Iron Lad - Fictional Character Biography

Fictional Character Biography

16 year-old Nathaniel "Nate" Richards is rescued by his time-traveling adult self, the villainous Kang the Conqueror, moments before bullies would cause him to be hospitalized for years of his life from a knife attack, an event that originally shaped his development into a villain. Kang takes his teenage self through time to witness the future battles and glory that would result in his transformation into Kang the Conqueror, hoping to inspire his younger self. However, it backfires and Nate is horrified at the life of evil his future self shows him. Kang presses Nate to accept his future by killing the bully who would have hospitalized him. Instead, Nate takes the time travel technology given to him by Kang and transports himself to the past, hoping to avoid his sinister destiny.

He seeks the Avengers for assistance, but finds the Avengers disbanded. Seeking answers, he downloads the remnants of the destroyed Vision's operating system into his armor. This reveals a fail-safe plan created by the android to reform the Avengers should they disband or fall in action by locating the next generation of Avengers, all whom have some tie to the original team. Using this plan, Nate assembles his new team, the Young Avengers, with the sole purpose of defeating his future self and reshaping his own future. He models his armor after the Avenger Iron Man, calling himself Iron Lad. He forms a brief romantic relationship with fellow Young Avenger teammate Stature.

Eventually, Kang comes to the past looking for Nate, wanting to return his younger self to his proper place in the timestream. Nate refuses to return, unwilling to become the infamous future villain. The team battle the Growing Man, a robot created by Kang, and are able to defeat him. Kang battles the remaining Avengers and the teen heroes, seemingly gaining the upper hand when Iron Lad runs Hawkeye's sword through Kang's chest. This kills Kang, but the ramifications cause several changes to the timeline, including all the Avengers being dead and Young Avenger Wiccan disappearing. Iron Lad realizes that the only way to restore everything is to go back to his time and assume his role as Kang the Conqueror. In doing so he will also lose his memories of his time in the past as a Young Avenger. Before he goes back in time, he asks his teammates to forgive him for the actions he will commit in the future and kisses Stature goodbye. He leaves behind his armor, which has activated the Vision's operating software, effectively recreating the armor into a sentient being—an inexperienced "young" Vision. The new Vision carries Nate's brain patterns, similar to the original Vision and Wonder Man.

Stature and the Vision eventually feel attracted to one another, due initially to Nate's mental imprint. They later begin a relationship. While fighting the cosmic cube altered Absorbing Man, during the "Dark Reign" storyline, the new Vision (now a joint member of the Young Avengers and the Mighty Avengers) is affected by the cube's cosmic radiation and splits into both Iron Lad and the original Vision. Iron Lad appears to maintain the memories of the events prior to going back in time. After the Absorbing Man is defeated, the original Vision and Iron Lad merge back together as the new Vision once again.

Iron Lad appears in the 2010-12 miniseries, Avengers: The Children's Crusade, in which he prevents Wolverine from killing an amnesiac and de-powered Wanda Maximoff (whom Wolverine feels presents too great a threat). Iron Lad states that he does this because the future depends on their survival. Soon thereafter, Stature's deceased father Ant-Man (Scott Lang) is plucked from the past and saved, but Stature is killed. Iron Lad insists upon travelling back to the past to save her, and he destroys the new Vision when he protests. When the Young Avengers tell Iron Lad that this is most likely the event that will lead him down the path to becoming Kang the Conqueror, he states that "I will be better than Kang the Conqueror", and disappears into the timestream.