says she immediately regretted turning him out on the street last night and went to look for him. She dragged him home and engineering whizz (when he's sane) Tyree figured out to plug the chestplate into a power socket - which saved Tony's life.

Tony notices an abandoned factory nearby and Tamara says that's where her dad used to work. It made tanks during WWII and other metal objects later. But it's been closed down for years.

But now she's got to go to work as a teacher. She leaves him to make sure Tyree takes his medication. It turns out Tyree needs a whole pharmacy of different meds, all on different schedules. And the patient doesn't know where he's up to. This gives Stark an idea.

In the Wilder's house Pride organiser Geoffrey is on a video call when he's interrupted by his teen son Alex. He brushes the boy off and returns to talking to Sidewinder, hiring his new team the Serpent Society to kill Tony Stark. The current members are Anaconda, Cobra, Diamondback, Puff Adder and Rattler.

When Tamara gets home Tony tells her he's got to rush out to buy a load of scrap parts with the $100 he's 'borrowed' from her petty cash stash. She finds Tyree doing technical drawings at a rate he hasn't achieved since his interrupted college Engineering degree. He says the pair will make loads of money from the company Stark is going to set up.

Sidewinder spots Stark leaving the house and follows using his teleportation ability. Tony goes to a scrap yard and asks for various bits. The owner says this isn't a shop, but for the $100 he can take away whatever he can carry. Stark starts to scavenge.

But he's interrupted by Anaconda, Diamondback and Rattler. DB's throwing diamonds bounce off the chestplate he's still wearing under his clothes, and 1 temporarily blinds Rattler. The chest unibeam knocks the women flat and Tony hides in a pipe. But Cobra follows him and pushes him out. Stark retaliates by shocking the villain with his power lead.

Tony still thinks everything that's happening to him is due to Obadiah Stane who stole his company and fortune. This makes him even more determined to succeed again from scratch. He finds the parts he needs in a pile of electronic stuff.

Sidewinder rallies his troops and Puff Adder finds their prey. But Stark has jury-rigged some offensive weaponry.

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