Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Invincible Iron Man #40 Synopsis by
T Vernon
Tony Stark confronts the original Avengers: Thor, Wasp, Hulk and…Iron Man? Yes, it’s really Tiberius Stone in the armor and they are mentally connected via Dream Vision, Stone’s new virtual reality device—and then suddenly Tony is Alice and he’s in Wonderland, where Stone calls all the shots. Then they are in THE MATRIX and Ty is Morpheus, explaining things to Neo/Tony, namely, that he is a test subject for Stone’s plan to use Dream Vision to control the minds of the users. And then Tony finds himself in an office and told where to find Ty Stone—but first he must elude gunmen who look like movie gangsters James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, George Raft, and Edward G. Robinson, which is where Tony began in issue #37—and now that he has realized that he has some control over the Dream Vision, he has donned virtual Iron Man armor and is on his way to confront Ty Stone in the Black Tower. He is invited to take the elevator to the penthouse but the first stop is seeing himself the day he learned his parents were dead. For the second stop, he finds himself a drunken derelict in an alley; next floor sees him learning that he has been paralyzed by Kathy Dare when she shot him, finally, his confrontation with the sentient armor. Emotionally battered, Tony yells “Enough!” and then finds himself facing Ty who is in the guise of Don Vito Corleone from THE GODFATHER. Tony blows him to hell with repulsor rays but Ty is really unscathed since he does, after all, control the dreamscape. Ty strikes back, and Tony is overwhelmed by the Pink Elephants on Parade from Disney’s DUMBO and then chewed up by the dinosaurs from JURASSIC PARK before being buried under a swarm of man-eating cockroaches (CREEPSHOW?). For the grand finale of the show, they are in a Roman arena where Emperor Ty prepares to slaughter his helpless opponent Tony (GLADIATOR). But Tony has some control over what happens too and he hurls Ty away. Then Ty becomes godlike, raining wrath down on Tony’s head—but Tony’s great power is his mind, which creates a new blue armor around himself and blows Ty apart. Tony leaves the Dream Vision while Ty is helpless….
Epilogue: A few weeks later, Ty Stone is guest on 20 VISION, telling Beatrice Walders that it was the dead Milo Stevens who was behind the attacks on Tony Stark and that he can’t understand why his old friend Tony Stark would make all these hurtful accusations against him. Tony meets him outside where he promises to take him down once and for all. Yet Ty still has Rumiko Fujikawa and his bodyguard Radioactive Man waiting for him, leaving Tony to wonder exactly what he won….