Tough to pull off a dramatic unmasking when your face is seriously janked up.

Also, no one knowing who you are doesn't help, either. From 2004, Iron Man #88/433, "The Singularity, part 3" Written by Mark Ricketts, pencils by Tony Harris, inks by Tom Feister.

In the previous issue, Tony's longstanding on-and-off girlfriend Rumiko Fujikawa had just been murdered by someone in an Iron Man suit, and this month Tony has to fight the murderer in last year's suit. Although the murderer shoots down a news copter, another cameraman broadcasts the fight: Tony was unable to put his mask on, but this does clear his name. In Times Square, Pepper Potts and Happy Hogan see the broadcast, but Pepper seems to have a bigger picture goal in mind: lecturing Happy about "the singularity," she leads him to Tony's secret war room. (Pepper seemed severely traumatized last issue after the murder of the Stark board of directors; here she seems to be treating this as a lark, a fun day out.)

As the fight goes on, outside Tony's mansion the army has gathered a team, wearing even older Iron Man armors; and their commander is relayed an order from the president: "Eliminate the last Iron Man standing." Meanwhile, the fight doesn't go Tony's way: he catches a beating and his own lecture, this one about how stupid not having a secret identity was and how he put all his loved ones at risk. The Iron Murderer then unmasks, revealing himself to be...I have no idea who that is. It's illegal arms dealer Clarence Ward back for revenge, although how he got an Iron Man suit I have no idea. I'm not even sure how the army got them, for that matter.

I got the last four issues of this series out of a quarter bin, and I'm definitely blogging this one now so I can do the final issue for year-end. This is a lot--a lot a lot--editorial clearing house and putting the genies back in the bottle. The amount of effort put into doing that, and I'm not sure how long they stayed put...