Appearing in "Viva Las Vegas"
Featured Characters:
- Iron Man (Tony Stark) (First appearance)
Supporting Characters:
- Elsa Bloodstone (First appearance)
- Pepper Potts (First appearance)
Antagonists:
- Fin Fang Foom (Behind the scenes)
Other Characters:
- Ulysses Bloodstone (Referenced)
Races and Species:
Locations:
- Earth-80734 (First appearance)
Items:
Synopsis for "Viva Las Vegas"
In China, a tour guide escorts fortune hunter Elsa Bloodstone through an ancient settlement on the banks of the Yangtze. Exploring a cave, they find remnants of a giant golden statue called the Golden Dragon. Unconcerned about the value of the artifact, Elsa telephones her client and arranges to have it removed from the cave.
Somewhere over the Mediterranean, a terrorist attempts to hijack a Stark Air 797. As luck would have it, Tony Stark happens to be one of the passengers on board. He quickly dons his Iron Man armor, grabs the terrorist and flies through the top of the plane. The terrorist detonates a belt of explosives and dies. Iron Man flies back to the jet and tries to calm the passengers, but they appear to be more afraid of him than the terrorist. Flying away, he grumbles "I need a vacation".
Some time later, Tony Stark visits the Stark Casino on the Las Vegas strip. He entertains two attractive female patrons and invites them up into his suite. Across town, the statue of the gold dragon is mounted on the roof of the Golden Dragon Casino. Suddenly, hundreds of lizards begin scurrying across the streets of Vegas. They are all running in the same direction and there does not appear to be any reason for their odd behavior. At the Golden Dragon Casino, the eye pieces on the artifact begin to glow.
Solicit Synopsis
Notes
- Iron Man: Viva Las Vegas is a four-issue limited series published under Marvel's "Marvel Knights" imprint.
- Writer Jon Favreau is more popularly known as the director of the Iron Man feature film. He also played a cameo role as Tony Stark's limousine driver Happy Hogan.
- Several elements apparent in this series (Tony Stark drinking at the Stark Casino; there being no mention of Stark being the director SHIELD; the sudden existence of a never-before-mentioned Stark airline and Stark casino) indicate that it is not taking place on Earth-616; Instead, it seems more likely that this storyline takes place on the Earth-199999 seen in the Iron Man feature film. However, Marvel has indicated that the series actually takes place in its own seperate reality, Earth-80734
- The Golden Dragon statuary is revealed to be the physical shell for the dragon Fin Fang Foom in issue 2.