Invincible Iron Man Issue #11

Last time on Crazy Awesome Pwning Time Yo, starring Tony Stark: Tony's deleting his brain, Osborn issued a warrant for made up crimes, Pepper found the Iron Potts, Maria Hill got fucked (literally) and went in search of a hard-drive to give to Bucky, from Futurepharm! This plot sauce is getting thick, for real!



Invincible Iron Man #11

Pepper Potts inside the Iron Potts finds out that this bitch is run by... Jarvis. From the movie. Just Another Rather Very Intelligent System y'all. He was put in the Iron Potts to as it's OS to help out Pepper in her "Mark 1616". Whatever Fraction, you can give it a Mark number but it's still Iron Potts. This is apparently an arbitrary number because Jarvis says that Tony did not make 1616 models of the Iron Man. Jarvis does however contain the entire Stark dataspine and a play list of 96,000 of Pepper's favorite songs. I find that to be unbelievable because I don't even know 96,000 songs and if Pepper does, and those are her favorites, how many actual songs does she know? Did Tony just upload his entire iTunes and just say Pepper has to deal? Tony probably doesn't use iTunes. He uses StarkTunes.

Pepper realizes that Tony programmed Jarvis to care for her, which is sweet and I wish someone would do that for me. Stark really cares about Pepper. The armor is completely designed around all the enhancements that Stark has given her since she was implanted with her own little repulsor tech disc. Jarvis is there to make the experience more enjoyable (like how could piloting an Iron Man suit be boring) and answer questions. You know, be what Tony can't be. When asked if she's ready to start her training Pepper replies:

Pepper: "Hell yes."

Damn right Pepper, damn right.

Los Angeles:

The saviour of this issue, regardless of where it goes from here, and really the arc in general, resides in this page:

Tony's Narration: Henry Hellrung prays Yep. That's right kids. Henry Fucking Hellrung. You put Hellrung in anything and I will eat it up and ask for more like a well trained little puppy. So there. It's been said. For more on Hellrung, check out: The Order: The Next Right Thing and The Order: California Dreaming. Plug complete. As much for himself as for others

Henry finishes the AA Serenity prayer and then inspires the AA followers to come back because the program does work. Henry, I love you in a way that I can't even describe in words. And to my surprise, Larroca didn't screw him up too bad. So that's a plus. Oh Henry, kind eyes, shaggy hair with graying temples, exasperation, acceptance, tolerance... you're the man of my dreams.

He's been an actor, a drunk, a washout, a spokesperson, a super hero, a sponsee, and then--

Tony: "Hey Sponsor."

Henry's narration: He's the most wanted man in the world, there's no way he'd be dumb enough to crash my meeting--

Henry: "...Tony?"

Tony looks... well a little like a jackass. He's wearing some weird GI Joe uniform (someone's trying to channel Steve) and he's shaved off the Mood 'stache and... well most of his hair too. All I can say is, when Tony Stark changes his hair... shit is about to go down. At least he didn't go blond this time.

Tony: "Hey man. Can y'spare the price of a cup of coffee for a fellow American down on his luck?"

Henry: "Jeez, man, I didn't recognize you."

Tony: "That was the point."

They exchange a hug and it pleases me. Henry will accept Stark no matter what he does. Tony can always come crawling back to Henry, and Henry won't judge him or treat him harshly. Henry is the friend that we all have who will sit beside you in the jail cell and say "Man, we fucked up". He will always help without having to throw in his two cents, just offer a kind word and whatever he can.

There should be more people like Henry in Tony's life.

Tony: "I'm in a little bit of trouble" (this is over the panel where Tony shaves his head) "and I've had to... well make provisions. Maybe you've heard."

Henry: "Yeah I've been alive for more than the last hour, Tony. And there's "trouble" and there's whatever the hell you're in."

Tony: "Yeah, thanks. Henry... it's gonna be a while before I can hit another meeting. In fact, it's been a while since I've hit any meeting. Like--a while. A couple years while. So, uh... that it. I just needed to tell you that."

