Machine Man: Difference between revisions
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On the dirigible, Machine Man was apparently disabled in a fight with Khan's new henchman, [[Tong]], who was enhanced to feel no pain. Machine Man and Khan were attached to a device designed to transfer their consciousnesses, allowing Khan to have an immortal body to match his powerful intellect. Machine Man feigned the device's success to get the drop on Tong, who he realised could still be harmed despite not feeling it, and in reality he had sent an electric backlash into the lab's instruments. With Tong downed and the dirigible exploding, Machine Man taunted Khan that if he wanted to escape such a nasty accident, he would have to save himself. As he escaped the exploding blimp, Machine Man pondered on how Khan's greed and vainglory reminded him of the worst of humanity. Aaron disregarded his despair to instead move on and, as always, hope for a better future for mankind. {{storylink|Xanadu!}}
On one occasion, Machine Man saved a bus full of school children from crashing off a bridge into the ocean. Machine Man helped to repair the bridge, though Peter encouraged him to take it slowly for the benefit of the assembled press and paparazzi. Peter readily admitted when asked by a journo that this was in response to [[Miles Brickman]]'s anti-Machine Man crusade, as Machine Man would have no need to take jobs from workers. TV reporter [[Dorothy Mason]] argued that Machine Man was at that moment taking a job from a derrick operator, and that with a hundred Machine Men, there'd be thousands fewer employees in construction. The press disperses, and Machine Man, who found the whole situation unnecessarily, departed for the job he already had. Arriving tt Delmar, Aaron was pounced upon by an amorous Maggie, so he stranded her on top of a tall filing cabinet.
That evening, Aaron was at home re-energising his cells when he received a call from Peter to put the TV on. The top news, as reported by Mrs Mayson, concerned a break-in of a Wall Street vault – with the [[Dobbs|security guards]] claiming the assailant to be Machine Man! Aaron could only listen over the phone as [[NYPD|police]] showed up at Peter's apartment with a warrant for both his and Machine Man's arrest. Distressed by this travesty of justice, Machine Man departed to patrol the city looking for the real culprit, though he had to modify his flight path to avoid Maggie, who was staking his apartment out.
Noticing a high-pitched frequency, Machine Man found his [[Barry Witherspoon|impersonator]] bursting through the wall of a jewellery store, stolen goods in hand. He was surprised to find the crook shrugged off his super strength, showed no response to thirty thousand volts of electricity, and reacted and responded unnaturally. Machine Man was overcome, partially due to the effect of the frequency affecting his gyro and gravity centres, and the phony escaped in a van. He regained consciousness to find the police had him dead to rights at the crime scene, but escaped, protesting his innocence. Atop a building, Aaron wondered if a life of persecution was what his father had envisioned for him, before he visited Peter at the window of his prison cell.
The next morning, a photo taken by Mrs Mayson of Machine Man "invading" the prison was all over [[Daily Bugle|the papers]]. A frustrated Aaron suited up and handed himself in to the authorities. His impersonator committed another crime while Machine Man spent the night imprisoned, proving his and Peter's innocence. They regrouped at Peter's apartment, but were interrupted by [[Archie Goldsmith]] bursting through the door, chased by the fake Machine Man, who had orders to kill him. The two Machine Men fought, with the bout ending when the impostor took them both through the window and landing in the sewers. Machine Man followed him to [[Fred Greenfield]] and his getaway van, where he took Fred's supersonic device that was controlling the fake and apprehended him. The next day, realising that the impersonator, Barry Witherspoon, was being mind controlled, Machine Man called in a favour with Dr [[Oliver Broadhurst]], who restored Witherspoon back to normal. With the real crooks serving justice and Peter out of jail, Machine Man watched as his doppelganger reunited with his [[Gloria Witherspoon|loving wife and children]] and solemnly wondered, "What else could anyone want?" {{storylink|The Man Who Could Walk Through Walls}}
==Notes==
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