Synopsis
Iron Man (1968 series) #163 synopsis by
T Vernon
Rating:
Iron Man fights a fire at Stark International caused by an employee under the hypnotic control of Tattoo’s headphones (see last issue). He then spies a woman whose car was crushed by a falling bit of machinery; her rushes her to the emergency room. The next day, as Tony Stark he visits her in the hospital; she introduces herself as Indres Moomji a scientist who was touring the plant. Tony is smitten….
Tony and Rhodey fly to New Mexico to question Aloysius Lafferty, the guy who made the bomb used by Tattoo. Elsewhere, a mysterious chess player dispatches an agent called the Knight, an armored and masked figure astride a jet-powered mechanical steed. The Knight assaults the engine on Tony’s plane and disappears; as Iron Man our hero can do an emergency repair in midair and the craft makes it to its destination. In New Mexico, Iron Man heads out to see the bomb-maker while the Knight arrives at Tony’s hotel; finding him absent the Knight proceeds to Lafferty’s desert workshop. While Iron Man is trying to get Lafferty to give up his employer’s name, the Knight comes barging in and there is a battle in the sky. To our hero’s surprise, the Knight is much faster than he can keep up with; Iron Man deduces that the Knight must zero in on a large object to maintain his speed—so Shellhead tricks his foe into crashing into a shed full of explosives. Blinded by the ensuing explosion, the Knight is now easily clobbered by Iron Man. Tony heads back to New York and Indres while the mysterious chess master prepares his next gambit….