Iron Man Arc Reactor Drawing

The Mark VII Armor was Tony Stark's seventh Iron Man suit. It was the first suit designed for automatic deployment and assembly, and possessed extensive flight and weapons upgrades. It was notably used during the Battle of New York.

History

"It's been a very long day, and I think I've had my fill of idiots in armored suits telling me what to do."

―Loki to Hunter B-15^[src]

Following nearly failing to save Pepper Potts when battling Obadiah Stane, Tony Stark would work on improving the Iron Man armor's delivery system. Stark would go through many different plans to improve the mechanism, until one day, when on a date with Potts in his lab, he was given two Colantotte bracelets by her. These bracelets would inspire Stark on how to improve the suit delivery system: encasing the suit in a metal casing that could use the bracelets to locate Stark and form the armor around him. Stark would immediately begin development on his next suit, the Mark VII, which was in its last phase of testing by 2012.^[1]

During an attack on the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, in which Loki escaped imprisonment, Tony Stark's Mark VI suit was severely damaged while attempting to repair and restart the Helicarrier's damaged turbines. When Stark realized that Loki intended to carry out his plans from the top of Stark Tower, Stark repaired the Mark VI just enough for him to fly back to Stark Tower himself. Upon arriving he relinquished the Mark VI while telling J.A.R.V.I.S. to prepare the Mark VII. Though J.A.R.V.I.S. pleaded that the suit was not yet ready, Stark insisted, requiring the suit immediately.

Stark distracted Loki as J.A.R.V.I.S. prepared the Mark VII, and covertly slipped on a pair of bracelets. After Loki failed to take control of Stark's mind, he decided to dispose of him by throwing him through a window to his death. Distressed, Stark called for J.A.R.V.I.S. to deploy the Mark VII as he was thrown through the window. The Mark VII had just arrived on the elevator and quickly deployed, crashing into Loki as it followed Stark out the window. Using its thrusters, the Mark VII was able to catch Stark mid-fall and, locating his bracelets, latched onto him while assembling into the Iron Man armor, allowing Stark to fly back up to face Loki and his army as it began to emerge through a portal in the sky.

The armor was quickly put to the test against the Chitauri as it held off a large number of their Chariot flyers and distracted a Leviathan as the rest of the Avengers arrived. Fighting alongside his teammates, Stark used the suit to hold air superiority over the Chitauri and took out a Leviathan by flying through it. As the battle escalated, the World Security Council overrode Nick Fury's authority and launched a nuke to eliminate the invaders. Unable to stop the launch himself, Nick Fury contacted Stark to intercept the missile. Putting all of the Mark VII's power into its flight capabilities he intercepted the missile and redirected it, flying it through the wormhole. However, in space, the Mark VII lost power and fell back into the wormhole's gravity field to Earth. In the end, Mark VII had been heavily damaged by the events of the battle.^[2]

Eventually the Mark VII was repaired of its damages and continued to be used by Stark as his "default" armor despite his ongoing development of the Iron Legion armors (though he used it interchangeably with the Mark XLII as it was in its final testing phases). Stark used the Mark VII to get to and from the restaurant where he met with James Rhodes to discuss the recent Mandarin attacks.

During the attack on Stark's mansion, the Mark VII self-destructed with its predecessors to prevent its technology from being controlled by the Mandarin. Its helmet ultimately survived and was used to relay a message to Pepper Potts that Stark was still alive.^[3]

Capabilities

The Mark VII was a leap forward in the Iron Man technology, bringing together all of the groundwork and advancements made with the first six versions in addition to greatly expanding on the flight system, as well as the ordinance and laser weapon systems. Additionally the Mark VII showed new advancements in portability and accessibility, a specialization that was first demonstrated in the Mark V armor.

Tony Stark attaching himself with the armor

When not in use the armor takes on a form resembling a cylindrical pod in which the chest-plate forms the top and the thrusters from the boots form the bottom, which propels the pod like a rocket. On Tony Stark's command, it can be deployed by J.A.R.V.I.S. and sent to him. It uses a laser-guided system, similar to a bar-code scanner, to find a pair of bracelets worn by the user and attaches to them as it assembles around the user's body. This new system effectively eliminated the need for the gantry system that most of the previous armors required. This suit adapted from and improved upon the designs of the Mark V, which allowed its various parts to collapse and allow its user to step in and out of it seamlessly, as well as ejecting the user on command.

Like the previous models, the suit increased the physical abilities of the wearer, giving Stark superhuman strength, durability, movement speed and reflexes. In addition, the Mark VII upgraded the gauntlet repulsor and uni-beam weapons as the previous suits had, notably returning to a circular uni-beam aperture where the previous suit had used a triangular one. The Mark VII makes a considerable innovation to the flight system through the addition of a pair of thrusters added to the suit's back, which give the suit faster flight speed and acceleration, while also providing flight stability, allowing Stark to freely use his palm-mounted repulsors to attack enemies while in flight. The suit also has two ports in the chest plate that house thrusters to counterbalance the thrusters added to the back, and to help the suit ascend while flying without the use of the hand repulsors. The suit also contains smaller, auxiliary thrusters in the boots to provide extra thrust when trying to lift or manipulate other objects during flight.

This iteration of the Iron Man armor contained an expansive assortment of weapons, including both new weapons and upgrades to weapon systems from the previous armors. Most notably, the Mark VII possessed a vast armament of miniature, guided air-to-air missiles that are housed in the compartments on each shoulder. Like the previous suits, the Mark VII contained a small anti-armor missile in each gauntlet of the suit. The suit also demonstrated the use of flare launchers, located at the suit's hips that were present in most of the previous suits.

Additionally, the Mark VII possessed an advanced version of the hand-mounted laser weapon system introduced in the Mark VI. Unlike the Mark VI's lasers, which could only be fired once, the Mark VII's lasers could fire nearly continuously by drawing power directly from the Arc Reactor. Each laser module fired three lasers with one larger, central laser, and two flanking lasers for a heavier attack. This suit also sports missile launchers on each thigh.

While the suit makes vast improvements over earlier models, it was still not capable of feats such as space travel. When Stark crossed through the Tesseract's portal into space while redirecting the missile meant to destroy New York City to the Chitauri command ship, his systems shut down, causing him to pass out and fall back to Earth, nearly killing him.

Despite all of its immediate successors, the Mark VII has demonstrated the greatest combat potential, as most of the subsequent models were either specialized variants or not yet perfected prototypes.

References

Transparent Endgame Logo.png

↑ The Avengers: Iron Man Mark VII
↑ The Avengers
↑ Iron Man 3

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Iron Man Armor: Mark XLIX