Henry is not really surprised, he knows what shit's been going on. Nor is he judgemental. Henry is exactly what is needed in this situation, something no one else has been throughout this entire experience. Henry Hellrung is Rational.

Henry: "Tony... stop running. Turn yourself in. It can't be that bad. I mean... you're you. You're too high-profile to just get--get--get disappeared."

Tony: "I know you haven't had your powers long, H, but come on. You know damn well nobody's too big to go away when the right people are angry at you. And these people are very, very angry at me."

Henry is going to be rational again. Thank you, Henry.

Henry: "Then--and, man, don't take this wrong but--why did you come here? People need this place and you just put a target on the front door."

Good point, Henry.

Tony: "I know, Henry--I know-- I put a cashier's check for two million dollars into the collection hat when you passed it around. Just--just take care of your people, yeah?"

Henry: "Tony, you don't have to run--"

Tony: "I do, Henry. So listen--there's an Iron Man on the roof of the church here. It's how I'm getting away. About ten minutes after I'm gone, HAMMER will come busting in. Just lie down and lace your fingers behind your head. Tell them every single word we said here, don't lie and don't be clever and you'll be home in time for dinner. Be seeing you."

Henry slumps down into one of the fold up chairs from the AA meeting. Here's the exasperation I mentioned early. Dear, forgiving, exasperated Henry.

Henry: "Yeah. Okay, Tony, okay."

So in summary: Hi, Hank! Here's some guilt money. I've just dragged you into my web of crazypants because I'm a marked man. Oh, and I'm a dead man. Okay, thanks bye!

Austin, Texas

Maria Hill and Tony have been digging in the same closet because when I first saw her I thought it was him, pre-head shave. I was like... why is he in Texas now, didn't he send Maria? But whatever. It's Maria and she's snooping around outside Futurepharm. She's staking the place out all SHIELD pro style and finally decides there's no point in doing so anymore, I imagine because there is nothing going on there. Also, for some reason Austin looks like some Middle Eastern marketplace during war time. Maria is now back into her SHIELD uniform with one of those quick changes. She hops a fence in a way that leads me to believe she stole powers from Peter Parker when she mind raped him. At the end of this page, Hill also apparently had a vision of the future, knowing that not only have breaking into Futurepharm and being one of Osborn's most wanted marked her for death, but so has receiving Tony's hot beef injection:

Maria: "It's not every day you end your career with a bullet in the head."

Back in LA: Which I never thought would be a land of Logic, Henry is being picked up by the HAMMER SWAT, who are surprisingly gentle with my Henry. It's because he's pretty... sigh.

This next few pages is interlaced with flashbacks from a simpler time.

Maria: "Who's he?"

Tony: "He's Henry."

Maria: "So? Who's Henry? Why is he here?"

Flashback Panel:

War Machine, Anthem (Henry Hellrung), Pepper, Tony and Maria in Tony's office. We know it's a flashback because it's gray, Tony is in his office, Henry is Anthem and Tony is Mexican with his mood 'stache. Oh and it's gray.

Tony: "He's my friend; that's why he's here."

Maria: "Well I've never heard of him."

Tony: "Nobody heard of you either until like twenty minutes ago. so how about shutting up for two seconds?"

I admit now it turns me all sorts of on when Tony snarks/yells/bitches at Maria Hill. Like in a way that should make the man I love jealous.

Tony: "You all need to commit this address to memory, right now, and never forget it okay? Calicomom63@gmail.com. And the password is T0nyw@sr1ght with a zero, @ sign and 1 as the vowels. Only access it from public places. Libraries, coffee shops, whatever."

Side note: Being the nerd 'tard I am I tried to log into this email, as I'm sure many people have. I found out via Matt Fraction's twitter that people keep trying to change the password which verified my suspicion that Fraction registered the address so that assholes like me couldn't claim it and fuck with people. Because I so would and it would be awesome.

