Random Happenstance

We saw the Iron Man vs. Alien riff of Iron Man #237 a while back; but as a title Warheads was tailor-made for bughunts. So, why not get Iron Man in there for one too? From 1992, Warheads #3, "Metamorph!" Guest-written by John Freeman, guest art by Geoff Senior.

Feels a little early for a guest crew, as well as a guest-star: readers would've barely had any time with the regular crew or cast yet. (Actually, the book's designer Gary Erskine had already left! He wouldn't be back in this run.) That said, maybe Geoff Senior should've got an Iron Man, as he does a great job on the current suit, the model 9, which I've seen referred to as "neo-classic" or "coffee-can," for the style of boots! (Looking it up, Senior would do a couple issues of War Machine later.) Nick Fury calls on Tony Stark, to examine captured Mys-Tech weaponry; Tony does so, and at first glance it shouldn't work. Tony keeps it to himself, but suspects this could be related to Justin Hammer stealing his tech again, which tied into current continuity: Tony was also dying of a nervous system disorder. Fury had discovered a team of Warheads was headed for Central America, and with his new hologram disguise tech, Tony flies down to check it out.

Tony eavesdrops on the Warheads, as they set up for a dimensional jump: a lot of their stuff was mystic-based, so I think they were in South America because this was ley-line based. Colonel Liger's regular Kether Troop was short-handed due to deaths and injuries, so they had more subs than usual, including mouthy tech support Grierson. Figuring they wouldn't notice if his behavior was off, Iron Man stuns Grierson, and holographically disguises himself to take his place on the mission. The Warheads are then sent via wormhole, across the galaxy, to try and salvage tech from a downed spaceship. "Grierson" and Peters are attacked by weird blobs and separated from the others: Tony realizes whatever that thing was, it was only trying to scan him; but Peters panics and tries to shoot his way out and is killed. The other Warheads fight their way through the ship, with an eye out for any tech they could maybe swipe, and find first cocoons with aliens in stasis, then weird copies of the Warheads attack.

Outside, Tony watches the blobs trying to absorb and scan the local wildlife, then gets attacked by one of the sub Warheads, who thought he was a robot sentry or something. The telepathic/precog Misha tries to warn her, but she is killed by the ship's defenses; so Misha teams up with Tony, since her "voice" tells her today they're on the same side. Today, anyway...Rejoining the rest of the squad, they start to put the puzzle together: the aliens didn't have anything like terraforming equipment, because they worked the other way: the ship would alter the alien colonists to survive in the local conditions. Or it should; the ship's programs seemed to have gotten crossed. Misha and Tony confront the alien computer and 'reset' it. The Warheads escape with some stolen goodies, and only Misha had seen that "Grierson" was Tony, which she keeps to herself. The real Grierson wakes up, confused why Colonel Liger was telling him great job on the mission; but that's written off as typical head-trauma for one of their jobs. 

A little beat-up, Tony manages to get home, with maybe a little intel for Fury: their tech was mostly magic, not swiped from him. And the Warheads might be dangerous, but whatever they were facing could be worse...