Iron Man #330
Good as Gone
When a fire broke out at the Kappa Phi fraternity house, Iron Man sprang into action to help evacuate the people trapped inside.[1] While doing so, he stashed his classmate Kris DeGann in the attic neglecting to notice that this is where they were storing canisters of highly flammable gasses were being stored. Remembering at the last moment, Iron Man races inside and uses the electro-magnetic device in his armor to funnel the force of the explosion up into the sky. While this mitigates the damage, Kris is injured seriously enough to need to be hospitalized.
Changing out of his armor, Tony rushes to the hospital with his dutiful butler Edwin Jarvis. Tony is beating himself up over what happened, believing that he could have handle the situation better if he hadn’t gotten drunk at the party before the fire happened. Jarvis admits that the older version of Tony Stark struggled with alcohol abuse all his life, however, he believes young Tony still needs to make mistakes in order to learn from them.[2] Tony doesn’t quite see things that way and believes that what happened was due to his own arrogance and hates that someone else had to get hurt in the process. All Jarvis can recommend is that Tony do what he can to take responsibility for what happened.
As they are leaving the hospital, they are stopped by Meredith McCall-Alden, who has been recovering in the hospital after her encounter with Frost-Bite. Although she is walking around, she is been blinded by her ordeals. She calls out to a familiar voice and for a moment, Tony fears that Meredith recognizes his own voice. However, as it turns out, she recognizes Edwin Jarvis’ voice instead.[3] Meredith gives Jarvis her sympathies having heard of Tony Stark’s death. She also tells Edwin about the damage done to her cornea, however the doctors don’t know if the damage is permanent. Hearing this, Tony adds this to the list of things he now thinks are his fault.
Tony then heads to the room where Kris DeGann is resting after her ordeal. There he finds Remmy Lawford — Benj Brennan’s girlfriend — waiting by her bed side. She tells Tony that Kris only suffered a mild concussion and is expected to recover. She then hugs Tony, something that Kris wakes up to see and is no happy about.
Meanwhile, on Long Island, Abe Zimmer has arrived at the abandoned site of the original Stark Industries.[4] He is on a secret mission now that Stark Enterprises has been purchased by Fujikawa Inc.
By this time, Tony is up on the roof of the hospital once more finding just how out of place he is in the future and how much is different.[5] His thoughts are interrupted by War Machine who has come from the west coast and hopes to recruit Tony on a special mission for Stark Enterprises. Tony isn’t interested in “bonding” with Jim Rhodes, but that all changes when Jim gets a distress call from Abe Zimmer. Someone has attacked him while on his mission. This is a cyborg warrior calling herself Calico. She manages to catch Abe off guard and seriously injures him. However, when she tries to finish him off, Abe grabs a live wire to electrocute them both in an effort to stop her.
That’s when Iron Man and War Machine arrive on the scene. Tony races Abe outside and tries to give him CPR in order to save his life, but he dies. Jim is devastated by this but thanks Tony for trying. There is much more at stake than this, and the pair soon enter the former office of the adult Tony Stark. There young Tony uses his biometrics to get them access to Tony’s hidden lab where all the surplus suits of Iron Man armor have been stashed away. This mission is to destroy them before Fujikawa can get at them. However, before they can do this they are ambushed by a group of cyborg mercenaries calling themselves the Stockpile. They include the Unicorn,[6][7] Sunstreak, Joust, and Brass. Little does anyone know that Brass is an autonomous robot that is being remotely controlled by Morgan Stark, Tony’s cousin, who has come to claim the Iron Man technology for himself.[8]
Recurring Characters
Iron Man, War Machine, Stockpile (Brass, Joust, Sunstreak, Unicorn), Morgan Stark, Edwin Jarvis, Kris DeGann, Meredith McCall, Abe Zimmer, Remmy Lawford
Continuity Notes
This version of Tony Stark was pulled forward in time to help the Avengers stop his older self after he betrayed the team. It was a whole thing. See Iron Man #319-325, Avengers #390-395, Force Works #16-20, War Machine #20-23, Avengers: The Crossing #1, Avengers: Timeslide #1, Age of Innocence: The Rebirth of Iron Man #1 as well as Avengers Forever #8 to find out just what the fuck was going on. At any rate, this younger version of Tony comes from a divergent reality as a result, Marvel Legacy: The 1990s Handbook #1 identifies it as Reality-96020. Tony is said to be 19 at the time he was taken from the past and he was brought forward to the future by about 10 years. Per the Sliding Timescale this is not accurate at all. It would actually be closer to 14 years. See the Pre-Modern Age Timeline for more details.
Jarvis’ concerns for Tony’s well being is due to the fact that his adult self had a problem with alcohol, having gone through two damaging drinking binges in Iron Man #120-128 and 167-182. This younger version of Tony could also be susceptible to alcohol abuse since, as per adult Tony Stark’s recollections in Iron Man #313, his own alcohol dependence stems from generational abuse passed down to him by Howard Stark.
There is a lot going on with Meredith McCall that needs explaining here. The details:
When young Tony was pulled out of the past in Avengers: Timeslide #1, he was seeing Meredith McCall at the time. From his perspective he disappeared on her over a decade ago.
However, Tony’s fears that this Meredith will recognize him are unfounded since his disappearance now takes place in a divergent reality. While the Earth-616 Meredith McCall did date her reality’s Tony Stark (as seen in Iron Man #28) never would have had Tony Stark disappear on her when they were teens.
At any rate, Meredith was frozen alive by Frostbite and freed by Iron Man in Iron Man #327-328.
Here it is stated that the employees at the Stark Industries plant on Long Island quit to work for Tony at Stark Enterprises. That’s really downplaying what happened. See, Stark Industries was subject to a hostile take over by Obadiah Stane who took over the company and named it after himself in Iron Man #173. Many employees quit the company to work for Stark Enterprise when Tony opened his no organization in issue #215. Stane International remained independent even after Obadiah Stane’s death in Iron Man #200. However, Tony had just recently bought back Stane International in issue #283.
Tony notes that the Baxter Building from his own era has been replaced by the Four Freedoms Plaza. The original Baxter Building was launched into space in Fantastic Four #278. The FF began building the Four Freedoms Plaza in its place, opening the building to the public in Fantastic Four #296.
Unicorn refers to himself as Iron Man’s “old pal”, suggesting that they have a history together. However, they never did. There were two previous individuals to take up the mantle of the Unicorn. The first was Milos Masaryk who was indeed an Iron Man foe, first fighting him in Tales of Suspense #56. He was briefly replaced by Yegor Balinov, who appeared in Soviet Super Soldiers #1, who wasn’t around long enough to fight Iron Man. This man is neither, but a third individual named Aaidan Blomfield. His identity was given in Dark Reign Files #1.
Speaking of Dark Reign Files #1, that resource also gives the real names of Calico (Pania Panapa), Joust (Boudica Gorman), and Sunstreak (Andrea Roarke).
Morgan Stark is all fucked up here because he survived a fiery car crash in Iron Man #292. He is using the same neural telepresence technology that Tony used to pilot his Iron Man armor from Iron Man #269 through 284.
