The Ultimates are running out of time. The Maker breaks free from his cage in a few short months, and so far the Ultimates have hardly made any progress in their worldwide revolution. After the revelation that the team would have died at Hulk’s hands without Doom using the Immortus Engine, they realized they were thinking about everything all wrong. The Ultimates have completely restructured how they’re fighting, going from a team to a movement. In the midst of that, Iron Lad using the Immortus Engine as his new heart has awakened a new power that can turn the tides of everything.
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The Ultimate Movement Has Begun
For the first year, the Ultimates tried to fight like a team or an army, but now they know that if they want to make a real difference they need to be something more. Instead of just attacking the powers that be, they’re also taking the time to inspire and teach the people how to fight for themselves. They’ve made their own version of the internet, where they spread the information that the elites suppress and hold anonymous sessions to teach people skills they’ll need to stand up for themselves. Luke Cage has led rebellions in supermax prisons all across North America, and they’ve converted them into schools to train future superheroes. Iron Lad even used the time-controlling abilities of the Immortus Engine to slow down time inside the prisons, massively extending the training period for everyone.
That’s not to say everything is going well for our heroes. Thor and Sif still refuse to return to Midgard, leading their revolution in the rest of the Nine Realms. At the same time, a traitor in their ranks is reporting their every move to the Council that runs the world. Wasp has been spying on her fellow Ultimates for months now, and stumbled upon a secret meeting between Iron Lad and the Human Torch. They talked about a secret mission that would cost Torch his life, and the android agreed without hesitation. We don’t know exactly what went down, but Wasp does, and it’s no doubt she told the supervillains the Ultimates are down a pivotal member. Of course, she also discovered one other secret that is even bigger, and had the ability to change the course of everything.
Iron Lad was all across the globe inspiring the populace, visiting the prisons, taking down the Red Skulls, and doing so much more. The final page of the issue reveals that this is all possible because of Tony’s use of the Immortus Engine. Not only does it allow him to see through time and make it so his need to eat and sleep are vastly decreased, but he’s started using it to isolate his own moments in time and split them. Effectively, Iron Lad is creating duplicates of himself by manipulating his own time stream, allowing him to be in multiple places at once. However, each of these duplicates demand a piece of his attention, so it’s not like he’s cloning himself, but more like he’s piloting multiple bodies at the same time. This sounds like an information overload nightmare, but there are few people who are better at multitasking than Tony Stark. Already, Tony is planning to up the number of himself that he keeps in rotation to nine or ten at a time, meaning he’d be doing ten different tasks and holding potentially ten different conversations at the same time. All of that on top of actively focusing on using the Immortus Engine to keep himself split. Even for someone as smart as Tony, it’s hard to imagine that level of concentration not having a negative side effect on some level. Still, even if he can only split into a few chronal copies at a time, even one extra Iron Lad is a game changer.
The Ultimate Army of Iron Lads
Especially with their resident gods out of the picture for now, Iron Lad is one of the Ultimate’s heavy hitters. His armor lets him go toe to toe with some of the strongest villains in the world, and if he can now be in multiple places at once, then their fire power just massively increased. Even if his effectiveness as a fighter and thinker goes down slightly with so many of him running around, ten Iron Lads running around each at sixty percent effectiveness of the single one is an insane boost. Iron Lad has finally tapped into the time warping abilities that the Immortus Engine gives him access to, and given all he’s shown so far, I’m willing to bet that he’s still only just scratching the surface of his full potential. The Council may know what he can do, but that doesn’t mean they can do anything to stop him. Of course, they might try and take advantage of his split attention, but we’ll just have to wait and see if Iron Lad can use this new power to change everything about how the Ultimages do business.
Ultimates #13 is on sale now!
