Iron Ring

The Iron Ring is an organization from the IDW portion of the Generation 1 continuity family.

Not to be confused with the Ironic Ring, who are just a bunch of hipsters.

When Joe Colton, thought dead, reemerged as the fearsome Baron Ironblood, he became the founder and overseer of the villainous Iron Ring to counter Optimus Prime's annexation of Earth into the Council of Worlds. Forced to go outside the law and betray his ideals in the name of Earth's sovereignty, Colton assembled a motley group of ne'er do wells from a variety of sources: ex-Cobra operatives, supervillains, mercenaries, ninja, mad scientists, and even a handful of aliens.

Drawing on Garrison Kreiger's I.R.O.N. assets and based out of Count "Iron Klaw" van Rani's Iron Castle, they stand poised to take down Cybertron itself — and may very well succeed.

They're very on-point with their theming game.

My dear! Conquest may be our objective... but the costumes set us above the rabble.Miles Mayhem explains panache to Lady Shazraella, "Hitting the Big Time"

Fiction

IDW Generation 1 continuity

The origins of the Iron Ring lie in the mid-2000s, when Joe Colton recruited Garrison Kreiger into Skywatch's Project: Hot House. The two investigated the Talisman for its potential as a weapon against Cybertronians by combining it with samples of Ore-13. With the help of the shipwrecked Transformer Centurion, Kreiger's Cybertronian asset, they were able to trick Sgt. Savage into reactivating the device, its energies proving lethal against the captive Decepticon Bugly while hurling Savage a decade into the future. When Eagles Scream

In 2016, following Megatron's 2008 invasion of Earth and Optimus Prime's recent annexation of the planet into the Council of Worlds, Colton was briefly appointed director of the Earth Defense Command. Hoping to fight back a race capable of crushing humanity underfoot without notice, he attempted to requisition and weaponize the Talisman through official channels, but discovered that the Earth's governments had been insurmountably infiltrated by a different alien species: the malevolent Dire Wraiths. Having lost his hand and identity to one of the Wraiths, Colton — out of options and willing to betray his own ideals for the future of Earth — contacted Kreiger once more, fully believing in the need to fight back against the Transformers that had painted a target on his homeworld. Ghost in the Machine

Kreiger and Colton met in Kreiger's Paris lair, where Kreiger removed the traces of Dire Wraith biomatter from his body and reintroduced him to the Talisman. With the government and his G.I. Joe team compromised, Colton put together a list of potential supervillains to aid him. First Strike #0 To deal with villains who would otherwise be reluctant to deal with the founder of G.I. Joe, Colton adopted the identity of "Baron Ironblood", wearing a uniform based on Skywatch's old hazard suits and replacing his missing hand with a Talisman-tech prosthetic.

One of his first recruits to his new alliance was the European supervillain Doctor X, who had protected England from Megatron's invasion in her role as head of intelligence of the Action Man Programme; while X was not interested in invading Cybertron, her ally Storm Shadow was tempted by his promises to upgrade her and her Red Shadow ninja with advanced Talisman technology, and Doctor X agreed to go along with his plan because of it. The Origins of Evil, Part One: Redcliffe Club To aid them, Doctor X licensed usage of the M.A.S.S. device from the former Cobra arms dealer Destro, Ironblood bringing the arms dealer over to their side by promising him access to cutting edge Cybertronian technology. The Origins of Evil, Part Two: A Game of Chess Ironblood would also recruit his old friend Miles Mayhem for his straightforward approach and contempt for Cybertronian life, The Origins of Evil, Part Three: A Little Bit of Mayhem and, in the wake of Baron Karza's failed invasion of Earth, the disgraced Microspace ruler Shazraella, promising her a new Transformer body and whatever remained of Cybertron in return for her services. Hitting the Big Time

Ironblood also recruited I.R.O.N. shareholder and leader of Kalistan Count van Rani, aka the Iron Klaw, who gave them temporary use of his castle — though Colton had misgivings about van Rani and Kreiger's enslavement of the Predacons and granting them the ability to combine into Predaking, believing they could not be trusted. Ghost in the Machine Simultaneously, Ironblood set up a secondary command center aboard an abandoned Cobra base on the Moon, Enter the Shadow, with Storm Shadow using her Red Shadows in conjunction with the M.A.S.S. Device to scavenge materials for it. G.I. Joe vol. 5 #1

At Ironblood's command, the Talisman was stored in a SIS/I.R.O.N. bunker beneath Verenya; Garrison Kreiger profile however, it only remained there for a short time before Garrison Blackrock, searching for more information about his Cybertronian heritage, broke into the base and began tampering with it. Crisis Intervention

Annoyed the setback, Ironblood recruited the mercenary team known as the Oktober Guard to retrieve the artifact. They did so, and returned it to Ironblood's refurbished moonbase. Much to Ironblood's irritation, Ian Noble, the UK's latest Action Man, had been brought along with the device. After the British spy broke into the base, Ironblood's desire to permanently silence Noble ran up against Doctor X's more elaborate solution, buying enough time for Blackrock, Mayday, Kup, and the Micronauts to find a way to the Moon and rescue him. The moonbase destroyed, the villains retreated back to Earth to continue their plans. Enter The Shadow

Needing a diversion, Ironblood's alliance found a catspaw in Tomax Paoli, former commander of Cobra and current interim CEO of I.R.O.N. Accompanied by Centurion, Ironblood warned him that the team that had breached their moonbase would soon deduce the Iron Ring's connection to I.R.O.N. and would be coming for him, urging him to take up the mantle of Cobra Commander and accept Centurion's help to retrieve the "Project: Ice Man" protocols from I.R.O.N.'s San Francisco division — The Secret of the Mummy's Tomb an endeavor involving the comatose body of the Atomic Man and the frozen remains of Domitius Major, both of which Kreiger had procured years before as part of his ongoing investigations into the Talisman. Strange Visitors

With Tomax and Centurion occupied, the heroes tracked the Iron Ring to the Iron Castle, and, with the help of Snake-Eyes and a robotic lookalike of the G.I. Joe ninja, managed to infiltrate the base by disguising Snake-Eyes as Tomax, pretending to have taken Blackrock hostage. The ruse lasted long enough for Garrison to learn where the real Tomax had gone off too; after taking down Predaking and killing Razorclaw The Iron Klaw the heroes set course for San Francisco to intercept him. Strange Visitors With their fortress breached, Ironblood decided to cut ties with Tomax and Centurion and scrub their mission, using the Ice Man project as a decoy while the rest of the Iron Ring continued apace with their plans. The Iron kLaw

On arriving in San Francisco, Centurion chauffeured Paoli to I.R.O.N.'s headquarters, where he conferred with Kreiger via telepresence. Kreiger told him that their plans had changed, and that he would become Cobra Commander long enough to distract the heroes. Tracking him to the building, Action Man and Mayday chased Tomax through the halls while Kup contended with Centurion. After learning of Centurion's convoluted history, Blackrock managed to convince the Eukarian to stand down while his human accomplice was incapacitated by his pursuers. In the aftermath, Tomax was taken into custody while Centurion surrendered, feigning a change of heart. Strange Visitors

Notes

• Pre-release solicitations and interviews for First Strike claimed that Baron Ironblood would be leading a resurgent version of Cobra, but that wasn't borne out in the comic itself — though Cobra forces like the Dreadnoks and Destro's Iron Grenadiers are members of the coalition, G.I. Joe: First Strike makes it clear that the bulk of Cobra is on Earth under the control of the new Cobra Commander.