In his earlier appearances, the nature of Arno Stark's family relation with Tony Stark is not specified. In
Avengers West Coast # 61 (1990), Arno calls Tony his uncle.
What If ? (Vol.2) # 53 (1993) reveals that Arno is - at least in the alternate timeline depicted in that issue - the son of
Morgan Stark, Tony's unscrupulous cousin, which makes him Tony's
first cousin once removed. Arno inherited at some point the company
Stark Industries. Rather than use the armor for heroic deeds, he prefers to act as a hired
mercenary or commit acts of corporate
espionage to cripple his competitors for industrialist gain. In his original appearance, the Iron Man of 2020 was employed by
Sunset Bain (as an old woman) to destroy
Machine Man after he was accidentally discovered and subsequently reactivated by the Midnight Wreckers, rebellious youths who scavenged discarded technology. Despite ostensibly superior power, Iron Man was defeated by the furious Machine Man who went on to state "I'm a better man than you." In
The Amazing Spider-Man Annual #20, Arno's factory is infiltrated by Robert Saunders, a heavily scarred man who starts a countdown on a powerful bomb of Stark's design, threatening Stark's wife and son (trapped in the factory) and the surrounding city. The only way to deactivate the device is with a
retinal scan of Saunders, but Saunders is killed and his body destroyed while trying to escape Stark. To get the scan data, Stark travels back in time to the "present" (i.e. 1986, when the story was published) to find Saunders as a child. He is soon mistaken for the "current" Iron Man (Tony Stark) and attacked by one of Tony's enemies,
Blizzard. Arno, knowing his time in the 20th century is limited, immediately kills Blizzard. This draws the attention of
Spider-Man who also mistakes Arno for Tony and further mistakes Arno's attempts to obtain a retinal scan of Saunders as an attack on the boy. Spider-Man evades various attempts by Arno to get hold of the child, while Arno becomes increasingly desperate as his time in the 20th century nears its end. One of Arno's attacks seriously injures Saunders;
the scars Arno inflicted would eventually lead Saunders's vengeance-minded future self to sabotage Arno's factory, thus Arno unwittingly creates the situation he traveled back in time to resolve and an angry Spider-Man then directly attacks Arno. Despite Arno's superior firepower, Spider-Man overwhelms him with his speed and damages his armor. When Arno is pulled back to his own time, he finds himself standing in the center of a huge crater, having returned too late to prevent the bomb's detonation and the destruction of his family, factory and city. A later appearance has Iron Man 2020 fight the time-traveling cyborg
Death's Head. In another appearance, Arno is summoned by
Immortus, along with other characters from past or future timelines, to join his
Legion of the Unliving and battle the
West Coast Avengers. Arno fights his counterpart and relative Tony Stark, who defeats him. Iron Man 2020 also had his own one-shot in June 1994, in which he faces off against an industrial rival who seeks to use him to destroy all his competitors all at once, sacrificing his own daughter in the process. At the end of the story, Arno and the girl Melodi get together, suggesting an evolution towards a more heroic role again. Meanwhile, the background character Howard is revealed (if only to the reader) to be the aged Tony himself who intends to guide his young cousin. Arno (or an alternate version) has been seen imprisoned in the time cells of the
Time Variance Authority, the holding facilities for the most "dangerous time-travel offenders". In 2023, Arno makes helicarrier technology available for public use, to start with in the form of a helicruiser called the "Spirit of free enterprise". At the same time, he has supplied
S.H.I.E.L.D. with a far more advanced replacement Hypercarrier. Unfortunately, his launching the airborne cruise ship has raised the ire of the aged
sky pirate, Commodore Q. Arno has married Melodi at this point and "Howard" remains his retainer. He also employs a squad of fetal
Extremis enhanciles who act as his personal armored combat squad. A version of Arno's armor left in the present is stolen by the
Sinister Six as part of
Doctor Octopus's
plans against the Avengers, using technology from the armor to devise a means of defeating the Iron Man of the present. Arno is later rescued from a collapsing timeline by
Kang the Conqueror who recruits him as part of a team of multiversal characters tasked with combating the
Apocalypse Twins. Arno (or an alternate version) has been seen imprisoned in the time cells of the
Time Variance Authority, the holding facilities for the most "dangerous time-travel offenders". In 2023, Arno makes helicarrier technology available for public use, to start with in the form of a helicruiser called the "Spirit of free enterprise". At the same time, he has supplied
S.H.I.E.L.D. with a far more advanced replacement Hypercarrier. Unfortunately, his launching the airborne cruise ship has raised the ire of the aged
sky pirate, Commodore Q. Arno has married Melodi at this point and "Howard" remains his retainer. He also employs a squad of fetal
Extremis enhanciles who act as his personal armored combat squad. A version of Arno's armor left in the present is stolen by the
Sinister Six as part of
Doctor Octopus's
plans against the Avengers, using technology from the armor to devise a means of defeating the Iron Man of the present. Arno is later rescued from a collapsing timeline by
Kang the Conqueror who recruits him as part of a team of multiversal characters tasked with combating the
Apocalypse Twins. ==Powers and abilities==