Iron Man (2026 series) #7

In #1-5 Tony Stark ran a competition to find new young geniuses but Madame Masque and AIM kidnapped them and placed them under the stress that led Tony to create the 1st Iron Man suit. They hoped it would 'inspire' them to create even more scientific breakthroughs but it all blew up in their faces and most of the geniuses died. Stark has created a school for the survivors at his workshop on the old Gamma Base (where Hulk was born). The top genius Adam Ware is believed dead but he's actually taken over AIM. Meanwhile some of Tony's friends are secretly worried about him.

This issue opens with Tony having a 3rd date with chef Luna Lucia and he's giving her a present. She opens the box and takes out a Madame Masque mask which she dons with glee. Tony is surprised at the present, and even more so when she attacks him ....

.... but it's all a nightmare and he wakes up. He gets a call from James Rhodes who wants to meet up with him, and says he's already on the way. We see Rhodey flying in his War Machine armour and he's in contact with Captain America who thinks he should join them, but Rhodey doesn't want to make Tony suspect their suspicions and he says he'll report back to the group (that we saw at the end of #1). We also see flashbacks of Stark creating the War Machine suit for him and then WM fighting Iron Man, plus the dissolution of their latest West Coast Avengers.

Rhodes enters Stark's base and the WM suit packs itself away as Tony greets him. Stark tells him that Pepper Potts is running Stark Industries and his Security Chief Melinda May is off tracking down AIM. Last issue's altercation with Norman Osborn and Spider-Man also gets a mention. Then Tony introduces him to his 5 students and their specialities:- Chuck Armstrong (stealth), Arjun Brahmin (intergalactic travel), Emi Gan (hydroengineering), Daniel Buss (sustainability) and Melrose Morrison (biodegredation). He's hoping to attract even more talent and between them they can create a better future. Rhodey is suspicious and wants to know what's really going on.

The students show him their latest joint project - a device that gathers up metal objects but nothing organic. They envisage it for example used to help Damage Control clear up the wreckage of a disaster. This will be the 1st full-scale demo and at 1st it goes well. But then it acts like something alive and hungry and it turns the scrap into a functioning body to go after more metal. The class discover they can't shut it off so IM and WM have to intervene but the entity tries to disassemble *them*. Rhodey gets an idea. He exits his WM suit and dives into the centre of the thing, knowing it won't try to eat *him*. And then he destroys the originating device.

Stark and his students think this is just a minor setback and they can tweak it to do better, and Tony even talks about incorporating it into Iron Man. But Rhodes calls for a private IM/WM meeting in midair. James accuses Tony of teaching his kids to build weapons. Tony protests that their tech will have good uses, but Rhodey points out that it can be weaponised, and that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. He suggests that Tony deliberately built his lab in this deserted base in the middle of the New Mexico desert because he *knew* things could go horribly wrong, but now he's brought these kids into it. Tony admits his past mistakes but wants to do something to make up for them, and he asks Rhodey to join him here to *stop* him making more mistakes.

Meanwhile Adam Ware has created a New AIM City as a secret base for Masque's branch of AIM. He's also using the mental network he created to black out random cities to see what happens. He also has a horde of IM-like robots(?). He tells MM that he wants her to help him persuade all the other fragments of AIM to join up under his control. She worries that it will make Tony Stark aware that he's still alive but he says he's going to keep Stark distracted with an old enemy with a grudge. Enter an upgraded Whiplash.