WAR MACHINE

 

WAR MACHINE

Real Name: James Rupert Rhodes

First Appearance: Iron Man (Vol. 1) #118, January 1979 (as James Rhodes); Iron Man (Vol. 1) #170, May 1983 (as Iron Man); Iron Man (Vol. 1) #284, September 1992 (as War Machine)

Powers: Jim “Rhodey” Rhodes was a stand-in Iron Man for a time, first equipped with the Iron Man Mark V and later the Variable Threat Response Battle Suit, or War Machine Mark II armor, from which he derived his second code name. Like most Iron Man armors, the War Machine is made of accordion-like components which snap into shape and are then held in place by a powerful magnetic force field that maintains the suit's integrity and protect the wearer from sub-nuclear levels of assault. Exo-skeletal power boosters increase his strength to Class 85-90 under optimal conditions. It has a wide array of sensors, including multiple-targeting infrared laser sights. An arsenal of weapons is built into the gauntlets, including repulsor rays, pulse bolts, retractable laser blade for close-quarters combat, and a mini-cannon. The mini-cannon has modular ammunition feeds able to switch between tear gas, smoke, flare, tracer, armor-piercing, explosive, concussive, and thermite rounds. The chest-mounted uni-beam can be used as a searchlight, blinding flare, focused laser, heat beam, magnetic tractor/repulsor beam, or electromagnetic pulse generator. The backpack assembly is a modular system, able to store up to eight different weapons. The armor has hydraulic rail systems that move weapons from his back onto shoulder mounts. These weapons can be attached directly, carrying one on each side, or collapsed into a storage bundle for his full backpack assembly, storing eight bundles total and cybernetically triggering one at a time from each side to flip out onto the rails, unfold into ready mode, and then rise up onto his shoulder. He has employed a bazooka, plasma cannon, flamethrower, particle beam discharger, and pulse cannon in the past, but his primary shoulder weapons are a Gatling gun and mini-box rocket launcher. The Gatling gun fires armor-piercing rounds anywhere from 1 to 1,000 per minute, and has its own independent laser sight. The rocket launcher has a variable payload like the mini-cannon, equipped with smoke, tear gas, anti-tank, anti-ship, armor-piercing, flame bomb, fire suppressant, radio repeater, and sub-nuclear rockets. Rhodes ultimately lost this suit during a trip through the timestream.

Rhodes was next outfitted with the Eidolon Warwear, a body glove made of xeno-technology which bonded itself to him on a genetic level. The Warwear could hide itself beneath his skin, leaving no trace of its presence besides a series of mandalas (ceremonial markings) on portions of his skin. When activated, the Warwear sprung forth from his body and assembled itself into a full body suit of armor. A combination of exoskeletal and chemical enhancers increased his strength, speed, agility, endurance, and reaction time. The suit was highly durable and able to resistance physical injury, and could use nanite assemblers to repair any damage done to itself or to Jim himself. It enabled him to fly and preserved his life functions in the vacuum of space. An array of advanced sensors allowed him to see into different ranges of light, pick up on ultrasonics, and detect a range of electromagnetic waves. By touching a person or object, War Machine could probe it directly, creating a full spectrum sensory analysis. He was able to shed a set of drone rockets from his forearm, which could be used as explosive missiles or as a long range version of his sensory probes, acting as an extension of the Warwear to transmit information back to the main portion of the suit. Rhodes could also spawn new weapons from the adaptable material on his shoulders, literally creating virtually any weapon he could imagine. He tended to favor a concussion cannon. The Warwear was apparently lost when he directed it through Stark Enterprises's computer systems to purge the classified data after Stark died in Onslaught.

Later, James Rhodes showed up working with the Crew, using an Iron Man-style War Machine gauntlet to destroy motor vehicles. Here, Rhodes was using a holo-armor -- the gauntlet had a power supply enabling it to forge a hard-light recreation of the War Machine Armor Mark II around the wearer to grant them all the standard abilities: Strength, bulletproofing, flight, repulsors, etc. The holo-armor was supposed to have a serious power drain problem, though, even if additional power wasn't put to use on using the active systems once the armor was formed, giving it only a few minutes supply of energy when activated. After that, Rhodes joined Sentinel Squad O*N*E, typically wearing a man-sized version of the giant mechanical suits. This armor was presumably equipped with the standard array of strength enhancement, force field reinforced armor, pulsar beams, sensory scanners, and boot jets.

After suffering otherwise-fatal injuries in a terrorist attack, Rhodey was left quadraplegic with severe damage to his body and the right side of his face. Tony Stark had him rebuilt using cutting edge Cyberware, with cybernetic limbs, a heavily reinforced spine, cerebral control implants, and an artificial eye, all composed out of a mixture of titanium and impact-absorbing vibranium. Additionally, Tony deliberately constructed Rhodey's cybernetics and operating system without any StarkTech, in case Stark's system was ever hacked or corrupted. Independent of any other adornments, Jim's cybernetics gave him some level of increased strength and reflexes and a coherent laser beam built into his right optic. Furthermore, the cybernetic implants in his brain gave him a photographic memory and total recall, as well as enhanced data processing abilities. Rhodey's cybernetics were not designed to work alone, however -- without the helmet and chestpiece of his War Machine armor, Rhodes' personal Cyberware would quickly run dry on its reserve power supply. In order to stay alive, Rhodey required regular recharging periods where he connected his armor and, by extension, his life-supporting cybernetics to a power source.

