STOCKPILE

Membership: Brass, Joust, Sunstreak, Unicorn, Calico

Purpose: Mercenaries/criminals

Affiliations: Morgan Stark

Enemies: Iron Man (Tony Stark) of Earth-96020, War Machine, Abe Zimmer

Base of Operations: Helicon (Morgan Stark’s base, anyway)

First Appearance: Iron Man I#330 (July, 1996)

History: The Stockpile were a team of high-tech mercenaries, working for Morgan Stark in his attempt to seize control of Stark’s Iron Man armors.

Following his apparent death in Iron Man I#292, Morgan Stark survived thanks to the synthetic neural network stolen from his cousin Tony, allowing him limited mobility, and to link himself to Brass. Morgan appeared inhologram-form, to taunt Teen Tony (Iron Man: Age of Innocence), and observed the reading of Stark’s will from his underground lair, Helicon (Iron Man I#327).

(Iron Man I#330)- Calico broke into the old Stark International Research & Development Complex (which had since become part of Stark Enterprises, and then Stark-Fujikawa) on Long Island, only to find that Stark’s old chief of security, Abe Zimmer, was there, expecting an attack, and killed her by electrocuting her. The rest of the Stockpile arrived, and blasted him out of a window, killing him.

Having received a call for help from Zimmer, Jim Rhodes arrived at the complex, as War Machine, accompanied by Iron Boy, who discovered the Stark Vaults and the ‘Hall of Armors’ within the complex. The Stockpile broke in, and confronted them.

(Iron Man I#331)- The Stockpile initially overwhelmed Iron Boy and War Machine, until Iron Boy deflected Sunstreak’s ‘solar lance’ at Brass, destroying it. Joust assumed command of the group, sending Sunstreak against Iron Boy again, only for him to freeze her out of the fight with a sustained barometric field of air at absolute zero, while War Machine slammed Unicorn into Joust, knocking her out. Unicorn quickly recovered and charged at Iron oy and War Machine, proving resistant to their weapons, but not to a section of the ceiling they brought crashing down on him.

Morgan Stark, however, managed to cyber-link himself into all of the Iron Man armors at once, and attacked Iron Boy and War Machine again, sending wave after wave of armors at them, until Iron Boy came up with the plan of transmitting the self-destruct frequency to the armors. As he did so, War Machine took the unconscious Joust and Sunstreak to safety (and presumably then to incarceration), and, looking for the Unicorn, found he had already escaped. Morgan Stark, with what was left of his own body dying as a result of the feedback from Brass’ destruction, was seemingly killed when the armors were destroyed.

(Deadpool III#39)- While eating at the Russian Tea Room ("where all the really chic super-villains eat"), Deadpool, Constrictor and Titania/Copycat noticed an out-of-costume Unicorn was also there.

Comments: Created by Terry Kavanagh, Jimmy Cheung and Marc Campos.

Morgan returned none the worse for wear, and with Tony bearing no ill will towards him, as if none of this had ever happened, in Iron Man III#1. Ah, continuity...

While Brass was directly controlled by Morgan Stark, Morgan’s hardly an obscure character, nor directly a member of the group, so isn’t included as a bio of his own, just as part of their history.

Given that the other Unicorns are dead and insane, it presumably must’ve been the Stockpile Unicorn in Deadpool III#39.
--could be, although death (and/or insanity) have never stopped anyone at Marvel before...--Snood.

Iron Boy refers to the teenage Tony Stark brought through time to replace the Kang-controlled version from the Crossing--Snood.

Joust, Calico & Unicorn received real names in the Dark Reign Files.

Profile by Gauntlet: Dark Rider

Clarifications: None for Stockpile. see individuals

Brass should not be confused with:

• Brass, ally of Ghost Rider and Wolverine, @ Marvel Comics Presents I#67
• Brass, General Selbert, of Project: Glamor, @ Marvel Comics Presents I#1