Anthony "Tony" StarkIron Lad

When an alternate universe Reed Richards, AKA The Maker, uses time travel to create his ideal Earth, Earth-6160, he prevents Super Heroes from existing and establishes a council of Super Villains that rules the world. When locked away by inventor Howard Stark, his teenage son, Tony, takes the code name Iron Lad and recruits a network of heroes to fight back against the Council and prepare for the Maker’s return.

A Future Set in Iron

Raised by technocrat and inventor Howard Stark, AKA Iron Man, Anthony “Tony” Stark grows up around science and technology and is something of a technological genius himself. His father runs Stane/Stark Industries with his business partner Obadiah Stane. 

As a teenager, Tony witnesses an attack on live TV in Latveria, one in which his father and Stane are part of but then the feed goes dark for a whole day. Howard returns home with Obadiah’s body and explains to Tony that the Maker had changed with their world’s history, creating his ideal Earth by systematically preventing anyone from becoming a Super Hero. Ruling his perfected Earth, he forms a secret council of Super Villains in charge of different regions, and together, The Maker’s Council quietly orchestrates the history of the world. In the Maker’s base of operations, a domed dwelling known as the City, he houses the Immortus Engine, a time machine, which allows him to carry out his diabolical plans. Though the engine is damaged and he needs Howard to help him fix it. Upon hearing this news, Tony encourages his father to fight them and win. Tony also offered to help but his father refused until he needed him, and Howard returned to the City.

When a broken and masked Reed Richards, AKA Doom, visits Tony, he gives the teenager the repaired Immortus Engine, of which Tony helped to restore, and a letter from his father. Howard was trapped in the sealed off City, trapping the imperator of Earth, the Maker, inside with him. Doom could not confirm whether Howard was alive but he did mention how inside the City the world was ending, the future colliding with the now. Tony also learns that the City will remain closed for a two-year time period. To take advantage of the time available with the Maker trapped, Tony resolves to restore heroes to his world, but realizes he needs a suit to do it. Doom helps him build a suit and with it he takes the code name Iron Lad.

A Suit of Armor

Fashioned after his father’s Iron Man armor, Tony’s full-body suit contains repulsor technology that fires concussive energy blasts from its gauntlets. The armor is also damage-resistant to an extent, offering Tony some superhuman durability. It can also handle temporal shear, making it resistant to the effects of time travel, and contains integrated navigational control.

A Great Evil

Tony’s foremost enemy is the diabolical genius The Maker, who used time travel to prevent Super Heroes from becoming their heroic selves, and established a secret council of villains, the Maker’s Council, that rules the world from the shadows. While the Maker is locked away in his own facility, the City, thanks to Tony’s father and a traumatized Reed Richards working together, Tony teams up with Reed, who insists on being called Doom, to set things right in their world.

Tony as Iron Lad comes up against The Maker’s council members and pawns such as Henri Duggary, AKA Captain Britain, and Midas. 

Ultimate Allies

Iron Lad first teams up with Doom, a broken Reed Richards who was held prisoner by the Maker for an unknown amount of time. Doom is haunted by his past, losing his family in an accident he caused, and often butts heads with Tony, though their goal to defeat the Maker and restore heroes to their world remains the same. While Doom pushes Tony to use their most powerful weapon, the Immortus Engine time machine, Tony often does not want to rely on it to fix all their problems, but will use it on occasion.

Tony and Doom recruit Thor, and Sif joins them as well, to create a team of Ultimates with the goal of building a network of super-powered heroes to defeat the Maker when he escapes his prison and his council.

Time Will Tell

To restore lost heroes, Iron Lad and Doom used the Immortus Engine to go back in time and rescue Super-Soldier Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, from the icy depths. By way of a technologically-advanced ship, Tony and Doom also traveled  to Asgard, breaking the Asgardian god Thor out of prison. His warden, Sif, joined them on their journey. Their collective goal was to create a group of super-powered individuals to fight the Maker and his cabal of Super Villains: The Maker’s Council. Though the council had other goals. Captain Britain, one of the Maker’s inner circle, confronted the team, severely wounding Thor but losing an eye to Iron Lad. The Council responded by launching an attack on New York City using Stark satellites, destroying Stark Tower and framing Tony and his allies as terrorists.

Thousands died in the attack and Tony was presumed dead to the world, but in actuality he and his small team absconded into the future, six months to be exact, secreted away in an off-the-books Stane/Stark corporate spy satellite. With the working Immortus Engine time machine in their hands, Tony believed they could fix things by creating the Super Hero resistance network: the Ultimates Network. To recreate the world stolen from them, Tony suggested finding replacement Super Heroes, as Doom noted that the Maker likely killed the original heroes. Still, Doom agreed to build the Ultimate Network with him albeit starting six months in the past. They worked for six days, designing super-identities, calculating the probability of heroism and weighing many other variables, preparing catalysts and calculating trajectories, and in between Tony cracked the ice that Captain America was trapped inside of, and brought him up to speed, including the fact that the United States broke up in 1969. 

Tony sent technology and heroic material in “origin-boxes” through time, back six months, to prospective recruits to teach them of the heroes they were meant to become. Afterward, Tony and Doom looked out the window hoping to see their world teeming with Super Heroes, but they found that only one or two took hold, such as the middle-aged Peter Parker, who allowed himself to be bitten by a radioactive spider to become Spider-Man, and the imprisoned Luke Cage, whose unbreakable skin and superhuman strength allowed him to protect others. Tony’s team of Ultimates then started recruiting some of their prospective heroes directly, such as android Jim Hammond, AKA Human Torch, as well as Hank Pym and Janet Van Dyne, who were both working in pest control. In the midst of recruiting the latter couple, the Ultimates were interrupted by Captain Britain and his personal guard, the Black Crusade. As a fight followed, Janet and Hank accepted their destiny, taking up the Wasp and Giant-Man mantles, then the newly formed Ultimates defeated the Black Crusade. 

The team soon rescued a powerful amnesiac young woman named America Chavez from the Council’s underbelly while Tony’s other recruitment attempts had failed. Tony soon found Doom focused on a problem in his past that haunted him, and arguing over whether to use the Immortus Engine, Tony resolved to leave Doom be. Meanwhile, Captain America recruited an unknown civilian who had taken up a discarded bow and arrow and was dressed in a Hawkeye costume. The mystery civilian was Charli Ramsey, a member of the Oglala band of the Lakota Nation, who soon joined the growing roster.

After Tony and part of the team tried to recruit Lejori Joena Zakaria, AKA She-Hulk, on Gamma Island, the Maker’s Council member, Bruce Banner, AKA the Hulk, saw their meddling as a direct threat to his experiments there. As such, the Hulk ambushed the network of Ultimates, leaving Tony near dead and in critical condition. While Tony healed in a containment tube, the Ultimates continued their mission of recruiting heroes. Tony eventually awoke, though his body was beyond conventional healing, so he installed the Immortus Engine into his chest. While undergoing surgery without anesthesia, he followed the Ultimates’ missions and discovered footage of the battle with the Hulk, which showed how everyone had perished, but no one had actually died. Suspecting that the Immortus Engine was used, he demanded an explanation from Doom.