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Ultimate Iron Man #3

Posted: Monday, August 8, 2005
By: Judson Miers



Writer: Orson Scott Card
Artist: Andy Kubert

Publisher: Marvel Comics

For those of you who haven’t been keeping up with this re-telling of Iron Man, Loni Stark (later Stane) and Zebediah Stane stole his defense contracting company from Howard Stark, Tony’s dad. Howard and his new geneticist, Maria, were working on a better bio-armor when love blossomed and a child was conceived, Tony. A terrible lab experiment later, Tony was born with specific mutations that allow him to withstand the bio-armor. Long story short, Howard flees with his research team and newborn baby. As marriages of convenience usually turn out, Loni and Obadiah’s marriage is on the rocks from the beginning, even though there’s another baby on the way, Obadiah Stane. (I only bore the reader with this synopsis because it’s been almost 4 months since the last issue!!!)

As one might imagine, Zeb isn’t too keen on loosing the Bio-Armor. As such, he uses all of his resources to find Howard Stark and company (that’s assumed). For the next four years, Zeb tracks them until he finally is able to kidnap Tony and tries to use “The Lid” to probe Tony’s mind. Tony is special. He has an advanced healing factor, sort of like Logan’s, and his advanced mental abilities are distributed throughout his body. Also, an advancement allows the armor to be flesh colored instead of blue after drying.

We are reintroduced to young Stark in another 10 years as his genius is beginning to bear fruits as his robotic, semi-alive metal flies are able to replicate and take remote commands. (He puts them to use when he meets Jim Rhodes.) We see the beginning of a relationship that has spanned many years in the regular MU, but who knows how this one will end up?

Anyway, we do get to see his first armor! I won’t spoil it for you, but we do get to see the first armor.

The only drawback of this book is the awesome amount of time between issues. That, and only that, keeps this book from being a perfect , and I don’t give those often.



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