WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for the "Dark Ages" backup story in FCBD 2020 X-Men #1 by Tom Taylor, Iban Coello, Brian Reber and VC's Joe Sabino, available now.
With Marvel's Free Comic Book Day offering, the publisher kicked off its next epic storyline: the out-of-continuity series, Dark Ages. The story begins on a quiet night in New York City which quickly turns into all-out chaos: a massive earthquake hits the city before a huge green surge of energy appears in the sky. After this, all of the lights in the city are turned off, and everything that runs on technology simply doesn't work anymore. Without power, a plane falls from the sky. Without power, cellphones stop working. And, without power, Tony Stark's Iron Man suit fails him completely.
Whatever happened isn't confined to New York, it's apparently all over the world. The Marvel Universe has just been plunged into a literal Dark Age, and we have no idea how or why. For now, all that we know is that the technological core of plenty of Marvel heroes has just fallen under attack, and nothing will ever be the same in this corner of the Marvel Multiverse.
The first superhero to feel the weight of Dark Ages is Iron Man. Tony Stark's suit -- his very superpower -- is completely dependent on technology. But with electric power completely turned off all over the world, the Armored Avenger's highly advanced suit is nothing more than an expensive paperweight. What's worse is that the power is cut off at the worst possible time for Stark: while he is mid-flight. As his suit turns off, he starts to fall -- and to make matters all the more horrifying, he's on a collision course with a plane.
When Iron Man hits the plane's wing, he causes a devastating explosion. The plane crashes on the ground in a ball of flame, and Tony loses a leg in the accident. After crashing into one of his buildings, he's left wounded and bloodied and without the very technology that makes his superheroism possible. Without technology, Iron Man simply doesn't exist.
While this is where the introductory chapter of Dark Ages leaves us, it becomes clear that Iron Man will not be the only casualty of this worldwide event. With no more power, plenty of other superheroes and villains now find themselves without a part of what allows them to function. After all, any character who uses an advanced suit of armor -- from War Machine to Black Panther and even some Spider-Man suits -- is in the same situation as Tony Stark to one extent or another.
What's more, while multiple characters have special abilities, some of them are still rooted in science and technology. For example, Mister Fantastic may be elastic, but he uses tons of inventions and technology to help the world. Without power, he's just someone who can stretch. Robots or cyborgs like the Vision may have even been deactivated completely.
On top of that, all flight vehicles are essentially grounded, a list that likely includes the Avengers' Quinjets, the Fantasticar and the X-Men's Blackbird jets. What's more, communications between team members just got a lot more complicated, because comlinks and cellphones need power to work.
On one level or another, almost every Marvel hero or villain uses technology in an echo of the Atomic Age-thinking that informed the foundation of the Marvel Universe and a reflection of real-world life. But without it, everything has changed. Without technology, the very face of the Marvel Universe has been altered and characters who once relied on it have suffered a fatal downgrade. In this Marvel world, the power dynamic has just shifted -- literally -- and it's only a matter of time until something or someone new emerges to fill the void.