Present time Panel:

Henry is getting arrested and for some reason the adorable look of acceptance on his face combined with him getting handcuffed makes me feel a little funny. Henry, stop seducing me with your ink and paper charms! Tony continues to talk from the flashback over this panel:

Tony: "This is account is our equivalent of a panic room. No one is to ever, ever, use it to actually send or receive any email. We only use it to ping one another; to singal one another when there's no other possible way. Nobody will trace it."

Henry is now in custody and handcuffed with his arms behind him to a chair. He's apparently being interrogated by THE HAND OF JUSTICE, or Ms Hand. Maybe that's her alter ego we'll find out later. Poor Henry. There is more dialogue from the flashback:

Tony: "So what you do-- what I want everyone to get in the habit of doing--is check it every few days. Whenever you get coffee, or you're at the library, or--or whatever--log in and check the inbox."

Just... how much time does Tony think this group is spending at the library? Like for real? I mean, I know that Rhodey has to catch up on his Dickens and he's spending hours and hours in the library just blissfully reading. Yeah, totally.

Pepper: "But we can't send mail--how does it get mail?"

Flashback again:

Tony looks rather smug. Oh he thinks of it all, you people. Don't bore him with your questions.

Tony: "Excellent question, Ms. Potts. It doesn't." Say what? Oh Tony, now you're just being goofy! "In the To: field, type the first letter of your name and then a bunch of random garbage. End with the first letter of the name of whomever you wish to ping. If I wanted to get Pepper's attention say, I'd go to the library, hit gmail, log in and address an email to "T-blahblahblah99-P and hit send. That's it."

Well, that... sounds stupid. Oh and thanks for telling me how to send an email, by the way. I hadn't figured it out yet. You're not fucking talking to Steve here, the people in this room are tech savvy individuals who know the basic function of the internet. You don't have to dumb it down.

Henry is leaving the HAMMER building rubbing his wrist and looking a bit tossed about. The continued dialogue just irritates me.

Tony: "The email will bounce back as un-sendable and it'll just sit in the inbox where we'll all log in, in due time, and see someone is pinging someone else."

Pepper: "Ahh--but we're all using it to bounce messages to one another, hidden in the sender's address."

Henry is now at the library, he's going to try this whacked out system. As silly and nutty as this is, I suppose in this situation it has to work. Henry is going to ping someone. Apparently libraries in LA have laptops... unless he went home and got his laptop which makes little sense because if I were him I'd have then changed my clothes or tucked in my shirt after what I've been through.

Tony: "A simple message but-- exactly. The mail never actually leaves so there's no reason for it to ever be looked at by anyone anywhere. It'll just be another jacked-up email somebody's mom screwed up sending and nothing anyone will ever think to look at or look for. Everyone set up a rendezvous location with everyone else, and if you get pinged, you meet there 24 hours later, no matter what."

Back to the flashback:

I will say this for the Anthem costume. I love it so much, because Tony knows how to design a costume that leaves nothing to the imagination. I am all for Henry being in the Anthem costume all the time, especially since the costumes seem to be all Larroca can draw. Henry's regular clothes seem to suffer the same fat problem Tony's do. I have no part of me that believes these two men wear their clothes horrendously over-sized. Public figures like them wear their clothes crisp, clean, tailored. Sure, Tony has all of his stuff custom but Henry isn't too shabby, he can buy something nice off the rack from Saks.

Henry: "Aren't you being a little Paranoid? why would--how could--a Stark Industries mail server ever be so compromised that you yourself couldn't use it?"

Maria: "New guy is right. Stark aside--do you really think something could happen to compromise SHIELD's security systems so badly that we'd need this rinky-dink cloak-and-dagger crap?" Oh Maria, you have such a way with words.

Tony: "Of course. I think of everything."

Welcome to the inner circle of Crazy Town, Maria. Tony is a futurist which means he's got an answer for 13 steps ahead of any scenario the world could throw at him. I bet he knew the day he injected Extremis with all of that information in the Stark dataspine and SHIELD, he might one day delete his brain. This comforts me none. So moving on...