The new War Machine armor outwardly resembled the original version. Inwardly, though, the suit was much more advanced. It possessed a wide array of sensors, capable of projecting floating holographic displays or mapping information directly onto Rhodes' eye. It could identify people and targets on sight, calling up extensive biographical information culled from all the world's databases. The sensors could scan for vital signs, diagnose injuries, and monitor pulse rate and pupil dilation to indicate stress and interpret if someone was lying. They also made War Machine's ability to target multiple long-range moving targets fantastic. Remote Flyspys are cameras literally shaped like a fly, able to infiltrate hidden locations and transmit visual and advanced sensory data back to Rhodes. He was equipped with collapsible cyber-jacks, enabling him to plug into computer systems to share or manipulate information, and energy absorbing abilities that siphoned directed or ambient energy supplies to recharge the armor and protect him from harm. For offensive purposes, War Machine could use the armor's standard features (repulsor rays, wrist-cannons, shoulder Gatling gun and microrocket launcher), or reveal his hidden cybernetic nature and unsheath a number of additional armaments. His entire armor would expand into a larger physical frame, the Gatling gun would telescope with increased range and firepower, the launcher would pop open with a number of extra launch tubes, and he would sprout a particle beam cannon on his chest, magnum barrels from his hips, and multiple other gunports from different points on his body.

Besides the features of the fully-assembled armor itself, War Machine's cybernetics had a unique power of tech assimilation. The location of the mechanism that controlled this power is unknown -- however, Rhodes retained it even after all his visible cybernetics were replaced with non-metallic plastic parts in prison, implying the ability was somehow encoded into the operating system of his components. The most basic feature of his tech assimilation power was the magno-locks that held his weapons and cybernetic components together. His arms and legs could be blasted off his body, and not only could he continue to cybernetically animate them from a distance, he could magnetically retrieve the limbs and re-affix them to his torso. New weapons and equipment could be added to his armor at any time, magnetically holding them to his suit while his Cyberware incorporated the tech's operating systems into his own. This allowed Rhodes to literally hold an entire working armory on his back. Tech-based assaults were virtually useless against War Machine. If guided missiles were fired at him, Jim could override their command codes, magnetically lock the missiles onto his exo-frame for as long as he desired, and then reactivate the missiles to send them flying off at a new target of his choosing. If portions of his mechanical body were damaged or lost, he could make use of whatever was available, such as grafting his torso onto a tank in order to regain mobility. War Machine's tech assimilation power enabled him to deconstruct machines from a distance and make use of their individual components. This was often an effective weapon on its own, as Rhodes could separate a jet into individual parts in mid-air, unceremoniously dropping the pilot to the ground below.

War Machine did not have matter manipulation abilities: He could not reshape the physical structure of individual pieces, or alter their composition. He could, however, reassemble tech in new ways, such as rebuilding his legs by swiping hydraulics and armor plating from outside sources. War Machine could manipulate extremely small amounts of material. Once, while separated from all other materials, he created a two-way radio transceiver out of a microchip he scraped together from silicon molecules on the walls of his cell. His tech assimilation powers could also be used to reconfigure a remote technological construct without altering or adding to his own body: When a jet airliner had its wings shorn off, War Machine used his magno-locks to grab the engines off the wings and reattach them to the plane as upward thrusters, similar to a Helicarrier design.

Eventually, Rhodes had his brain deposited into a cloned body, and regained his humanity. He has readopted a normal-looking War Machine armor since then. The armor demonstrated standard capabilities and no noticeable advancements until Rhodes upgraded to an entirely new suit.

After his first defeat at the hands of Palmer Addley, War Machine turned to Tony Stark to improve the armor for more modern warfare scenarios. The armor's basic features remained the same: Exoskeletal strength enhancement, magnetic field reinforced armor, repulsor rays, and boot rockets. The suit relies on current Stark technology, including a repulsor electromagnetic arc generator in the chestplate, giving it a virtually limitless power supply. It was streamlined to possess no exterior weapon systems under normal conditions, but several long range implements like a machine gun, rocket launcher, particle beam weapon and so forth are now stored inside the shoulders and forearms, and emerge for use at a cybernetic command. The primary advancements came in the armor's versatility for different combat situations. It now includes a "Ghost mode", shifting Rhodes' mass extra-dimensionally to simulate intangibility, making him untouchable by attacks and capable of passing through solid barriers. Next, the "Chameleon mode" could make him invisible to the naked eye, in addition to sensor invisibility that cloaks him from radar, infrared, sonar, computer targeting systems, etc. Ghost and Chameleon mode are incompatible with each other, and so only one can be activated at a time.

Jim Rhodes was trained in the military and, as a result, is a skilled pilot, hand-to-hand combatant, and aviation engineer.