Marvel Television’s Ironheart pits technology against magic. But Parker Robbins, AKA the Hood (Transformers: Rise of the Beasts‘ Anthony Ramos), leads a squad combining both. A new teaser released ahead of the June 24 premiere of the Disney+ series introduces Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne) to the Hood’s gang, which includes pyrotechnics specialist Clown (Birdgirl‘s Sonia Denis); the muscle, Blood Siblings Ros (GLOW‘s Shakira Barrera) and Jerry Blood (Talk to Me‘s Zoe Terakes); knife-wielding “H.R.” John (Good Girls‘ Manny Montana); hacker extraordinaire Slug (RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars winner Shea Couleé); and tech specialist Stuart Clarke (The Eric Andre Show‘s Eric André), who has a moniker that Iron Man comic readers might recognize.
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“It’s not Stuart, it’s Rampage,” André’s techie says in the new clip, which you can watch below.
In the comics, Stuart Clarke’s Rampage debuted in the pages of Champions #5 in 1976. Created by writer Tony Isabella and artist Don Heck, the co-creator of Iron Man with Stan Lee, Rampage was described as “the everyman of super-villains” and the first born of the 1970s recession.
Rampage battled the Los Angeles-based team of Hercules, Ghost Rider, Black Widow, and the X-Men’s Angel and Iceman, wearing the exo-skeleton uniform he developed to revolutionize police work. But when Tony Stark’s Los Angeles operation started work on a similar project and received the government contracts that could have saved his failing business, Clarke Futuristic, he donned the lightweight exo-skeleton and went on a rampage.
The inventor-turned-bank robber later formed the Recession Raiders — a pack of armored Rampages — and battled the Avengers Wonder Man and Beast. After his company went bankrupt, Clarke joined Baintronics, Inc., a company founded by Sunset Bain, AKA the underworld armorer Madame Menace, who raided Stark Industries and stole Stark tech. In the 1990s Iron Man comic run, Clarke helped Bain’s technology and munitions firm as it targeted Stark with an imposter War Machine at a time when Jim Rhodes had retired.
When the Punisher’s armory was depleted during the superhuman civil war, and Clarke escaped from the Raft, Frank Castle tracked him down and had Clarke supply him with an arsenal of high-tech gadgets and weapons as his new “Microchip.” Most recently, Clarke suited up as Rampage again at a time when Doctor Doom became the infamous Iron Man while Stark was incapacitated. Rampage joined the Hood’s gang when Robbins decided to organize a group of villains to take down Doom in his Iron Man armor.
But Rampage isn’t the only Iron Man villain hiding in plain sight. Ironheart‘s Blood Siblings, Ros and Jerry, are a take on the Blood Brothers, R’Hos Blood and Gh’Ree Blood (“Ross” and “Gary”).
First introduced in 1972’s Iron Man #55 by Jim Starlin and Mike Friedrich, the Blood Brothers are symbionically linked — proximity determines their strength. The closer they are to each other, the stronger they become, so Iron Man’s strategy is to separate them when he’s faced the duo in the pages of Iron Man. Part of the Roclite species, the Blood Brothers were originally servants of Thanos and they have thrown down with the likes of Drax the Destroyer and Thing of the Fantastic Four.
Set after the events of 2022’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Ironheart pits technology against magic when Riri — determined to make her mark on the world — returns to her hometown of Chicago. Her unique take on building iron suits is brilliant, but in pursuit of her ambitions, she finds herself wrapped up with the mysterious Hood.
Marvel’s Ironheart, which also stars Lyric Ross, Alden Ehrenreich, Regan Aliyah, Matthew Elam, and Anji White, premieres with three episodes June 24 on Disney+. A second batch of episodes drop one week later on July 1.
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