Marvel Introduces Iron Man and Wasp’s Son, and He’s a Villain

The age of heroes is over. Avengers: Twilight #1, from writer Chip Zdarsky and artist Daniel Acuna, takes place in a dystopic future decades after “H-Day”: Hero Day, a national tragedy and a day of reckoning for the superhero community that leveled Boston and killed hundreds — including Spider-Man and the Hulk. An elderly and de-powered Steve Rogers is an old soldier in futuristic New York City: an authoritarian police state under the inescapable eyes of Big Brother. S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Iron Cops brutalize citizens in violation of the Watcher Act, which outlawed camera phones as a criminal offense, and the new Avengers are Earth’s mightiest zeroes.

The new Iron Man is an empty suit powered by Stark Technology C.E.O. James Stark, the spoiled and sleazy son of two original Avengers: Tony Stark/Iron Man and Janet van Dyne/Wasp. Stark has a direct line to the president and the F.B.I., providing the U.S. with soldier armor and weapons from a government facility: The Raft. He’s the type to profess himself a proponent of free speech while verbally lashing war hero Steve Rogers on national television, where he blames the old Captain America and the old Iron Man for H-Day. 

“You and others — like my father — painted the world as black and white, heroes and villains… but then you brought us H-Day,” Stark tells Rogers. “The day the world woke up… and realized there is no line between vigilante ‘heroes’ and media-dubbed ‘villains.’ Unparalleled destruction by all, but the death count fell mostly to Dr. Bruce Banner… the Hulk.” As Rogers recalls, it was the rogue robot Ultron that exposed all superhero secret identities, enhanced groups of supervillains, and then took control of Hulk on H-Day. To that, Stark responds: “The evil A.I. created by yet another Avenger, Dr. Hank Pym.”

“I know what a hero looks like. They look like your mom and dad,” Rogers says, storming out. “Are you trying to tarnish their legacies so you don’t look as hollow by comparison?” He fumes to himself about the younger Stark: “He’s got so much of Tony and Jan in him — they both loved to pick fights with me and my ‘old-fashioned ways.’” James Stark is still a kid, he thinks, protected by Edwin Jarvis’ younger brother, Kyle, from up in his tower.

After Iron Cops clad in Iron Man-esque armor rough up Rogers for defending some video-recording skateboarders for violating curfew, he’s rescued by the Defenders: a resistance of hooded and poncho-clad dissenters in masks. Their leader is an aged Luke Cage, whose once bulletproof skin has made him nearly immovable. Their leader is Amy, a defector from the new S.H.I.E.L.D. who has been gaining intel on their abuses of the American people. They murdered Matt Murdock, who opened a legal clinic to challenge the Watcher Act, until he was disappeared. “The government and S.H.I.E.L.D. are squashing political dissent. The new Avengers are laying waste to countries overseas,” Cage tells Rogers, informing him that the news is tightly controlled by a conglomerate — a group that Tony and Jan’s son is a part of. The Defenders have been trying to spread the truth, but they need a symbol to fight fascism. They need Captain America.

A scientist, Carey, managed to replicate the Super-Soldier Serum that turned a weakly Steve Rogers into Captain America in the 1940s. The process only works on some, so Cage is calling on Rogers to be the symbol that the Defenders aren’t as they fight from the shadows. A century after he first stepped into the Vita-Ray Chamber, Steve Rogers is again reborn as Captain America… and he’s going to assemble the Avengers.

Elsewhere, at the Raft, Stark’s high-tech lab doubles as a prison for the disembodied head of Tony Stark. James is the only one who can make contact with Tony via a neuro-link Iron Man helmet… revealing that James is keeping what’s left of his father’s mind alive to create Stark tech.

Avengers: Twilight #1 is on sale now; issue #2 is out February 28.