Tony Stark: Murderer!

As we've begun to see this week, the Avengers: Disassembled story arc from 2004 sent ripples through a select number of other titles, though some mostly shared the story's distinctive DISASSEMBLED banner tacked on to each book's masthead while their stories only loosely made reference to the Avengers crisis. Captain America and the Falcon was probably the only book that could rightly admit to being a "tie-in" to what was happening in The Avengers, as it featured the Scarlet Witch herself in more than a cameo role in a series of stories that took place before everything hit the fan at Avengers Mansion.

In Invincible Iron Man, however, the story that takes place would simply take its cue from Tony Stark's speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations, an appearance that took a turn for the worse and tarnished both his reputation as Iron Man and almost certainly his credentials as U.S. Secretary of Defense. Only well afterward would we think to take notice of the woman who appears with him on the dais.

Knowing Stark's history as an alcoholic, our first instinct would probably be to take this display as an indication that he's fallen off the wagon and relapsed into a state of inebriation. Yet it becomes apparent that there's something deeper at work here, when he attests to just the opposite.

Yet as fast as good news travels, bad news outdistances it by a country mile--and the news for Stark keeps getting worse. Thanks to his performance at the U.N., the Stark Enterprises Board of Directors is left scrambling to contain the damage, even to floating the idea of changing the name of the company--while Iron Man becomes embroiled in the Code White alert at Avengers Mansion that has already cost lives. For S.E., the Board believes things couldn't get any worse. For the Board members themselves, however, they soon discover that their future has become hopeless.

It's only a chance encounter which delays Pepper Hogan from being on time for the Board meeting and thus saving her from sharing their fate. But Iron Man's actions haven't yet run their course--and even as late arrivals, she and her husband find themselves to be targets of their closest friend.

The aftermath is almost as grim and riddled with questions as the explosive situation on Fifth Avenue--though writer Mark Ricketts leaves that conflict almost totally in the Avengers book, albeit with the strong implication that Stark's unexplained behavior at the U.N. and in this story are somehow linked.

In the interim, Rumiko Fujikawa, a woman Stark nearly married three years ago, re-enters his life after hearing of his U.N. episode. Through flashbacks of their time together, we also learn of Clarence Ward of Ward Industries, a shady industrialist who at one time wanted to meet with Stark to discuss applying his technology to his own work. (Unknown to Stark or anyone else, that "work" entails being an arms dealer to terrorists based in Iraq.) Ward's brusque and insulting manner causes him to fumble the ball when attempting to ingratiate himself with Stark and Rumiko at a private dinner, which pretty much torpedos any chance he might have had to do business with Stark. To make matters worse for him, Iron Man would later expose Ward's operation in Fallujah and shut him down, though Ward would escape capture.

Meanwhile, things don't look too good for Stark as far as any "innocent until proven guilty" prospects. For one thing, Pepper discovers that S.E. stock held by any Board member reverts back to Stark upon their death. Elsewhere, sequestered in his Virginia estate, Stark runs exhaustive tests on himself in an effort to discover why he lost control of himself at the U.N. It's there that Rumiko arrives to rekindle their relationship; but shock leads to shock, when their reunion is instead marked by her sudden murder, at the hand of one whose appearance may have Stark doubting his very sanity.

Stark learns soon enough that our boy in the armor is none other than Ward, who's looking for revenge. But thanks to an on-site cameraman providing a live feed, and Ward's tendency to run off at the mouth on his activities to discredit and disgrace Stark, Stark's battle with Ward in a spare suit of armor plays out on screens everywhere (including Times Square), complete with audio, assuring Stark's innocence in the murders for which he'd become a suspect.

The battle is intense, but ends badly for Ward (though not at Stark's hand, in a nice twist to the story by Ricketts). Afterward, we find Stark back in New York, giving a press conference and choosing a new direction for his life.

In essence, he re-establishes his "secret identity" vis-à-vis Iron Man for the general public, as the character pivots toward a future away from the Avengers--at least, that seems to be plan.  (But in that last panel we see of him here, it's almost as if he realizes that "Dark Stark" is waiting in the wings, eh?)

This post covers events from Invincible Iron Man #s 86-89.