This is "Foundationed Deep," a feature where we look at particular odd/strange/interesting instances of retroactively connecting different comic book characters (for instance, Uncanny X-Men #268 retroactively established that Wolverine knew both Captain America and the Black Widow from World War II). Today, we look at the retroactive connection between Doctor Octopus and Iron Man that came out in an a fascinating story.

Amusingly, I was beginning to write this story when I realized that the first story in Marvel Fanfare was a cast of what I call "nepotistic continuity," where a writer does a call back to one of their own earlier stories. So I paused on writing this story to go write up the tale of Roger McKenzie and Doctor Octopus' little-used adamantium arms! Check that out here.

Okay, on to this article!

In Marvel Fanfare #22-23, Roger McKenzie and Ken Steacy told the story of Tony Stark helping to upgrade the security systems at Rykers Island to keep the more powerful supervillain prisons in custody.

What he was not prepared for, though, was Doctor Octopus and his recently introduced adamantium tentacles...

They broke all of the prisoners out. Octopus initially just intended to escape on his own, but he figured it would be useful to have some distractions working for him. So Iron Man had to beat up a bunch of supervillains before he finally met Doctor Octopus. However, IRon Man was not prepared for how powerful Octopus was with those new adamantium tentacles!

Iron Man slowly regrouped and in the next issue, he was ultimately successful in taking Doc Ock out...

I believe that it is important to note that Iron Man and Doctor Octopus do not appear to know each other in the comic. As far as I can tell, this was actually the first time that Tony and Octavius even MET in a comic book (since James Rhodes was filling in as Iron Man during Secret Wars when Doctor Octopus was one of the supervillains that the Beyonder called to Battleworld to fight against a select group of superheroes for Beyonder's amusement).

Of course, this is comics, everyone knows everyone else, right? That's the entire point of this feature!

So a number of years later, the two would meet up in a story arc in Matt Fraction and Salvador Larroca's Invincible Iron Man (#501-503). This soon followed a story in Amazing Spider-Man #600 that had revealed that Doctor Octopus had suffered so many injuries to his brain by being punched by superheroes over the years that the trauma has caused his body to essentially collapse around him. He was near death.

So what does that have to do with Iron Man? Find out!

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We see a flashback to see that Tony Stark and Otto Octavius have known each other since they were young men...

We see them in present day, where Octopus has threatened to detonate a nuclear bomb if Tony doesn't follow his commands...

We see that Octavius has hated Tony since they first met...

However, he needs Tony's help to try to cure him...

He has used his supervillain colleagues to take Tony's friends hostage while he forces Tony to work on him.

We get another flashback in the final issue..

Ultimately, Tony has to tell him that he cannot fix him. He promises Otto, though, that the world's scientists will work together to fix him. Instead, he just wants Tony to admit that Otto is smarter than him. He then makes Tony beg for him not to kill his friends. Tony complies...

Otto then admits that he faked the bomb. There never was any real danger.

The issue ends with the slowly dying Doc Ock replaying Tony begging him, the only thing that gives Otto any pleasure now...

Holy dark story!

But a good use of retroactive continuity between two characters.

If anyone else has a suggestion for a future Foundation Deep, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!