Iron Ring
From Transformers Wiki
When Joe Colton, thought dead, reemerged as the fearsome Baron Ironblood, he became the founder and overseer of the villainous Iron Ring to counter Optimus Prime's annexation of Earth into the Council of Worlds. Forced to go outside the law and betray his ideals in the name of Earth's sovereignty, Colton assembled a motley group of ne'er do wells from a variety of sources: ex-Cobra operatives, supervillains, mercenaries, ninja, mad scientists, and even a handful of aliens.
Drawing on Garrison Kreiger's I.R.O.N. assets and based out of Count "Iron Klaw" van Rani's Iron Castle, they stand poised to take down Cybertron itself — and may very well succeed.
They're very on-point with their theming game.
Contents |
Fiction
2005 IDW continuity
The origins of the Iron Ring lie in the mid-2000s, when Joe Colton recruited Garrison Kreiger into Skywatch's Project: Hot House. The two investigated the Talisman for its potential as a weapon against Cybertronians by combining it with samples of Ore-13. With the help of the shipwrecked Transformer Centurion, Kreiger's Cybertronian asset, they were able to trick Sgt. Savage into reactivating the device, its energies proving lethal against the captive Decepticon Bugly while hurling Savage a decade into the future. When Eagles Scream
In 2016, following Megatron's 2008 invasion of Earth and Optimus Prime's recent annexation of the planet into the Council of Worlds, Colton was briefly appointed director of the Earth Defense Command. Hoping to fight back a race capable of crushing humanity underfoot without notice, he attempted to requisition and weaponize the Talisman through official channels, but discovered that the Earth's governments had been insurmountably infiltrated by a different alien species: the malevolent Dire Wraiths. Having lost his hand and identity to one of the Wraiths, Colton — out of options and willing to betray his own ideals for the future of Earth — contacted Kreiger once more, fully believing in the need to fight back against the Transformers that had painted a target on his homeworld. Ghost in the Machine
Kreiger and Colton met in Kreiger's Paris lair, where Kreiger removed the traces of Dire Wraith biomatter from his body and reintroduced him to the Talisman. With the government and his G.I. Joe team compromised, Colton put together a list of potential supervillains to aid him. First Strike #0 To deal with villains who would otherwise be reluctant to deal with the founder of G.I. Joe, Colton adopted the identity of "Baron Ironblood", wearing a uniform based on Skywatch's old hazard suits and replacing his missing hand with a Talisman-tech prosthetic.
One of his first recruits to his new alliance was the European supervillain Doctor X, who had protected England from Megatron's invasion in her role as head of intelligence of the Action Man Programme; while X was not interested in invading Cybertron, her ally Storm Shadow was tempted by his promises to upgrade her and her Red Shadow ninja with advanced Talisman technology, and Doctor X agreed to go along with his plan because of it. Redcliffe Club To aid them, Doctor X licensed usage of the M.A.S.S. Device from the former Cobra arms dealer Destro, Ironblood bringing the arms dealer over to their side by promising him access to cutting edge Cybertronian technology. A Game of Chess Ironblood would also recruit his old friend Miles Mayhem for his straightforward approach and contempt for Cybertronian life, A Little Bit of Mayhem and, in the wake of Baron Karza's failed invasion of Earth, the disgraced Microspace ruler Shazraella, promising her a new Transformer body and whatever remained of Cybertron in return for her services. Hitting the Big Time
Ironblood also recruited I.R.O.N. shareholder and leader of Kalistan Count van Rani, aka the Iron Klaw, who gave them temporary use of his castle — though Colton had misgivings about van Rani and Kreiger's enslavement of the Predacons and granting them the ability to combine into Predaking, believing they could not be trusted. Ghost in the Machine Simultaneously, Ironblood set up a secondary command center aboard an abandoned Cobra base on the Moon, Enter the Shadow with Storm Shadow using her Red Shadows in conjunction with the M.A.S.S. Device to scavenge materials to refurbish it. G.I. Joe vol. 5 #1
At Ironblood's command, the Talisman was stored in a SIS/I.R.O.N. bunker beneath Verenya; Garrison Kreiger profile however, it only remained there for a short time before Garrison Blackrock, searching for more information about his Cybertronian heritage, broke into the base and began tampering with it. Crisis Intervention Ghost in the Machine
Annoyed by the setback, Ironblood recruited the mercenary team known as the Oktober Guard to retrieve the artifact. They did so, and returned it to Ironblood's moonbase. Crisis Intervention Much to Ironblood's irritation, Ian Noble, the UK's latest Action Man, had been brought along with the device. After the British spy broke into the base, Ironblood's desire to permanently silence Noble ran up against Doctor X's more elaborate solution, buying enough time for Blackrock, Mayday, Kup, and the Micronauts to find a way to the Moon and rescue him, taking the Talisman for themselves in the process. With the moonbase destroyed and the Talisman lost, the villains retreated back to Earth to continue their plans Enter the Shadow with the aid of Kreiger's numerous Talisman copies, which he had assembled over the years from scraps of alien technology. The Iron Klaw
Needing a diversion, Ironblood's alliance found a catspaw in Tomax Paoli, former commander of Cobra and current interim CEO of I.R.O.N. Accompanied by Centurion, Ironblood warned him that the team that had breached their moonbase would soon deduce the Iron Ring's connection to I.R.O.N. and would be coming for him, urging him to take up the mantle of Cobra Commander and accept Centurion's help to retrieve the "Project: Ice Man" protocols from I.R.O.N.'s San Francisco division — The Secret of the Mummy's Tomb an endeavor involving the comatose body of the Atomic Man and the frozen remains of Domitius Major, both of which Kreiger had procured years before as part of his ongoing investigations into the Talisman. Strange Visitors
