Appearing in "The River"
Featured Characters:
Supporting Characters:
- Hellfire Club
- White Queen (Emma Frost)
- Hellfire Knights (Death of several)
- White King (Wilson Fisk)
Antagonists:
Other Characters:
- Wolverine (Logan) (Mentioned in narration)
- Deadpool (Wade Wilson) (Mentioned in narration)
- Avengers (Mentioned in narration)
- X-Men (Mentioned in narration)
- Ironheart (Riri Williams) (Mentioned in narration)
- Thor (Odinson) (Mentioned in narration)
Races and Species:
- Humans
- Mutants
- Dwarves of Nidavellir (Mentioned in narration)
Locations:
- Sol
- Earth
- Arakko/Mars (Mentioned)
Items:
- Iron Man Armor Model 72 (Mysterium Armor) (First appearance)
- Adamantium (On Sentinel Zero's claws)
- Mysterium
- Vibranium (Mentioned in narration)
- War Machine Sentinel
- Mjolnir (Mentioned in narration)
- Iron Man Armor Model 73 (Sentinel Buster Armor) (First full appearance)
Synopsis for "The River"
While his fabricator is putting the finishing touches on his new suit, Tony Stark steps out of his secret lab in the Hellfire Club to give Emma Frost a boxed present ahead of their final battle against Orchis. He finds her in her room, having ditched her Hazel Kendal identity and being coiffed by a stylist. After Stark gives Emma the gift and thanks her for her support, she leaves in a limo, kissing Tony farewell. Tony's attention is turned back to the Hellfire Club when he hears a scream.
The helmeted Orchis operative has killed several Hellfire Knights inside the mansion, and he unsheathes his Wolverine claws when Tony runs into him. As they tussle next to a bar counter, Stark uses alcohol and a candelabra to set his assailant ablaze, burning its clothes to reveal a Sentinel Zero underneath. From the upper floor, the Kingpin heaves Tony his mysterium cane, but the Sentinel Zero swats it away after Tony blocks an attack with it, and gashes Tony's chest. Frost appears, having returned for something she forgot. Taking off her inhibitor ring, she uses her diamond form to stall the Sentinel while Tony retreats to his lab. The Sentinel manages to force Emma's ring back into her finger, making her vulnerable. Iron Man bursts out of the ground, clad in his new Mysterium Armor. The Sentinel Zero lunges its claws at him, shocking Tony and Emma equally when it makes contact with the armor. The robot's claws and its entire arm have ruptured on impact. In return, Stark grabs the machine's head and crumples it effortlessly. Tony and Emma leave the building, the latter fastening repulsor brass knuckles that read "Hell" and "Fire," which were Stark's present and the thing she came back for. A Stark Sentinel lands in front of them, but they combine their repulsor attacks to destroy its head with a single combined blast. Iron Man and the White Queen part ways as he takes flight to attend to Avengers matters.
Later on, Tony takes it to orbit, with the mysterium ships in tow. On his way to Australia, he parades in such a way to get caught on Feilong's satellites. The villain monitors Iron Man aboard the Bloom, while Doctor Stasis stands behind him. He orders all Stark Sentinels to converge on the hero, just as Tony and the ships make landfall on the Australian Outback. Feilong is suddenly overcome with anger when a realization dawns on him; those aren't ships. He blasts his computer and runs away in panic, and Stasis confirms that there are no life sings on those vehicles. In haste, Feilong boards a War Machine Sentinel and takes off. Back in Australia, a swarm of Sentinels approach Iron Man's position. Tony flies into the air as the faux ships change shape around him and encase him in a towering Sentinel Buster Armor which dwarfs the Sentinels circling it.
Solicit Synopsis
• Months ago, James Rhodes was framed and arrested on an intel gathering mission that unearthed a terrible truth: Orchis isn’t planning to stop with mutants, they have every hero on Earth in their sights.
• Orchis will stop at nothing to achieve machine ascendancy.
• But when you’ve got to fight machines, it pays to have a War Machine of your own…Notes
- When Tony Stark's narration recalls his encounter with Emma Frost at the Bar with No Name being the reason he developed a countermeasure against her, an editor's note cites the issue in which it happened, Invincible Iron Man (Vol. 5) #6.
- As Iron Man is parting ways with Emma Frost, an editor's note directs readers to Fall of the House of X #1, when Emma is drafted back into the X-Men by Shadowkat. In Emma's one-panel appearance in that issue, she is approached by Pryde at the Hellfire Club while being accompanied by Tony, and he is still wearing the Mark Nil Armor. It's most likely for that issue's call-to-action to lead to Tony and Emma getting prepared to go to battle in this comic, and the issue to follow Emma's appearance being instead X-Men (Vol. 6) #32, in which she recruits other mutants into the final battle against Orchis aboard the same limo she is using in this issue.
- Before heading to Australia, Tony's narration states that he had "some Avengers business, an an editor's note directs readers to Avengers (Vol. 9) #12.
- This issue takes place before Fall of the House of X #2, since the Bloom is still intact. The space station is destroyed by Polaris in that comic by ramming Knowhere into it.
- When he arrives at the Australian Outback, Iron Man recalls in his narration that the X-Men once operated from here. This happened in Uncanny X-Men #229–251.
Trivia
- Cover artist Kael Ngu based his depiction of the War Machine Armor in the cover of this issue on its rendition from the War Machine [The Origins Collection] 1/6th scale figure by Hot Toys.[1]
- Iron Man explains to Emma that he got the idea of making her brass knuckles that read "Hell" and "Fire" from seeing her on a magazine cover with something similar. This is a meta-reference, since the concept of these brass knuckles originated in the cover of Marauders #25 by Russell Dauterman.
See Also
Links and References
References
- ↑ Ngu, Kael (November 20, 2023) Main cover for The Invincible Iron Man #15. I get to draw a classic Wa.... Retrieved on November 23, 2023.