Pepper Potts
Pepper Potts is a female comic character who features in Marvel Comics.
Contents |
Biography
Origin
Virginia Potts
After finishing secretarial school, she joined Stark Industries where she came to work for the company. During this time, she knew its President Howard Stark though he seemed to be a weary tired man by this point with Pepper hearing stories of him during his prime. Howard Stark and his wife later died in a car accident when the brakes on their vehicle failed. This led to his son Tony Stark becoming the new President and majority shareholder of Stark Industries. He came to overhaul the technical sides of the company though through the secretarial work Pepper could see that its business side was suffering. As such, she came to try to correct any errors in the documents to ensure that the company did not go into a loss. One of these was a government contract proposal for the A-12 artillery transports where Potts fixed a computation error that was forwarded to her employers desk. This attracted the attention of Tony Stark where he met with Pepper and decided to promote her as his personal executive assistant. She was immediately put to work but faced chauvinism from Tony Stark which made her first hate the man. In her new position, Stark funnelled all the important documentation and paperwork to her whilst he enjoyed himself. During this time, she came to note that Stark's care-free attitude and lack of empathy masked a person who was deeply in pain with her feeling sympathy for him as she came to see that he was lonely. The company then experienced a rough patch with Tony and his cousin Morgan Stark receiving an offer to buy-out their company from Roxxon Energy Corporation. Stark was considering it but Pepper decided to take him to the homes of one of his employees who would lose work if the company was sold. Thus, she managed to convince Tony to reject the offer and Pepper was overjoyed where she decided to reverse her earlier opinion of her employer as she felt that he was a good man. (Iron Man: The Iron Age v1 #1)
Happy Hogan
Though infatuated with Stark, events began to change when he hired a bodyguard named Happy Hogan. The pair ended up bickering with one another though Hogan confessed that he felt himself attracted to Potts though she rebuffed his advances saying that she was saving herself to be the future Mrs. Tony Stark. Pepper later saw the supervillain Jack Frost and went to a telephone to warn Tony Stark that he intended to break in leading to him quickly changing into Iron Man in his office. Hogan in the meantime rushed into Pepper's office where he picked up a fallen guard's rifle whereupon he raced to Stark's office in an effort to protect him. As he arrived to check on his employer, he was froze solid by Jack Frost though Iron Man later arrived to defeat the villain. (Tales of Suspense v1 #45) Afterwards, she along with Happy and Tony gathered at Stark Industries to watch the test launch of a new missile test pad. Stark later snuck away in order to change into his Iron Man armor in case something went wrong. The Crimson Dynamo emerged from hiding from the outskirts of the launch site where he used his control over electricity to cause the rocket to go out of control. Iron Man managed to arrive on the scene where in the air he grabbed he nose-cone of the rocket to slow it down enough to use his armored body to absorb the impact with the ground. The rocket and its crew were thus saved but the force of the impact caused Iron Man to be knocked out for a time. (Tales of Suspense v1 #46)
She continued working for Stark, delivering the news to Tony that one of his business associates, steel tycoon Charleton Carter, had backed out of a deal. She was extremely unhappy when Tony pretended to ask her out on a date as a cover to change into his Iron Man suit, leaving her behind in a locked room instead. (Tales of Suspense v1 #48)
Pepper still tried impressing Stark. But when she desperately needed to take someone to an employee's dinner, she reluctantly called Happy, who assumed it was a sign that Pepper really liked him. (Tales of Suspense v1 #50) Tony at first encouraged their relation, giving them Broadway tickets to go on another date. (Tales of Suspense v1 #51)
Pepper did eventually manage to go on a date with Tony. (Tales of Suspense v1 #55) When the Unicorn attacked Stark Industries Pepper was taken prisoner but was saved by Iron Man. After the fight, Tony and Pepper went to visit Happy who had been injured by the Unicorn. During their visit, Tony wondered if Pepper's niceties to Happy were to make him jealous or if they are genuine. (Tales of Suspense v1 #56) At Happy's request, Tony suggested to Pepper that she and Happy go on another date. Pepper jumped to the conclusion that Stark wanted to go out on a date with her instead. Stark took Pepper out to a fair which featured an archer named Hawkeye. After stopping a crime at the fair, Tony lost out on another chance at a date with Pepper when Happy beat him to the punch. (Tales of Suspense v1 #57)
Following Happy's death, Pepper was placed in charge of the Order by Stark and took the code name Hera. (The Order v2 #1)
Rescue