With Tomax and Centurion occupied, the heroes tracked the Iron Ring to Kalistan, and, with the help of Snake-Eyes and a robotic lookalike of the G.I. Joe ninja, managed to infiltrate van Rani's castle by disguising Snake-Eyes as Tomax and pretending to have taken Blackrock hostage. The ruse lasted long enough for Garrison to learn where the real Tomax had gone off too; after taking down Predaking and killing Razorclaw The Iron Klaw the heroes set course for San Francisco to intercept him. Strange Visitors With their fortress breached, Ironblood decided to cut ties with Tomax and Centurion and scrub their mission, sending Doctor X to prep the Brasnyan Ice Man facility as a decoy while the rest of the Iron Ring continued apace with their plans. The Iron Klaw
On arriving in San Francisco, Centurion chauffeured Paoli to I.R.O.N.'s headquarters, where he conferred with Kreiger via telepresence. Kreiger told him that their plans had changed, and that he would become Cobra Commander long enough to distract the heroes. Tracking him to the building, Action Man and Mayday chased Tomax through the halls while Kup contended with Centurion. After learning of Centurion's convoluted history, Blackrock managed to convince the Maximal to stand down while his human accomplice was incapacitated by his pursuers. In the aftermath, Tomax was taken into custody while Centurion surrendered, feigning a change of heart — and the heroes learned about the fate of Atomic Man, thought dead since 1994. Strange Visitors
Hoping to salvage the situation, Kreiger beat the heroes to Brasnya and activated the Ice Man project: after spending years in Kreiger's custody, the once-heroic Atomic Man had become more machine than man, a mindless, Talisman-energized puppet under Kreiger's control and the nerve center of the base. Luring the heroes into the base, Kreiger sprang his first trap on them, deploying the reanimated bodies of Domitius Major and the "Maximal Shockwave" to annihilate them. Fighting off the two mindless corpses the heroes — with the aid of M.A.S.K.—tracked Kreiger to the heart of the base, whereupon Action Man reached out to Atomic Man's humanity, causing the damaged cyborg to briefly reawaken and choose to commit suicide, deactivating the base and Kreiger's facsimile Transformers with it. Power and Glory
"You want us to be called L.O.V.E.M.U.F.F.I.N.?"
Mayday's team had not prepared for Kreiger's larger game, however: while awaiting a G.I. Joe pickup in Blackrock's Onyx tower in Buenos Aires, Centurion revealed that he was still loyal to Kreiger and hacked into the building's systems to fire on the incoming aircraft. At the same time, Baron Ironblood, Dr. X, and several other members of the organization managed to infiltrate the base and incapacitate Blackrock. Fighting off the temporally-shunted Sgt. Savage, the World War II veteran managed to publicly unmask Colton in broad daylight. When Eagles Scream The arrival of Optimus Prime aboard Metrotitan forced the Iron Ring to fall back, but not before stealing the Talisman back for themselves and abandoning Centurion to his fate. Back at the Iron Castle, van Rani provided the organization with one last opportunity to use his castle as their base and the assembled evildoers prepared for their full-scale invasion of Cybertron. Ghost in the Machine
The Iron Ring made themselves known to Cybertron on the day of Earth's inauguration into the Council of Worlds. First Strike #1 Hiding their forces inside fake Trojan horse "Transformers" made invisible to Cybertronian sensors by way of Mayhem's M.A.S.K. technology, the alliance teleported themselves to Cybertron by piggybacking off Metrotitan's Space Bridge using the M.A.S.S. device. First Strike #2 Primeless, Part 1
Seconds after Starscream began his speech, a massive explosion rocked Iacon as the Iron Ring revealed themselves and threw the event into chaos, indiscriminately gunning down Cybertronians as part of their opening assault. First Strike #1 "Baron Ironblood" led the charge, but this Ironblood was merely a decoy, the suit donned by Doctor Mindbender to distract pursuers while the real Colton shed his supervillain getup, leading a small team consisting of himself, Kreiger, Shazraella, Storm Shadow, Mayhem, and Destro to Metroplex's access tunnels aboard Mayhem's Outlaw vehicle. First Strike #2 While Scarlett and her allies eventually found a way to pursue the Iron Ring from Earth to Cybertron, they were too late to stop Colton's team from entering the tunnels beneath the Titan and allowing Shazraella to gain a new Cybertronian form, strapping the Talisman to her back and leading the trek underground to Cybertron's core First Strike #2 — turning the journey to the center of the planet into a race against time. First Strike #4 The Iron Ring soon reached the core, but found their path barred by Optimus Prime and Scarlett's team. First Strike #5
The Iron Ring engaged the heroes, with Colton revealing to Scarlett that the Ring were nothing more than pawns in his eyes. before Starscream, Elita One and Obsidian arrived with intent to kill. In the mounting chaos, Kreiger slipped away and decided to activate the Talisman then and there, revealing his true nature as an alien wizard known as Merkylnn, as well as transforming a portion of Cybertron's underground into New Prysmos. Merklynn then teleported all combatants back to Iacon. In the aftermath, the Iron Ring was taken into custody and placed within Cybertronian prison. First Strike #6
Notes
- Pre-release solicitations and interviews for First Strike claimed that Baron Ironblood would be leading a resurgent version of Cobra,[1] but that wasn't borne out in the comic itself—though Cobra forces like the Dreadnoks and Destro's Iron Grenadiers are members of the coalition, G.I. Joe: First Strike makes it clear that the bulk of Cobra is on Earth under the control of the new Cobra Commander.
