he continued to play a key role in assisting Stark, particularly during the first Armor Wars storyline. When Stark was shot by Kathy Dare and left paralyzed, he needed a fill-in for the role of Iron Man. Rhodes refused, citing the history between him and the armor, "not all of it good". Stark would call upon the former Force, Clay Wilson (known as Carl Walker at this point), to fill in, wearing the modified Stealth armor, until Stark could modify his regular armor to allow him to function normally inside the suit. Rhodes would reluctantly return to the armor to fight the Mandarin at the behest of the Chinese government, to allow Stark to seek medical assistance in their country. In the end, Stark (using a remote-control set of armor) and Rhodes team up with the Mandarin to stop the larger threat of the Makulan dragons. Birth of War Machine (Iron Man Armor Model 11) The Masters of Silence, three Japanese warriors tricked by Justin Hammer into attacking Iron Man, defeated Stark with technology that enabled them not to be affected by repulsors or unibeams. To combat the threat, Stark designed the "Variable Threat Response Battle Suit, Model XVI, Mark I" (nicknamed "War Machine"), a more heavily armed version of the Iron Man armor designed for all-out warfare. After Stark's apparent death in the comic book, he left Rhodes in control of Stark Enterprises as its new CEO, along with a new Variable Threat Response Battle Suit designed especially for Rhodes to continue the Iron Man legacy. As Iron Man once again, Rhodes used the armor and fought against threats such as the Living Laser, the second Spymaster, Blacklash, the Beetle, and Atom Smasher. Upon the revelation that Stark was alive, Rhodes quit Stark Enterprises and the friendship between the two was fractured, Rhodes resenting how Stark had kept him in the dark about his continued survival even as Stark argued that the experiments that saved his life were purely experimental and he could not have risked anyone else guessing that he was alive if Rhodes' grief had appeared anything but genuine. After teaming with Iron Man against battledroids programmed to kill Rhodes, Stark wanted Rhodes to keep the Variable Threat Response Battle Suit, stating that the armor always belonged to Rhodes. Rhodes eventually kept the armor and later adopted the name of War Machine. When the robot Ultimo went