Following the creation of H.A.M.M.E.R., Norman Osborn had his agents storm every Stark Industries building in order to deprive Tony Stark of any assistance or resources. This saw these agents being deployed to seize all of Stark's assets after an arrest warrant was issued for him. Pepper managed to escape after finding a suit of armor that Tony had built for her thus allowing her to avoid being herself. This armor was the Mark 1616 and held an artificial intelligence designated as J.A.R.V.I.S. to aid her and answer questions with the armor being tailor made for her. (Invincible Iron Man v1 #10) Afterwards, she began to operate as a superhero with the Iron Man Armor and called herself Rescue. During this time, she was engaged in various dangerous situations such as fighting Mokk the Breaker of Stone of the Worthy in Paris when Tony Stark was not available. (Invincible Iron Man v1 #507)
She helped Bethany Cabe to reunite the heroes of the Dynasty and Triumph Division in order to rescue Tony Stark from the Mandarin. (Invincible Iron Man v1 #525)
Rings of the Mandarin
Whilst Tony Stark went into space, Pepper attended a part in Las Vegas where she met a freelance P.R. and marketing expert named Marc Kumar. Kumar was handling a drunk client at the party and met with Potts with the two dating for months before Marc proposed to Pepper in Scotland. (Iron Man Annual v5 #1) During their time together, she told Marc many stories Stark with Kumar coming to the conclusion that Tony treated her badly and leading this resentment towards Stark. (Iron Man v5 #28)
Inversion
Due to the Inversion, Tony Stark's personality reverted to a point prior to him becoming a superhero and he began performing more ruthless acts whilst becoming uncaring about his actions. This included resuming weapon designing, selling Extremis as a drug that required constant purchases and drinking excessively. In preparation for the day he ever went rogue, Stark in the past copied his mental patterns long ago into an AI clone that was tasked with stopping him if he engaged such practices. The AI would team up with Potts to stop the Inverted Tony Stark with Pepper using her business connections to first remove the name Stark from Stark Resilient as well as thwarting his business acquisitions. Among her acts was purchasing a media company before the Inverted Tony could buy it. Afterwards, the AI Tony attacked using various Iron Man suits with the initial goal of downloading his personality into Stark's organic body that would in essence revert him to an earlier mindset but erase the current version. Upon learning of this, Pepper resisted this plan and the AI built her a suit where she participated in capturing Tony Stark. After separating him from his Synthetic Symbiote armor, they brought him to Resilient where he used this opportunity to introduce a virus that erased his AI clone. Pepper witnessed the erasure of the AI and concluded that the Tony Stark she knew was gone and decided to use her media influence to expose his acts to the world to turn the public against him. Thus, he would be alone and unloved by the masses after he went back to his new home on Stark Island. (Superior Iron Man v1 #9)
After Tony Stark was badly wounded, he had sent the armor along with an AI copy of his mind to a teenager named Riri Williams. She adopted the superhero name of Ironheart with Pepper Potts greeting her when the pair were attacked by techno-ninjas. (Invincible Iron Man v3 #3)
During the Robot Rebellion, Pepper took the Rescue suit to London in order to find Amanda Armstrong and inform her that Tony had 'died'. Potts wanted to acquire some of Amanda's hair in order to be used to help reconstitute Tony's body. (Rescue 2020 v1 #1)
Overview
Personality and attributes
Whilst on the Order, she operated as Team Leader where she took the code name Hera. (The Order v2 #1)
The adoptive son and daughter were known to had grown up. (Rescue 2020 v1 #1)
Powers and abilities
As Hera, Pepper was able to hook herself to external accessories that patched her into the global Stark satnet system and the Stark Dataspine allowing her access to a vast sum of information that she used in a logistical role for the superhero team known as the Order. (The Order v2 #3) These were described as being telepresence enhancements that allowed her to serve as team leader. (The Order v2 #1)
As Rescue, she was equipped with the Iron Man 1616 Armor suit that was built for Heavy Rescue and Recovery. A hybrid of repulsor technology and portable electromagnetic superfield generators gave the suit flight, speed, strength, magnetic field manipulation and so on. There was not a single weapon anywhere on the armor with everything designed for defensive and protective measures. (Invincible Iron Man v1 #11) The Rescue Armor's most notable capability was the generation of powerful force fields that were strong and wide enough to catch a crashing plane and hold it steadily. (Invincible Iron Man v2 #12) The armor additionally possesses repulsor blast and finger lasers. (Invincible Iron Man v2 #16)
It was also equipped with an artificial intelligence named J.A.R.V.I.S. (Just Another Rather Very Intelligent System) that was to serve as an interface between the user and the armor. It contained the entirety of the Stark Dataspine and had a playlist of 96,000 of Pepper's favourite songs. (Invincible Iron Man v1 #11) Later on, she came to use an assistant program called the H.A.P.P.Y. (Hosted Analogue Program Pre-Y2K) that was made by Stark pre-Y2k with its personality modelled on Happy Hogan. (Rescue 2020 v1 #1)
Though the suit was destroyed, a new version was created by the AI clone of Tony that she used to battle the Inverted Tony Stark. (Superior Iron Man v1 #9)
Pepper was once gifted a car by Tony Stark with the license plate STARK 2. (2020 Rescue v1 #1)
Notes
- Pepper Potts was created by Stan Lee and Don Heck where she made her first appearance in Tales of Suspense v1 #45 (September 1963) but debuted as Rescue in The Invincible Iron Man v1 #10 (May 2009).
