Origin
In the year 3016, Nathaniel Richards is rescued by his future self before a lethal attack by bullies, a key event in his path toward villainy. Nathan is given new armor and a glimpse of his life as Kang the Conqueror. As a result he turns against his future self and uses the armor to travel to modern day Earth (616 reality) to change his destiny.
Mayor Story Arcs
Joining the Young Avengers
After finding a destroyed Avengers Mansion (caused by an insane Scarlet Witch) and failing to travel further back in time, he finds the remains of Vision. Linking with the Visions systems he downloads all of his programs including a failsafe plan to assemble a new team of Avengers pending the destruction or disbanding of the original team. Young Kang assembles the Young Avengers and models his armor after Iron Man calling himself Iron Lad.
Eventually Kang returns to the present in search of Iron Lad with the intent on putting him back in his own time to prevent further disruption in the “time stream”. He battles the Young Avengers and quickly gains the advantage until Iron Lad stabs him through the back with a sword. The death of future Kang caused further disruption of reality, Iron Lad realized that he must accept his future as Kang the Conqueror to reverse the reality disruptions. Before his return to 3016, his mind is wiped clean and his armor removed. The Young Avengers lost a member in young Kang, but gained a new one via his armor. His Iron Lad armor fuses with Vision’s programing creating a new Vision who joins the team. Like young Kang, the new Vision has feelings for Cassandra Lang.
The Children’s Crusade
Iron Lad reappeared in Avengers: The Children’s Crusade saving Wanda Maximoff‘s (aka The Scarlet Witch) life from Wolverine. Iron Lad helped the Young Avengers and traveled to the past on the day Scott Lang (aka Ant-man) was killed at the request of his daughter Casandra Lang (aka Stature). The manage to save him from his death when the Scarlet witch who had just regained her memories brought them back to the present. When Scarlet Witch along with Dr. Doom and Wiccan attempted to restore power to all mutants who lost their abilities after M-day, Patriot throws one of Kate Bishop‘s arrows and stops them and Dr. Doom gains Wanda’s reality altering powers. He later fight the Avengers, the Young Avengers, and the X-men all at once and when it appears that Ant-man is killed his daughter, Stature charges at Doom and is actually killed. Iron Lad then wants to bring her to the future to find a doctor that can cure her, but Vision says to leave her there. This infuriates Iron Lad and he believes that Vision just wants Cassandra to stay with him and so he fights him and destroys him saying that he built Vision and could tear him apart just as easily. Everyone is shocked and Iron Lad goes back into the time stream leaving everyone else behind.
It was shown in Avengers: The Children’s Crusade – Young Avengers special that just prior to this he was in another time period fighting Kang, when the grown up Young Avengers appeared to defend Kang, who was now a member of team. They told him that the present day team of Avengers had killed both The Scarlet Witch and Wiccan. Iron Lad then travelled through time to save their lives. Though at the end of the issue it was revealed that the Young Avengers had been lying and Wiccan was still alive.
As a villain
Iron Lad, now calling himself Kid Immortus, later showed up as an accomplice of Doctor Doom during his battle with Scott Lang and the Future Foundation. He was shown in the company of a teen version of Ravonna as well. The partnership with Doom was tumultuous at best, and both Kid Immortus and Ravonna later abandoned the villain when the situation became dire.
Iron Lad later returned during Original Sin, where he and Immortus tried to keep Captain America captive to prevent him from interfering with the Illuminati‘s plan to save Earth from future Incursions.
Powers and Abilities
The armor Iron Lad wears is capable of energy blasts (similar to Iron Man’s repulsor blasts), flight, hacking into computer systems, generating magnetic fields, time travel, as well as changing its appearance based upon Iron Lad’s thoughts. Iron Lad’s armor shares a lot of similarities with Iron Man’s armor seeing how it was inspired by Stark’s design. The suit was made by his older self that he stole in order to travel to the past, in disguise.
In Other Media
Video Games
- Iron Lad appears in the Marvel Avengers Academy mobile game as part of the “Armor Wars” event, voiced by Billy Kametz.
Merchandise
- Iron Lad was featured in ToyBiz’s Marvel Legends line as part of the Young Avengers box set.
- Iron Lad was featured in the HeroClix figure game.