The Safe Armor

The Sentient Armor

Iron Man armor enables the wearer to lift approximately 70 tons under standard operating conditions.  Armors contain various generic and specialized offensive weaponry.

Generic features include:

• Computerized Digital Communications including a two-way radio, phone and external computer interface.

• Sensors containing radar, sonar, X-ray and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) capabilities.

• Repulsors: Laser-guided particle beam emission units mounted in the palm of each hand.

• Uni-beam: Multi-band light and force beam emitter adjustable to multiple uses including search light, heat beam, tractor beam, laser, holographic image inducers, ultraviolet light projector and electromagnetic pulse emission (EMP).

• Force Shielded Armor granting the wearer a degree of invulnerability.

• Boot Jets granting the power of  sustained flight.

• Human Senses Protection including sound bafflers and polarized lenses.

• Life support and  nutrition systems with underwater pressure tolerances of approximately 2000 feet and limited low orbit space capabilities.

Safe Armor is bulkier due to additional internal shielding and due to it not being compact enough to be carried in an attaché case, had to stored in a vehicle trunk and designed to be self piloting using anti-gravity technology.  When called via remote control, safe armor will track a homing signal and unfold from a modulated form to cover the body of the wearer.

Safety Armor

Iron Man Vol. 3 #15 (April, 1999)

Sentient Armor

Iron Man Vol. 3 #26 (Jan. 2000)

The armor gained sentience through a peculiar sequence of events.

Contracted by Sunset Bain (Madame Menace), Stark was assigned to break a series of security codes.  Recognizing the codes as an the intelligent program of the android Jocasta, Stark reactivated the robot's program and downloaded her into his armor's systems, later uploading her into his home system's mainframe.

 Stark believed that the downloaded residual of Jocasta's artificial intelligence corrupted the systems of Stark's armor, which when combined with a series of high-voltage electric shocks from the criminal known as Whiplash and a freak bolt of lightening and possible Y2K programming glitches overloaded the system, and the armors program became sentient.

Stark's initial instinct was to deactivate the armor and purge its systems.  The armor convinced him of the benefits of working together.  This arrangement worked, until the armor began to override Stark's commands and killed Whiplash when he refused to divulge his employer.  Stark attempted to instruct the armor in ethics, but to no avail, which lead to the inevitable altercation where he had to don his old armor to battle the new armor.

Stark was easily bested by the sentient armor and taken to a remote island, where the emotion conflicted armor insisted its creator become one with it.  Refusing, the armor battered Stark and left him to answer an Avengers distress call.  While gone, Stark set a series of traps in a desperate attempt to deactivate his creation.  When the armor returned the ensuing battle caused Stark to suffer a heart attack caused by an injury inflicted years earlier.  Conflicted the armor ripped a device from its own chest and attached it to Stark.  The self-inflicted injury caused the armor to lose power and deactivate.  In time the artificial heart would burrow its way into Stark's chest replacing his organic heart.

Stark used the armor's helmet to radio for help and buried it on the island.

It was later revealed that the sentient armor had been subconsciously programmed by Jocasta, through protocols programmed by her creator Ultron as a safeguard against his own deactivation.  When the armor was reactivated by the religious cult the Sons of Yinsen, in a plan to resurrect the man who help Stark create his first armor, the sentient armor followed through on its programming and lead the cult to the remains of Ultron, once again reactivating the robotic menace.