Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Invincible Iron Man #44 Synopsis by
T Vernon
At the ruins of the building that once held the offices of Askew Electronics, Iron Man recalls his probes to transmit their data to Jocasta, who pinpoints the source of the explosion. Shellhead gathers the pieces of the machine and returns to the lab for investigation….
Askew CEO Callista Hancock has called a meeting of all staff at a trendy nightclub—but none of the staff can get past the doorman at the exclusive place. So they end up at a nearby pub where Callista announces that the company is officially out of business, as the insurance won’t cover their losses and they will have to sell off their patents to pay a fraction of their debts—but they are going out in style…
…Tony awakens the next morning beside Callista and wishes he were still Tony Stark who could bail out the company. As Callista leaves, Rhodey enters, one of the few people who know where Tony is, and floats the idea that Tony gave up his company due to some malign influence while he was in Tiberius Stone’s virtual reality machine (issues #37-40); Tony makes light of the suggestion. Jocasta interrupts with news that the bomb was triggered by an email geared toward a user’s brain patterns. He suits up as Iron Man in the now completed new armor and takes Jocasta along, tracing the next email to the Omnitech Building. He crashes in and is quickly able to determine the bomb’s location and render it harmless. But Jocasta has also traced the email’s source: the Advanced Building. Iron Man enters in chameleon mode and heads to the boardroom where he discovers the CEO is M.O.D.O.K. The villain detects his presence and forces him to appear, ordering his men to open fire with laser guns. Shellhead knocks them all out with his sonic array and confronts the Big Bad. M.O.D.O.K. sends out a mental blast that surprisingly knocks Jocasta offline and explains that A.I.M. is now seeking to dominate the world via corporate power. And then M.O.D.O.K. introduces his newest consultant: the Ghost, who disrupts Shellhead’s working with one hand….