WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Venom: The End #1, by Adam Warren, Jeffrey "Chamba" Cruz, Guru-eFX and VC's Clayton Cowles, on sale now.

Since making his debut in the 1960s, Tony Stark/Iron Man has been one of the Marvel Universe's most stalwart heroes and played a key role on such teams as the Avengers. The hero also helped launch the Marvel Cinematic Universe with 2008's Iron Man and proved himself incredibly formidable in many subsequent movies. However, Venom: The End #1 sees Iron Man taking on a somewhat villainous role to battle against Venom in the last war of the Marvel Universe.

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Thanks to his ability to encode the DNA of all of his previous hosts in a genetic codex existing in the extradimensional codex making up his body, Venom survives far into the Marvel Universe's future, even outliving Eddie Brock -- his favorite host. After the death of Eddie and all of humanity, Venom uses his powers -- and those of Jamie Madrox/Multiple Man -- to restore life to the universe.

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However, while Venom is doing that, a group of artificial superintelligences (A.S.I.) duke it out for supremacy in the Milky Way galaxy. Among them is an A.S.I. based on the mind of Tony. This particular A.S.I. even looks like Tony and wears Iron Man armor. Eventually, the various warring A.S.I.s combine into a single, immensely powerful collective focused on expanding across the universe and assimilating all matter. The A.S.I. wants to accomplish this goal so as to master the secrets of the universe and be able to manipulate reality. This means all biological life will die in the process.

When the A.S.I. -- taking the form of Tony -- explains what's about to happen, and the Venom symbiote refuses to acquiesce. This leads to a war breaking out between Venom and the A.S.I. that lasts for over a trillion years. Over the course of their struggle, Venom taps into his various powers, but he proves ineffective against the overwhelming might of the A.S.I. Eventually, Venom taps into the powers of Pietro Maximoff/Quicksilver, which gives him a temporary leg up at the cost of a ton of his stored up hosts. Venom has a ton stored up, as he's bonded with everyone and everything that ever lived, but eventually he runs out of hosts.

Thanks to the "Godminds," which are a group of "unstoppable A.S.I. colossi," and their ability to alter reality in minor ways, the hostile force manages to take over a large chunk of the universe and kill such beings as the Celestials. Outmatched, Venom loses his battle and gives up his last host. However, the antihero has one last gambit. In his final moments, Venom uses the extradimensional lattice inside himself to create the Venomverse, which he populates with the genetic material of all life that has ever lived. The end of the comic reveals the A.S.I. has essentially mastered the universe and is now capable of looking at various other universes. One of the A.S.I. modeled after Tony keeps the Venomverse as a sort of preserve for biological life.

Tony has played the hero for so much of the Marvel Universe's history, but he ends up being part of the being that destroys all life in Venom: The End's universe. In contrast, Venom -- who has always been an unconventional hero -- is the last, greatest protector of his universe.

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