Ultimate Comics Armor Wars #4 - Marvel

Since the Ultimatum, Tony has found out that people are buying and selling his tech all over the world. And not just his Iron Man stuff. Also stuff that he had buried deep in his one of his security bunkers. He catches Justine Hammer in the act, but coverts her to his cause when he helps her with a nano-tech problem that she's having with her own body. Essentially . . he saves her life. They end up chasing the tech all over the world, but end up in London where they find that the police have purchased and adapted some of his suits as well into high-tech riot suits. In that fight the Ghost, who was also responsible for stealing the tech and other things from his bunker, tries to kill Tony, but he's saved when Justine shows the police the disk proving that the hardware was stolen. They pull him out of the Thames and he's allowed to destroy everything. Anyways, in the battle, Tony sprayed the Ghost with some radio-active material to allow him to track him. This leads them right back to the United States. With his armor non-functioning, some more robots attack thier plane as they approach the US. They disable Tony and take him and Justine to a secret bunker. There, Tony finds out that this whole thing was orchestrated by his deceased grand-father, Howard Stark Sr.. It seems that when Tony was quite young, Howard Sr. had to fake his death in order to participate in a deep black government project, Project Tomorrow. He had devoted his life to human/machine fusion. However, he's been down here a long time. And he'd decided that it was time for an upgrade . . an upgrade that only his grand-son could give him. And . . he wasn't asking. But before he gets to that, he's more interesting in a mysterious black-box that they also took from Tony's bunker. They've been unable to open it, which makes them even more curious. Tony doesn't want to do that, but after Howard Sr. presents him with his options, he figures he'll give him what he wants. Even if what he wants may not be what he gets. It turns out it's Tony's head from another dimension. It's in an Iron Man helmet. The head's dead, but . . the tech isn't. 'Incredible alien stuff. But it's very difficult to study, because it has some self-defense mechanism stuck on a loop that kills machinery. Shut down my own nanofleet quite violently, the first time. But I've shielded mine since then. Lucky me, I don't need machinery to live.' Apparently it disperses through the air because Howard Sr., Justine and every other machine in the room erupts in fire and burns itself out. Later when Tony is knocking a few back, he's looking at the head and toasting a job well done. After all he is saving the world. Right? Well . . that is until he realizes that the person he's saving the world from is . . himself. I have a feeling that from here . . Tony, and his armor and tech, are going to become a lot less integral part of this world. Warren Ellis wrote this mini-series, so of course there's a lot of brilliant ideas here. I love the way that Warren takes everyday ideas and with an epiphany and a nudge turns them into something completely different. Different, but . . reasonably assumed with the knowledge that we already have. By the time he gets done explaining them, they seem like the natural next step. They become 'fantastical' through the natural thought process. They make perfect sense after he shows them to you, but . .apparently he's the only one capable of initially seeing the path from 'a' to 'b'. I don't know how he continues to do it, over and over. But, he does . . and that's why I love his writing. Steve Kurth does the art. I thought he did a great job. All in all this was a very 'cool' series. I thought that it explained well what happened to Tony after the Ultimatum. And . . it gave us a direction for the future of this character. It looks kind of bleak right now, but . . with the Ultimates coming back, as well as the Ultimate Avengers . . we just never know what's going to happen in this universe.