Iron Man (after helping the repentant super-villain mercenary Force fake his death so that he could retire to a normal, law-abiding life) makes a shocking discovery upon examining the former villain’s armor: it used Stark’s very own armor designs. In an attempt to stop other people from misusing his designs, Stark plans to go about disabling other armored heroes and villains who are using suits based on the Iron Man technology (the designs of which were stolen by his enemy Spymaster, who had gone on to sell them to Justin Hammer, days before faking his death).

With the aid of former employee Scott Lang, Iron Man (after helping the repentant super-villain mercenary Force fake his death so that he could retire to a normal, law-abiding life) makes a shocking discovery upon examining the former villain’s armor: it used Stark’s very own armor designs. In an attempt to stop other people from misusing his designs, Stark plans to go about disabling other armored heroes and villains who are using suits based on the Iron Man technology (the designs of which were stolen by his enemy Spymaster, who had gone on to sell them to Justin Hammer, days before faking his death).

With the aid of former employee Scott Lang, who infiltrates a front company of Hammer, he discovers the identities of all those using his designs, although one escapes discovery due to security stopping the download. Tony then sets out on his quest to eliminate the technology using negator packs on their armors to destroy the circuitry.

During the course of the “Armor Wars”, Iron Man begins by confronting and defeating Stilt-Man. The Mauler, his next target, surrenders the armor without a fight when confronted without it (as Doyle states, he’s paid to fight, plus he could always steal another armor). Iron Man then went after the Controller, but a member of the Controller’s cult was killed in the conflict when the Controller had his minions pile on top of Iron Man and a subsequent attack crushed one of the brainwashed attackers.

Stark takes out the Raiders (a gang of crooks using high-tech suits), but upon returning learns that one name is missing from Hammer’s database, Stark deduces that the armor user must be the government operative Stingray, as all other armor-wearing individuals (such as Frog-Man or Doctor Doom) can be eliminated by facts or logic.

When Stingray rejects Iron Man’s request to look at the armour, Stark catches and negates Stingray after an underwater skirmish, only to find out that his negator does not work as Stingray’s suit was not based on his technology. As a result, Stark is forced to “fire” Iron Man due to lawsuits by the US Government.

Tony then continues his crusade by taking out The Beetle, but he then targets the S.H.I.E.L.D. operatives known as the Mandroids. While the Mandroids are not criminals, Stark justifies this by saying that if anyone ever got a hold of one armor utilizing his technology, they could simply duplicate the technology and the nightmare would restart.

In order to get the Mandroids into a position where he can destroy them, Stark pretends to hand Iron Man (claiming that Iron Man is actually Randall Pierce, a name created by him in the past for such an eventuality) over to S.H.I.E.L.D. and then pretending to discover a bug to explain Iron Man’s ‘advance knowledge’ of the raid after the Mandroids are destroyed.

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