Synopsis
Iron Man #15 synopsis by
T Vernon
Rating:
Flashback to the climax of issue #4: the Unicorn has defeated Iron Man and he then raised his fallen foe over his head and hurled him off the cliff to his death—but that’s not how it happened—a mysterious voice forces the Unicorn to recall how the battle really played out. The Unicorn had Iron Man at his mercy—but the hero ripped Unicorn’s belt from his body and threw it off the cliff; the villain, panicking leaped after it and vanished in the mists below. Unseen by the Golden Avenger, he seized the belt and activated his emergency booster rockets and flew to safety, where he collapsed and was discovered by…Ivan Kragoff, the Red Ghost. Kragoff has cured the Unicorn’s madness with a drug that will eventually restore his normal lifespan. Kragoff has also repaired the Unicorn’s power belt and has a mission for him. The armored baddie refuses until the Ghost reminds him that he needs continued injections if he wishes to survive. The mission: steal Tony Stark’s new cosmic ray device—which should afford Unicorn the opportunity for revenge against Stark’s armored bodyguard….
Meanwhile, Tony Stark is attending an event celebrating the reopening of Cord Manufacturing. Jasper Sitwell reminds him that he is due at SHIELD’s Nevada testing site in the morning; Tony takes his leave glad for an excuse to avoid Janice Cord, over whom he is still agonizing. Janice is disappointed that Tony left before she could introduce him to her new head scientist, Alex Niven....
The next day, Tony and Jasper arrive at the staging area, ready for the test of the new Cosmic Ray Intensifier—but the Unicorn and Red Ghost are also there. The Soviet mad scientist dispatches his minion to attack Stark’s aircraft and seize the device, while informing the reader of the reason he needs it: Red Ghost’s power of intangibility has faded away with time and he wants the device to re-energize himself. Unicorn, meanwhile, has blasted his way aboard the ship; Tony plans to change into Iron Man but the resourceful Jasper pushes the millionaire inventor out of the craft with a parachute and faces Unicorn alone. Tony watches helplessly from the ground as the ship goes down in flames. Donning his armor, Iron Man tracks Unicorn to a ghost town where he is attacked by a couple of apes, which leads him to suspect the involvement of the Red Ghost. The Russian baddie, meanwhile, is bathing in the intensified cosmic rays, when the apes burst into the room followed by Iron Man. While Unicorn engages his enemy, the Ghost herds his apes into the cosmic rays beams to restore their powers as well. Feedback from the machine wrecks the lab, drawing Iron Man’s attention to what the Red Ghost is doing. The hero fires a repulsor ray but the villain fades to intangibility and flees, on the way informing the Unicorn that he has been duped; there is no treatment for his fatal condition. He announces plans to build a super-intensifier in order to create an army of super-apes and conquer the world. Oh yes, and the lab is wired to auto-destruct. As the Red Ghost takes off in his escape craft, the building is rocked by a massive explosion….
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