This feature spotlights moments, exchanges, etc. from older comics that take on a brand new light when read in concert with later comic books. Here is the archive of previous installments.
Today, based on another suggestion from reader Mark H., we take a look at an interesting precursor to Tony Stark's role in the hit film, Age of Ultron (plus a bit of a similarity to the Marvel comic book event, Age of Ultron).
The hit 2015 film, Avengers: Age of Ultron, finds Tony Stark working on a computerized global defense system, basically something that could defend the whole world. He dubbed it "Ultron." When he gained access to a powerful gem, he used it to give Ultron sentience.
Ultron then turned out to be bad news for the world, which is the point of the film. So Tony unwittingly created a computer system that almost destroyed the whole world.
Meanwhile, in the Marvel comic book crossover event, Age of Ultron, Ultron (who was invented by Hank Pym in the Marvel Universe) has taken over the world at some point in the future and went back in time and took over the world in the present, as well. Using Doctor Doom's Time Machine, Wolverine and Invisible Woman go back in time where Wolverine decides that he has to kill Hank Pym, and thus avoid the creation of Ultron...
When Wolveri e returns to the altered present, however, he learns that the world was even WORSE off without Hank Pym in it. So he fixes his original mistake (all the time-traveling, however, severely weakened Marvel's Multiverse, partially leading to the recent Secret Wars crossover).
With all this in mind, let's look at Mark's suggestion of an interesting story from 1968, Invincible Iron Man #5's "Frenzy in a Far-Flung Future"...
The issue was written by Archie Goodwin and drawn by George Tuska and Jim Craig. It opens with Tony getting sucked into the future, where he is blamed for creating a massively powerful computer system that has ended up taking over the world...
What fascinates me is how Goodwin plays with the time travel. Tony doesn't give a crap about their blame. He presumes that time paradoxes will prevent anything from being changed (like "How can I die having time traveled to the future when the reasons for me time traveling will theoretically disappear when I die? If Cerebrus didn't exist, how could I be taken to the future to be killed so that I wouldn't create Cerebrus?" or whatever) so he never even concedes that he is at fault at all. He just concentrates on destroying Cerebrus, which he is aided in doing so by a beautiful woman of the future who also doesn't blame Tony (she blames the people over the last few centuries who corrupted Tony's original work). She helps him escape after Cerebrus attacked above. Ultimately, Tony faces off against Cerebrus, who has created a personification of itself (for optimal emoting purposes, I presume)...
See? He ends the comic not even caring the slightest about the future. Hilarious.
Anyhow, that's it for this one! Thanks for the suggestion, Mark! I think I've used up all your suggestions now, so you have to make more! That goes for the rest of you folks! E-mail me at bcronin@comicbookresources.com for more hilarious in hindsight comic book plots!