Invincible Iron Man #293: Review

Jun 1993

Len Kaminski, Kev Hopgood

Story Name:

Controlling Interests

Review & Comments

Rating:

Invincible Iron Man #293 Review by T Vernon (September 25, 2018)

Comments: Part two of two parts. Controller goes way back to IRON MAN #12 in 1969 and was last seen in #225. The red rubber ball given to Tony by Veronica Benning last issue is now blue; I'm sure someone has written a fan fiction story to account for the change.

Review: Nice issue in which a battle of wits is played out by cyborgs bashing each other for several pages. It might enliven chess matches too. Plus Tony, like the reader, wants to feel sorry for the Controller but it turns out to be really difficult. I'm sure we all cringe whenever that baddie shows up—as he does in TONY STARK, IRON MAN #1 which came out just as I was writing up this issue. Next up: Iron Man versus the Borg?

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Synopsis / Summary / Plot

Invincible Iron Man #293 Synopsis by T Vernon

With the disconnected Iron Man armor resting on the bottom of the ocean, the paralyzed Tony Stark is wheeled into the presence of the Controller, Basil Sandhurst, looking normal and whole. Sandhurst explains that he wants to make Tony normal and whole again but Tony is skeptical of the villain's intentions. Sandhurst injects a control chip into Tony's brain but it doesn't work immediately due to Tony's artificial nervous system. Tony uses the connection to reach the brain of the controlled Dr Oakley, ordering him to put Tony's remote headset on him. With that, Tony now commands the Iron Man armor once again and has it come to where he is waiting. Iron Man arrives at the building and breaks in, scattering the staff and distracting the Controller who has to send his mind slaves to deal with the intruder. Berserker 7 takes two seconds to take down but Berserkers 1-6 are also on hand to give Shellhead a hard time. While Iron Man takes on a multitude of baddies, Tony is able to push back mentally and it fuses all the circuits in the control system, causing all of the mind slaves to collapse, even “Basil Sandhurst.” The real Sandhurst is a now-wasted body held together by the fragments of his exo-suit; what he wanted from Stark was the tailored virus that cured him. Controller tells Iron Man that he will start mentally killing his slaves unless the hero leaves immediately so Shellhead returns Tony to Stark Enterprises, surprising Mrs. Arbogast. Tony comforts Dr Oakley who was mind -controlled by the villain and Tony goes back to his exercises lest he wind up like the Controller....

Epilogue 1: Tony names Felix Alvarez new VP in Charge of Operations.

Epilogue 2: At the Stark Enterprises Space Platform, rented by Cauwfield Multichemical company as a lab, an employee runs from a robotic pursuer and is then assimilated, transforming into a machine himself....