Flashback over, it's present time:

Robo-Rhodey! He looks like some 1920s detective in his trench coat and fedora disguise. That, and he's a cyborg. He's met with dear Henry in this coffee shop/bakery where at least Henry has changed clothes since, even if he doesn't look too put together. I forgive him, he's having a hard time. It's not every day your friend comes in and is all "Well, everything has gone to shit and I have some guilt money for you" even if that friend is Tony Stark.

Henry pinged Rhodes because Tony came to give his good-bye and then HAMMER dragged in Henry. He doesn't know what's up with Tony, but he knows that Rhodey does and he also knows that Rhodey has his own shit going on, but he asks please help. If HAMMER finds Tony, Henry says, they're going to kill him of which Henry has no doubt. He knows that Jim can find him and so he enlists Rhodes to do what everyone enlists Rhodes to do: Stop Tony Stark from doing really, really stupid things before it's the last really stupid thing he ever does and no one ever gets to talk to him again. Thus we return to Jim Rhodes's lot in life; babysitting Tony Stark.

War Machine flies through the air on the search for Iron Man. The narration gives us the following insight.

Narration: James Rhodes has been a lot of of things in his life: a Marine, a pilot, an engineer, a substitute Iron Man a babysitter, and, finally, a hero in his own right. A War Machine. But no matter what, the job he seems best at is cleaning up Tony Stark's messes... True friends, yo. True friends.

War Machine finds Iron Man in the 90s pre-Extremis armor that is the same style as the one that was Sentient. Yes it's the same style, no this one is not in love with him and nor will it ever be. Thank you, Fraction. Tony can be tracked since Rhodes is bleeding edge tech and Tony is well, not. If armors were cars Tony would be driving a Geo Metro circa 1994 and Rhodes would be in a 2011 Audi R8. The conversation they have involves Rhodey doing his Rhodey thing and saying Tony, you need to stop being such a fuck nut and come back and handle this like a rational adult.

It's good that Rhodey and Henry have brought some rationale here. Oh I know what's got the girls all crazy, it's Tony's dreamy eyes. Suckers.

Tony declines to come in because he's convinced he won't leave Osborn's custody alive, which is probably true in his defence. They're going to know Rhodey came after him, but Rhodey mentions he's not on Osborn's pay... but Tony needs to make sure that they don't think he's still on Tony's. So they're going to have a BATTLE ROYALE!

Whether Jim Rhodes likes it or not.

Rhodes: "Are. You. Insane?!?"

Tony: "If we don't scrap, and scrap hard, HAMMER will treat you as though we're colluding--and you can do far more good without Osborn bringing that kind of heat down n you."

Tony Stark, he's always thinking about his posse. Fight me, or Osborn will think you're my homeboy.

Rhodey: "I meant, are you insane trying to fight me? It's called War Machine, boss. Fighting is what it was designed to do. You don't stand a chance."

Which is pretty true, I feel.

Rhodey blasts at Tony and once they reach him, well Tony realizes that was a bad idea challenging Rhodes. He calls it truth in advertising. Well you did design the suit Tony...

Rhodes is also battling him with bleeding edge stuff again, which I think is Fraction's favorite thing to use to describe tech in Iron Man because that seems to be well... his only description for it. Tony's suit is not up to snuff and thus the attacks from War Machine actually do hurt, but he's not going to be out done. He attacks Rhodes again and Tony makes a snarky comment about no one ever armors up the weapons. His energy output he realizes will be picked up by Osborn's people, which of course...

...It is, in the next panel. Where some guy says that he thinks they found him.

Maria Hill, meanwhile, has found nothing or no one at Futurepharm so far. It's been nine whole frickin' hours! But, as she said, it's still Texas. And I agree. She makes a comment about it being legal to be shot on sight for breaking and entering and considering that most places in Texas have laws that allow you to have open bottles of liquor as long as your guns are on the gun rack on your truck, I find myself thinking that Maria isn't far off in her estimate.

