Synopsis
Original Sin 3.n - Hulk vs Iron Man #2 synopsis by
Rob Johnson
Rating:
Tony Stark buys a motel that hasn't seen any business since the gamma bomb went off nearby that created the Hulk. (What! It hasn't become a tourist attraction?) Then he calls down his mobile armoury and suits up, accompanied by some flying sensors.
Meanwhile Bruce Banner uses his SHIELD ID to get into the Pentagon and search for files to prove the military asked Tony to modify Bruce's gamma bomb. And he hits paydirt. (I presume this isn't the same scene as the end of last issue, because there he broke into a place he claimed was the original Gamma Base.)
It's flashback time as General Ross does hire Stark for the job. And now Banner has found the invoice.
Back at his lab, Bruce injects himself with something that makes him ill. This triggers a monitor on the performance of the Extremis in his system, and a hologram of Tony's 'pal' Arno pops up. (Arno is physically in Stark's futuristic city Troy, flying around in an Iron Man-like armour.) Bruce claims that Extremis is malfunctioning, but he's worked out how to fix it. Arno agrees to meet him at Tony's mansion.
Back in the desert motel Iron Man is using the sensor drone to examine the room he stayed in when he visited the Gamma Base. He hopes the hyper-detailed information will stimulate perfect recall of a meeting between himself and Banner (his memory being clouded by drink).
This flashback shows him trying to persuade Bruce to let him decrease the shielding and increase the bomb's efficiency, as mentioned last issue. But Bruce only wanted military funding so he could explore peaceful uses of gamma rays. He didn't want the bomb to be more powerful. And he definitely didn't want his grad school rival Tony Stark interfering.
After Bruce left, Tony let a whisky bottle 'talk' him into doing the modification anyway.
Tony had forgotten all this, until the Watcher's Eye triggered memories in both his and Hulk's brain (and some of each other's memories). Now he just prays that Bruce doesn't know what he did.
In the mansion Arno lets Bruce reprogramme his Extremis. And Bruce turns into the intelligent Hulk we saw at the start of last issue. His parting words are the classic "Now, if you'll forgive the pretension of the third person, Hulk must destroy to the best of his considerable abilities".