Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Tony Stark is sitting in his Manhattan office quietly drinking when Bruce Banner arrives for an appointment. Bruce begins by pointing out the contrasts between the two of them: Tony, child of privilege and success with nanotech processors bonded to his cells to enable him to control the Iron Man armor; Bruce, failed subject of a Super-Soldier experiment that left him with a stack that transforms him into a rampaging monster when he becomes angry; they are the two halves of the push to post-humanity. So what does Bruce want? He wants Tony to float similar nanotech devices in his blood to shut down the Super-Soldier stack and cure him of being the Hulk. Tony orders a copter to take them to his Ironworks lab in New Mexico. The transmission is picked up by James Larner, servant of the Leader, a former SIS agent with enhanced brain power who wants Starks’ nanotechnology and Banner’s Super-Soldier stack and is ready to take them. At the Ironworks, Stark’s extreme testing lab, where they need Bruce to turn into the Hulk to study his cell structure. It is becoming increasingly hard for Bruce to become human again, as the Super-Soldier stack is trying to make the change permanent. Bruce is placed in the Planet Tank where he is briefly subjected to the climate of Venus; the pressure triggers his change into the Hulk (“Much easier than throwing him out of a helicopter”). They try to return him to Venus conditions to knock him out but get a surprise: the Hulk is instantly adapting to the new climate. The giant crashes out of the tank and he is angry. Stark guards fire capsules of Hulk antidote at him—and his system rejects it, in fact it makes him stronger…