The story opens with some flash and awe as Iron Man is absorbing the explosion of a small anti-reactor device by clutching it to his body while guards hustle Stark staff to safety. The crowd suspects this is the end for Shellhead but when he emerges unharmed from the acrid smoke cloud, everyone cheers, except for Charlie Gray.
Charlie is a security guard increasingly jealous of all the attention paid to the armored hero. The disgruntled guard heads home, bitterly complaining about his lot and snarling at his wife and kids—and lamenting that his success as a high school football star has not led to a better life. Later he walks the streets brooding—and a portal opens up revealing the alien invader Lucifer.
The villain sympathizes with Charlie, since he is also imprisoned—though in a more literal fashion—in a hidden dimension. Lucifer explains to Charlie that he has developed a dimensional transmitter, allowing limbo to overlap with our world. Overwhelming Charlie with a demonstration of his ionic energies, he endows the hapless guard with his powers and sends him to capture Tony Stark, who can create a receiver so that the alien can cross over into our dimension permanently—and conquer Earth.
Charlie, transformed into another Lucifer, exults in the terror and destruction he is able to cause before his master puts him back on the right track.
Meanwhile, Charlie’s wife Wilma Gray has been driving around looking for him and recognizes him as the rampaging bad guy. He orders her away so she drives to Stark Industries to warn them of the coming menace. Tony believes her story and dons his Iron Man armor just as Charlie/Lucifer crashes into the building.
The struggle between the two spills out into the streets with the villain’s ionic energy overwhelming Iron Man. Wilma appears and pleads with Charlie not to sacrifice her and the children for his dreams of power and vengeance. Charlie fights off Lucifer’s weakening influence and the villain’s portal closes trapping him once again in the prison dimension. As Charlie and Wilma head off, Tony broods about having a normal life himself—and now that his damaged heart is repaired, he wonders if he must really go on being Iron Man…