WARNING: The following contains spoilers for King in Black: Iron Man/Doctor Doom #1 by Christopher Cantwell, Salvador Larroca, Guru-eFX, and VC's Travis Lanham, on sale now.
King in Black: Iron Man/Doctor Doom #1 puts a Christmas spin on the apocalypse while emphasizing Eddie Brock’s dying gift to Tony Stark. Tony, his Extremis armor now bonded with a symbiote, fights a Knullified Santa Claus alongside Doctor Doom. When Tony saves Santa from the Void, Doom shares that he has his own plans for the symbiotic armor, ones that could defeat Knull.
The issue starts with a flashback to Howard Stark giving his son a gift from Santa: prime New York real estate. The young Tony thanks his dad, not St. Nick, claiming he knows the whole thing is a sham. Howard tells his son he ought to believe in magic while he can, or else the world will “all turn cold and gray.”
In the present and New York is a Knullified wasteland. Tony sits in his new armor, gazing on his old Christmas gift and mourning Eddie Brock. He blames himself for Eddie’s death, since he wasn’t fast enough to bring his new symbiote to the anti-hero’s hospital bed. Doctor Doom arrives and attempts to pull Tony out of his grief by asking if he would mourn the Latverian sovereign as he does Eddie. But Tony and Doom see something strange flying through the darkened sky: a Knullified Santa Claus. The duo goes to fight Santa, claiming they don’t want him delivering symbiotes to children. Santa’s reindeer spew black ooze at the armored team while Chris Kringle himself sings massacre-covers of Christmas carols.
After their first bout with Santa, Doom attempts to pull Tony out of his grief again, trying to convince him to follow a new plan. His strategy is to put down Eddie and claim that the anti-hero’s death was worth it because now Tony has the dragon symbiote. Santa is still a threat, though, and before any minds change, Doom burns up the reindeer while Tony hijacks Santa’s sleigh with the symbiote. Santa plummets to his death from the immobilized sleigh and crashes into a car, as Eddie Brock did. Tony’s new dragon symbiote returns to him after falling with Santa, but it isn’t the only thing that survived the landing. St. Nick is still alive and curses up a storm! Tony asks the Knullified Kringle if he’s the real deal; he just wants to believe the world isn’t all cold and gray. But Santa attacks the hero and Tony fires back with his Extremis/symbiote repulsors. Santa emerges de-Knullified, a weight off Tony’s conscience. As the holiday icon walks away from the battle, he calls Tony a good boy and Doom a naughty man. The duo picks up his dropped ID, which identifies him as Michael Dunwoody, owner of a Christmas decoration store in Paramus, New Jersey.
Impressed by Tony’s display, Doom tells him that his suit negated Dunwoody’s assimilation into Knull’s void and that the power could be extrapolated to fight the King in Black. Tony realizes that Doom wants to take the suit for himself, so he instead uses the villain’s idea as a starting point for his own plans.
As they prepare to part ways, the conversation turns back to their Christmastime encounter. Doom tries to justify how Dunwoody would know about him and Tony, but the hero points out that neither of them has secret identities and their exploits are well known. Despite Iron Man’s logic, Doom still wants to believe that perhaps they met the real man in the red suit.
Iron Man and Doctor Doom’s battle with Santa kept with King in Black’s dual lighthearted/apocalyptic tone. Squaring off with a black ooze-leaking Santa is inherently absurd, but also shows the consequences of "King In Black" this far. When the next chapter rolls around, Tony and Doom’s plan should be in full swing. And since it was already big enough to bond a Void Dragon with a superhero, there’s no telling what comes next.