Futurepharm is pretty dead, which is not what Maria was expecting, but she's ready to shoot to kill if something does show up. But a red light, which should stop her, she says, makes her go snooping around some more. And then she realizes... the flyers she'd passed along the way, the memorials she'd walked by, people missing all over the place...

The bodies are feeding one of Iron Man's Lame rogues gallery members: The Controller!

Well snap. Now we've got another flavor in the plot sauce. Let's see: Brain delete, running from the law, Osborn in charge... and now a villain. Well well, this is going to be a hearty sauce indeed I see.

Side note: It took me until just now, third time through, to realize that this was the Controller. The art is that bad.

Battle Royale:

Tony: "Don't hold back, man. Big Brother isn't just watching, he's taking notes."

Finally, a 1984 reference I've been making since Tony took over SHIELD. Well, well Big Brother. It seems someone else has control of Oceania now, bwahahahaha.

Ahem.

Rhodes: "I strike you as the kind to suddenly hold back? Tony... repulsors be damned--your suit is so old you might as well try attacking me with Skylab. I have nineteen different locks on you, man. How far do you want to take this?" Haha, Skylab. I really laughed at that.

Tony: "All the way, Rhodey. All the way."

Tony wants to keep him talking and shooting so that he doesn't think too hard. Why? Because Rhodey will use that rational logic stuff again and we just can't have that. If Rhodey uses the old brain up in his head, then he'll stop Tony from doing stupid things and this whole arc will be over.

Rhodey: "You asked for it boss."

I will describe this panel in detail because, it's both amazing and hilarious.

War Machine rears back and fires everything he's got at Iron Man. Missiles and repulsor blasts come at Tony from all angles and all he does, is curl up, mid air into the fetal position.

Tony: "Oh Shi--"

The weapons hit Iron Man and he goes down toward the water below them.

Tony: "Great job."

Narration: I redirect everything but life support systems into my palm repulsors.

Iron Man shoots at War Machine with full power.

Luck--lucky shot--

Rhodey: "Shot breached suit. Dammit, Tony... I felt that."

Tony: "Redirect all power to life support. Pressurize inner hull."

Thanks, Rhodey.

Iron Man hits the water, goes under and War Machine chases the splash yelling for Tony. Iron Man is out of sight under the choppy waves of the ocean that's muted gray because apparently that's what it looks like to Larroca. He only goes to the ocean at night or during overcast. The sky behind War Machine does not hint to me that there are enough clouds for that kind of overcast to cloud the water.

Rhodes narration: He breached the suit--Tony knew he was going under the whole time so he breached my suit--

Rhodes: "Good luck, boss man. Give 'em hell."

I started singing All-American Rejects here, but I stopped.

Osborn has watched this whole thing on floating screens like he's Tony Fucking Stark or something. Wannabe. I'm telling you, Osborn has a boy crush on Tones. He cuts the feed and gets up, standing around in a lumpy suit, just like Tony would if he were in that position.

Osborn: "Hand, come here I want you."

This is foreplay before Osborn-- Oh he meant his assistant. She appears in the doorway with a file in hand.

Hand: "Yes, sir?"

Osborn: "Open my private line, please, and shut the door behind you. Now."

Hand: "...yes sir."

Apparently she was expecting something else... perhaps sex. Maybe him yelling at her was her brand of foreplay as well. Oh, she loves a man who treats her like a big sack of poop.

Osborn: "See, now. This is how this thing of our is going to work: I have a little problem headed to your neck of the woods. I'd like you to see if you an take care of it for me. Then I'll owe you a favor."

Reply: "What, Osborn?"

Next Panel: Namor, in all of his Atlantian glory, chilling in his shell throne, looking like a douche. You know, how Narmor rolls.

Osborn: "Tony Stark. Find him and kill him for me."

Namor: "Gladly."


Continued in Invincible Iron Man #12