Over the weekend at the New York Comic Con, Marvel announced that Dan Slott, Christos Gage and Pete Woods are working on the next iteration of Iron Man — Iron Man 2020, which spins out of Slott’s run on the character thus far.
Inside the Iron Man 2020 armor is Arno Stark, Tony Stark’s brother. He’ll be facing down with the Robot Rebellion, as artificial intelligence battles for robot rights.
“Like the inexorable turning of pages on a calendar, we’ve been building up to the arrival of 2020 and the advent of Arno Stark as Iron Man ever since this latest run began!” says Executive Editor Tom Brevoort. “Here, all of the larger themes we’ve been playing with will come to the fore in a big, sweeping, epic action movie that anyone can enjoy!”
Here’s how Marvel describes the book:
In Iron Man 2020, the future has arrived, and Artificial Intelligences present a clear and present danger to humanity and must be brought to heel! As the Robot Rebellion battles for the establishment of robot rights, someone new will don the Iron Man suit: Arno Stark, the long-lost brother of Tony Stark.
But Arno Stark won’t be alone: War Machine, Rescue, Ironheart will all have roles to play in the new series. The Robot Rebellion will also feature some familiar robots from the Marvel Universe including Machine Man AKA Aaron Stack, Jocasta, the Vision, Albert (the robotic Wolverine character), Elsie-Dee, Machinesmith, Nick Fury LMDs, Death’s Head, the Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android, Quasimodo, H.E.R.B.I.E., the Dreadnaughts, Brynocki, Alkhema and M-11.
Also, the press mentions everyone from Arno to Rescue to Jocasta, but there’s no mention of what exactly happened to Tony Stark. Hmmm.
Iron Man 2020 has been around since the 1980s, when he first appeared in a Machine Man miniseries set 40 years in the future. In that story, he was a cousin of Tony, beautifully drawn by Barry Windsor-Smith. Seriously, check it out:
With that future just a year away now, and with Arno Stark debuting as Tony’s long-lost brother, it’s probably been inevitable that this storyline was coming.
The new series begins in January.