Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Tony Stark as Mark 1 stopped Arno Stark/Iron Man 2020's attempt to turn all AIs into his private army, and as Iron Man
stopped him from taking over humanity for the same purpose. But at the
end of last issue the threat to both AIs and humans that Arno predicted
turned up from outer space. (Or did it?)
The ginormous Extinction Event Entity booms that it's going to break down all life, biological or robotic, and absorb them. (Who does this guy think he is, Galactus?) Arno says his Godkiller
armour is damaged so he won't be able to fight it - so it's up to Tony
to save the day. But brother Tony says this is the battle Arno's whole
life has prepared him for. He apologises for not believing in the threat
and sabotaging Arno's robotic and human armies, but he'll make up for
it now. He grabs Arno's hand and his 'virtual' Iron Man armour somehow
recreates the 2020 armour better than before.
As the Entity
breaches the wall of the space station Arno in turn apologises to the
AIs present for trying to enslave them, but says he needs them all to
help him now. They all fly out into space to do battle:- Awesome Andy carrying Machinesmith, Dr Shapiro the cat in his mecha-suit, HERBIE, Jocasta, Machine Man, Pepper Potts in her Rescue armour, and Mistress (Maria Stark) riding on Arsenal (Howard Stark).
Awesome Andy, Dr Shapiro, HERBIE and Machinesmith are zapped by
tentacles but the rest get through to start pushing the Entity into the
Earth's atmosphere.
But it may not be enough. They need a bigger army. Tony's suit's AI Friday calls for help. We see Captain Marvel, Ironheart, Thor, Vision and Wonder Man heading their way. Meanwhile large tentacles are attacking Earth (New York of course) and we see heroes such as Black Panther, Hulk, Mockingbird, Quake, Spider-Man, US Agent and Wasp doing their bit alongside Albert and Elsie Dee (back together since their 2020 iWolverine adventure), Nick Fury LMDs and even Sunset Bain and her Iron Legion. And Bethany Cabe joins in controlling the Controller (getting revenge for the Tony Stark: Iron Man series), James Rhodes controls Ultimo (picked up in the 2020 Force Works mini), and Andy Bhang has his own mecha.
Out
in space Arno suddenly blasts his brother, but it's only so Tony won't
stop him from diving into the mouth of the beast. It turns out that his
plan is himself, a paradoxical combination of AI and human with a mind
that can outthink an immortal singularity. And then there's 1 of those
loud implosions ...
... and Iron Man saves Arno from plummeting
to Earth through a sky suddenly free of tentacles. Arno confesses that
he deceived Tony into thinking he was an AI in an artificial body
created by Arno. He needed to do that to get control of Stark Unlimited in order to prepare for the Entity. Tony says he forgives him in the circumstances ...
...
and we find that everything that happened since Tony mended Arno's
armour at the beginning of the issue has been experienced by Arno in the
eScape VR system. And the Entity is just a holographic
projection. (So Dr Shapiro and the others are OK.) It seems that the
extinction event Arno foresaw was really his own death from the disease
that he had from birth. He thought he'd cured it but it was only
lessened, and it would kill him sometime this year. But now he will live
a happy life in VR as a hero who saved the world. Howard and Maria
agree to enter the VR with him in order to give him the family he never
had in his youth when he was hidden away in an iron lung (see the Secret Origin Of Tony Stark for the full story).
Later Sunset Bain confesses to Senator Brickman's
Senate Investigation Committee that *she* made Tony Stark think he was
an AI and she was behind the robot rebellion (and the earlier eScape
debacle), and she asks to be sent to prison for a long time. But we know
that Sunset is now an AI, and in the Uncanny Valley bar we find Jocasta controlling her via the obedience chip, much to the disgust of her lover Machine Man.
At Stark Unlimited Captain Marvel watches as Andy Bhang, Dr Shapiro and Tony use 1 of Arno's bio-pods to update Rhodey's body with DNA from his living relatives. Carol Danvers asks if Arno really did restore Tony to life with 1 of these pods then does that mean she really didn't kill Tony during Civil War II?
(Rhodey also died around then, and both of them got brought back. But
Arno's process was flawed, and for Tony it was only corrected with DNA
from his real parents, collected in the 2020 Rescue mini-series.) They now say that James' recent aversion to his War Machine
armour was due to the flaws in Arno's process. Wasp asks Tony if their
romantic relationship was also due to flaws. Tony says they'll have to
find out.
Later Friday stops being the AI for Tony's armour and
gets her android body back. And Tony Stark hands over the Stark
Unlimited building to Andy Bhang, and has it renamed Bhang Robotics. He's going to start from scratch again.