Alternate Versions
- In Invincible Iron Man v1 #500 (2011), an alternate possible future was shown with this reality being designated as Earth-113500. On this world, Tony and Pepper met where they had children who in turn gave birth to their grand daughter named Ginny Stark. She was a skilled combatant who led a resistance group called the Black Widows who opposed the rule of the Mandarin. Ginny met her grandfather who created a massive blackout beginning a new Age of Iron whereupon he died with his granddaughter burying him after which she put on the mask of Madame Masque as she worked to rebuild the world.
- In Armors Wars v1 (2015), a version of Pepper Potts was shown to reside at Technopolis on Battleworld. This version was the wife of Baron Tony Stark who ruled the realm but was unaware of his family's deception of the sickness that kept everyone wearing armor. After Kiri Oshiro revealed this publically, Pepper was horrified at her husband's actions and the ex-baroness elected to remain behind as an advisor after Tony was taken away by the Thor Corps for his crimes.
In other media
Television
- In Iron Man: Armored Adventures, the character appeared where she was voiced by Anna Cummer. This incarnation was a teenager with short red hair, freckles and whose full name was Patricia "Pepper" Potts.
- In The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Pepper Potts made a number of appearances in the animated series where she was voiced by actor Dawn Olivieri.
Films
- In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Pepper Potts made a number of appearances in the shared continuity setting.
- In Iron Man, the character made an appearance marking her debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe where she was portrayed by actor Gwyneth Paltrow.
- In Captain America: Civil War, Pepper Potts was referenced but not seen in the live-action film. Captain America Steve Rogers asked about Pepper with Tony Stark replying that the pair were no longer together.
- In Spider-Man: Homecoming, Pepper Potts appeared in the live-action film where she was portrayed once again by actor Gwyneth Paltrow. She was shown as heading a press conference by Stark Industries that sought to unveil Spider-Man as an Avenger but he decided to continue operate in his neighbourhood as a superhero. It was shown that Pepper and Tony had resumed their relationship.
- In Avengers: Infinity Wars, Pepper Potts appeared in the live-action film where she was portrayed by actor Gwyneth Paltrow.
- In Avengers: Endgame, Pepper Potts appeared in the live-action film where she was portrayed by actor Gwyneth Paltrow.
Video games
- In Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, Pepper Potts was referenced in the setting of the video game. Edwin Jarvis asks the player to fetch a pair of cufflinks that Pepper gifted to Tony Stark.
- In Marvel: Avengers Alliance, Pepper Potts appeared as the hero Rescue in the Facebook video game. Her backstory mentioned that Pepper normally served as an executive assistant who ran Stark Industries. After nearly dying in an explosion, she was infused with cybernetic implants allowing her to interface with her own variant of the Iron Man armor. She refused to become a living weapon leading to her focusing the armor completely on defensive systems allowing her to operate in a search-and-rescue role.
- In Marvel: War of Heroes, Pepper Potts as Rescue appeared as a playable card in the video game where it was said that she was assisted in her armor by the A.I. J.A.R.V.I.S.
- In Marvel Heroes, Pepper Potts appeared as a non-playable character in the setting of the MMORPG video game where she was voiced by actor Brett Pels.
- In Marvel Avengers Academy, Pepper Potts appeared in the setting of the mobile video game where she initially appeared as Nick Fury's assistant. For a limited time, her as Rescue was available as a playable character in the setting.
- In Marvel Strike Force, Pepper Potts as Rescue appeared as a playable character in the mobile video game.
Appearances
- Tales of Suspense v1:
- Iron Man v1:
- Invincible Iron Man v1:
- Iron Man v5:
- Superior Iron Man v1:
- Invincible Iron Man:
- Rescue 2020 v1: (2020)
External Links
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