One day at Anthony Stark’s private
lab, the wind tunnel malfunctions and the machinery runs out of
control, creating hurricane-force winds inside the building. Security
notifies Tony who tells them Iron Man is visiting at just that
moment. Donning his armor, Tony heads to the lab as Iron Man and
spins in the opposite direction to the giant fans, causing them to
break apart. Iron Man leaves and returns as Tony Stark to inspect the
damage. Suddenly, a guard named Jim vanishes, followed by a
scientist, Evans. Then Tony himself is encased in a faceted crystal
and drawn into the depths of the Earth. Passing through all the rock
strata he finds himself in a futuristic city at the center of the
Earth. He is freed from the crystal by Kala, Queen of the
Netherworld, and reunited with Jim and Evans. Kala explains that Tony
was their intended target and gives him a brief history of the
Netherworld: it was originally Atlantis but when it sank to the
bottom of the ocean (fortunately after they had enclosed it in a dome
for just such an emergency) it kept sinking through to the center of
the Earth. Now she is plotting to conquer the surface world. Kala’s
top general Baxu shows off all of their advanced weaponry and
explains that they learned English from monitoring the surface world
for years. Now what they need from Tony is a method of transporting
their weapons to the surface—and they threaten him and his
companions with death. When Tony warns them that Iron Man will be a
formidable obstacle to conquest (so would the Fantastic Four and Thor
but this ain’t their comic book), Kala threatens to reverse the
planet’s rotation and devastate the surface. Tony reluctantly
agrees and is shown to the lab; on the way he learns that Baxu a)
thinks the invasion is a bad idea, and b) hates taking orders from a
woman. Tony, locked in the lab, builds himself an Iron Man suit and
escapes, suggesting Baxu seize power. Shellhead defeats all the
weapons they can throw at him (and generates multiple illusions of
himself using mirrors) and finally carries Kala to the surface by
tunneling at high speed. Once they are on the surface, the atmosphere
causes Kala to age rapidly into an old crone. Disheartened, she begs
Iron Man to return her to the Netherworld. There, with her aging
reversed (somehow), she agrees to marry Baxu and let him be king.
Iron Man heads home with Jim and Evans.