Ultimo / Ultimo Lives / Crescendo

The lights burn late at Anthony Stark Enterprises. Tony Stark leaves with a senator for a congressional hearing and tells Pepper Potts to look after Happy Hogan. Then strange bolts split the sky. Shimmering light bathes the car, the engine dies, and Stark vanishes from the face of the Earth. Half a world away, inside his castle in China, the Mandarin has reached across the globe with his power rings. He was hunting Iron Man. He hauled in Iron Man's employer instead. General Yen and his troops ring the castle and demand the Mandarin's aid. A rain of giant hailstones scatters them into the hills. The Mandarin serves no nation. Soon, he promises, all of Earth will lie beneath his heel.

Then the Mandarin plays his master stroke. He unleashes Ultimo. From a volcano thought long dead rises the most gigantic figure mortal eyes have ever seen. Stripped of the attache case that holds his armor, Stark can only watch the living weapon lumber closer. So he gambles. While the Mandarin gloats, Stark dives for the moat and reclaims his case. Iron Man lives again. Golden and dwarfed, he faces a giant he cannot out-punch, so he out-thinks it. He lures Ultimo to the volcano's peak. He jets past the giant's withering eye-beams. Those beams strike the mountain's own molten eye instead. The volcano erupts and the force of the eruption is enough to destroy Ultimo. Back in Washington, the senator's deadline runs down to five minutes. Then Iron Man strolls in, a touch late, with a bit of unfinished business cleaned up.