WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for Dark Ages #1, available now from Marvel.
Tony Stark has never been one to hold back with his elaborate inventions, especially not when they come in the form of a new suit of armor. Whether it's something for Iron Man, War Machine or anyone else, Tony Stark is always ready to throw together whatever the occasion calls for. And even though the lights just went out for good across the Marvel Universe of Dark Ages, Tony has managed to build a suit capable of rocketing its way through the Dark Ages.
After the ancient threat of The Unmaker resurfaced and threatened to destroy the world from within, Doctor Strange led a select team of heroes to deal with the threat. While they were able to defeat the Unmaker by unleashing the power of a reality where electricity could not function, doing so led to that same electromagnetic pulse emanating throughout the planet. In a few short moments, all machines stopped working, including those in Iron Man's suit. At that moment, Tony Stark was flying high above New York City, the aftermath of the blast left one of his legs ripped off by a falling airplane he blindly collided with. While that is far from the end of the story as well as Tony Stark's role in it, though the situation has forced him to become a different kind of Iron Man.
As revealed at the end of Dark Ages #1 by Tom Taylor, Iban Coello, Brian Reber and VC's Joe Sabino, the former Avenger miraculously survived his injuries. Not only that, but he has even managed to craft a working Iron Man suit for himself without any advanced technology at his disposal. This new armor has been glimpsed before, though how it works is still yet to be seen. It can only be assumed that this suit is some combination of steam power and rocket propulsion, seeing as how anything remotely resembling an arc reactor is off the table. As impressive as it might be, this does come with some unsettling implications.
Aside from the fact that Tony is either wearing a giant boiler, engine or both, the armor itself can only have been crafted from whatever Tony was able to put together by hand. Without the means to even do something as simple as electroplate any of his armor, it would have to be built from simple steel, iron or brass. All of this adds up to an extremely heavy, incredibly fragile suit of Iron Man armor that is at best, a slightly better version of his very first suit and at worst, a flying time bomb. And, to top it all off, there isn't even the hope that all of this is part of some grander endeavor to set the world right, as Tony is now working right alongside an especially menacing Apocalypse.
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Steampunk and Iron Man aren't two diametrically opposed concepts, but they are ones that work together far better in theory than they do in practice. Considering the state of things in Dark Ages, it is understandable that Tony Stark would do the best he can with what little is available to maintain his own killer edge in this never-ending night. Then again, the obvious risks in donning this armor at all would imply a level of desperation not seen from the iron-clad Avenger in quite some time. If nothing else, this gives readers just one more reason to look forward to following the events of this latest, darkest alternate version of the Marvel Universe.