Part I Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI

A shadowy figure likely supposed to be Mordecai Midas makes some threats, which are never followed up on.

A few folks claim that Busiek intended Midas to be the bad guy in the unreleased Look Back in Armor 1-shot. He couldn't get to it before he left, in any case, and Tieri/Quesada were uninterested.

Morgan Stark shows up alive, limping, and legit after turning up horribly injured and then dying on-panel in the last issues of Vol. I.

A desire to gently reference the Kavanagh story without actually dredging it back up, I'd guess.

What is Jim Rhodes hiding from Tony here? He's reluctant to mention his salvage business, but he's clearly got other motives.

Possibly his huge financial problems revealed in The Crew #1?

Yvette Avril shows up here despite being listed as dead in the Iron Man: The Legend comic (apparently at the hands of Stockpile). How many of the other deaths attributed to the Stockpile didn't actually happen?

Note that the various Legend comics numerous signs of being last-minute productions, includign blatant spelling errors much liek those found elsewhere in thsi very list.

Where is Airstrike, the former Crimson Dynamo, when the Winter Guard show up?

He's also absent in the recent Avengers stuff. Dare we suggest that Busiek forgot about him?

The Mandarin's flashback here is inconsistent with the events of Vol. I #312. For one thing, the Heart of Darkness and the Avatars didn't blow up, they simply vanished.

There's also a raging debate about the janitor seen in #312, who many think was intended to be Warlord Chu.

The Mandarin makes a lot of comments suggesting that he has bigger plans, and promises to clash with Tony again soon. What has he been up to since then, and what exactly do his new "command rings" do now that the dragon base is destroyed? Was it the rings, or the base that almost overrode Vostok's powers?

Probably the rings, but that doesn't explain why they don't seem to affect the IM armor. And since the Mandarin is now considered dead and his original rings are back, we’ll probably never know. Note, however, that this issue all but spells out that the Mandarin will return.

How did Fin Fang Foom survive the events of Vol. I #275? Why is he now some kind of mystical possessing spirit?

Possibly this has something to do with Foom's odd appearances in the Legion of Night series.

What exactly are the military going to do with a massive dragon, anyway?

It's not like you can put Fin Fang Foom in jail, after all. Or maybe you can, as Yetrigar, another giant monster, was seen in the Vault in Avengers Spotlight #26.

Jocasta takes over the Antigone body and lets Tony think her destroyed. When will she turn up again?

Presumably Tieri was gesturing to the Jocasta seen in Avengers Forever.

Shouldn't Stark be more concerned about the Ultron-heart even after this encounter is over?

Indeed, issues of Black Panther demonstrated not only the heart's vulnerability, but also the fact that it retains some relationship to Ultron.

How did the Mandarin regain the dragon hands and Makluan rings after they were destroyed, and why did he send them to his son rather than take the rings back for himself?

For that matter, this issue simply cannot be reconciled with Vol. III #10 in any way. (Not that #10 doesn't itself have problems, as noted earlier.)

Iron Man again leaves Ty Stone "stuck" in Dreamvision, despite the fact that Stone managed to attack him from this position before.

Temugin leaves claiming that he will try to "enlighten" Tony regarding his materialism in the future. What does he mean by this, and when will he return?

Interpretations of this have ranged from seeing it as Temugin ending their hostilities to Grell and Laws setting up the basis for a different conflict between the two in the future. In any case, it's clearly intended to bring the character back at some point.