Iron Man Special #1

Monark Starstalker starred for 1 issue in 1976 in Marvel Premiere #32. He was a bounty hunter whose nervous system had been fried and now used a robot pet falcon Ulysses as his senses. He was in an alternate future, but came into the main present in Nova (2007) #29-30 via the Fault. This was the adventure involving Nova and Ego the Living Planet he mentions to Sam Alexander. At the end of #30 he learned he was actually a Nanite Construct owned by a company, running a program that only made him *think* he was a bounty hunter. He later got involved in Wolverine: The Best There Is #7-12, still working for the company. He seems to have forgotten he's a Construct here, and thinks he's really a lone bounty hunter again. (Is this Immortus at work again?)

Neut was 1 of Kang's minions in the Crossing saga in 1995. While never actually being shown as a member of Kang's Anachronauts, he could have been, and he certainly travelled in time. And he's certainly not been seen since then. Tony Stark dies at the end of that story, to be replaced by another version. But the 2 versions got merged by Heroes Reborn. And even though Tony's brain was drained during Dark Reign, his memories were reloaded from a backup which was certainly made much later than all that. So Neut is in there somewhere, but Tony can be forgiven for not having total recall. But there is also the problem that Avengers Forever retconned Kang as Immortus, and some of his followers as really Space Phantoms. And I claimed in my comments there and in the Crossing that making some of the Crossing characters SPs forced them all (except the Avengers) to be SPs. In particular I claimed that for Neut in Av#391. (But then Immortus is capable of making the SPs believe they *are* the characters they play - so maybe Neut still *thinks* he's Neut.)

SWORD (Sentient World Observation and Response Department) is a sort-of space-going SHIELD invented in Astonishing X-Men (2004). It's HQ the Peak was destroyed during Secret Invasion and then rebuilt. It was destroyed again in Uncanny Avengers #7, but has presumably been rebuilt again. After Avengers vs X-Men the 'bad' X-Men Cyclops, Emma Frost and Magik in Uncanny X-Men (2013) founded a school for mutants in the old Weapon X HQ to compete with that run by Wolverine & co in Prof X's Westchester mansion. Havok led the Starjammers 'space pirates' during the Emperor Vulcan/Kingbreaker/War of Kings era. I don't know if the arms dealer Starstalker is working for actually appeared in those issues. Death's Head featured in Iron Man's space adventures in #6-16, sometimes fighting against him, sometimes with him, depending which way the wind and money blew.

This story continues from Uncanny X-Men Special #1 and will conclude in Nova Special #1. Sean Ryan is writing all 3 issues - his 1st major scripting job for Marvel, although he's been an editor here for 10 years and has written some stuff for other companies. This appears to be penciller Rahmat Handoko's 1st comics job - you wouldn't have guessed it from the smooth storytelling - maybe it's a pseudonym. I don't know how the 4 inkers fit in, but the scene with Emma Frost seems stiff like the panels are animation cells. The frequently-used idea of trying out new or fairly-new creators on 1-shots continues with inker Roberto Poggi, colourist Ruth Redmond and cover artist Gary Choo. They were also used on the UXM Special, and Choo at least will be on the Nova Special too.