Howard Stark

Howard Stark is a brilliant industrialist and engineer working with the Strategic Scientific Reserve. A showman inventor as comfortable dazzling a Stark Expo crowd with a hovering car as he is engineering the tools that make the super-soldier program possible. He provides the vita-ray chamber that completes Steve Rogers' transformation and works the controls as the frail recruit is remade into a super soldier. A friend of Peggy Carter and a private defense contractor, he oscillates between the worlds of science, industry, and the war effort.

His genius outfits Captain America for the real fight. He presents Steve with a range of gear. Ultimately, Steve chooses his iconic Vibranium shield. When Steve resolves to go behind enemy lines to save the 107th, its Howard who flies him into Hydra territory and drops him near the enemy base. He later he joins the search of the frozen north that recovers the lost Tesseract from the sea after Steve's tragic crash.

Howard Stark has spent years as America's golden boy: boy genius turned weapons developer turned multi-millionaire, and by Peggy Carter's own account the best civilian pilot the war ever put in a cockpit. That shine curdles fast. Six pieces of his technology surface on the black market and in the arsenals of enemy states. The founder of Stark Industries is hauled before Congress to answer for it. He treats the hearings like a punchline, waffles through the questioning, and cannot even recall the charge. Then he skips the final day of testimony entirely. By the time the SSR comes looking, Stark is no longer merely in contempt of Congress. He is a fugitive from justice.

His version is simpler: he was robbed. Beneath his office sat a triple-thick, lead-lined vault where he kept his "bad babies," inventions too dangerous to sell to anyone, friends included. While he was away in Monaco, someone cut a hole from the sewer straight up into that vault and cleaned him out, and now his deadliest work is bleeding onto the black market. Rather than gamble on the Senate believing any of that, he recruits the one person he does trust, planting Peggy inside the SSR to hunt the real thief while he chases the overseas buyers himself. He leaves her his butler, Edwin Jarvis, and a warning that his molecular Nitramene formula could level whole city avenues. He is serenely certain the plan is airtight, which tracks for a man who says of an untested explosive, "I invented it, so it works."

Howard Stark returns to New York after secretly entering the country and immediately becomes the center of Peggy's problems. Peggy and Jarvis rescue him from the smugglers working for Otto Mink and hide him at the Griffith Hotel. Stark explains that he plans to leave for Rio in three days and wants Peggy to determine which of his confiscated inventions the SSR has recovered and which may still be circulating on the black market.

Stark then asks Peggy to steal the Blitzkrieg Button from the SSR. He describes it as a weapon capable of knocking out the electrical grid across New York and gives Peggy a dummy replacement. His actual purpose is to recover a vial of Steve Rogers' blood concealed inside the device. When Peggy discovers the deception and confronts him, Stark claims that he wants the blood for scientific research and possible medical breakthroughs. Peggy rejects his explanation, accusing him of using her and Steve's memory for personal gain, and refuses to give him the blood.

Howard returns to New York and walks into SSR custody. He explains that Midnight Oil was originally developed as a military stimulant intended to keep soldiers awake for extended periods. The chemical instead produced anger, hallucinations, psychosis, and eventually asphyxiation. Howard says that General John McGinnis ordered his laboratory raided and his research taken before Midnight Oil was deployed during the battle of Finow. Howard subsequently traveled to Finow and witnessed the effects of his invention on the soldiers there.

Howard agrees to serve as bait for Fennhoff and participates in the public appearance arranged by the SSR. Dottie and Fennhoff kidnap him during the attack and take him to his private aircraft hangar, where Fennhoff hypnotizes him. Fennhoff makes Howard believe that Steve Rogers has been found alive and convinces him to fly toward New York with Midnight Oil aboard his aircraft. Peggy reaches Howard by radio and reminds him that Steve died more than a year earlier. Howard comes to, abandons the attack, and returns with Jarvis. He later decides to destroy his remaining dangerous inventions.