The Great Minds of the Invaders (Earth-ARV41)

[UPDATE 12th November 2025: Changed Brad's aftermath in the bio]

Howard Stark was born in Richford, New York, on 15th August 1914. His mother was a tailor who sewed shirtwaists for loving, while his father, Howard Stark Sr., occasionally sold fruits. Growing up in the Lower East Side of New York, alongside his friend, Joseph Manfredi, Howard learned that society put the limits to success based on ones' economic status or gender. As Howard stated to Peggy Carter, “Let me tell you, you don't get to climb the American ladder without picking up some bad habits on the way.”

This motive eventually drove Howard to break the social barrier of his family, of course by lying to get what he needed. Years by years, his struggles were finally paid off, and Howard gradually became an industrial genius, multi-millionaire, inventor, and businessman. Using his wealth, he attended several international conventions, such as the one from Abraham Erskine in Geneva, Switzerland, in May 1934.

In 1936, Howard Stark joined the Brotherhood of the Shield, and he was greatly admired due to his intelligence and skills. However, upon learning that its leader, Isaac Newton, had corrupted the Brotherhood by changing its motive from preventing the world to its end into making the world ends exactly in year 2062, Howard, with an aid of Leonardo da Vinci, successfully defeated Newton with his prior knowledges and inventions, effectively putting an end to Newton’s reign over the Brotherhood of the Shield. When the Brotherhood was finally restored to its initial state, Howard was originally asked by da Vinci to become the Head of the Brotherhood, but he refused, as he wanted to be more focus on his newly formed technological empire and returned to his country instead.

Howard Stark eventually founded Stark Industries in 1939, and around a year later, in 1940, he alongside Chester Philips formed Strategic Scientific Reserve (SSR), which served as a spiritual predecessor of SHIELD. Howard, alongside Peggy Carter, saved Abraham Erskine’s life from HYDRA’s grapple, and Howard adviced Erskine to fake his death via a car accident, and changed his name to Joseph Reinstein instead. When the United States officially declared war on the Axis power following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, Stark Industries also produced a hundred thousand planes as part of the American war effort during WWII.

The 1942 World Exposition was considered to be one of the most memorable ones because of several demonstrations made by Howard Stark, including the Hovercar (later nicknamed Lola by both Howard and Phil Coulson). It was dubbed the 1942 Stark Expo, and Steve Rogers, alongside Bucky Barnes, attended it.

Howard Stark, as well as Abraham Erskine, were instrumental in the successful Project Rebirth that turned Steve Rogers into America’s first Super Soldier. He was also the one to have secretly figured out Steve Rogers’ motives to saves the captured troops in North Africa besides Peggy Carter, and Steve was finally given a more battle-ready Captain America suit by Howard.

But that wasn’t enough, as he thought he could’ve done more than just fighting from the behind. Using a piece of the Tesseract’s power that he earned from the looted weapons of HYDRA, he decided to built his new, gigantic armour, strong enough to destroy a single tank. Named the HYDRA Stomper, the armour has became Howard’s new suit, earning him the title “The Genius of the Invaders.” He also aided Brad Pym in improvising his Hornet jetpack, earning Brad the title Hornet in the same time.

Following the disappearance of Captain America in early 1945, Howard Stark struggled to find the remains of Valkyrie plane, but instead, he found the Tesseract. Meanwhile, Peggy Carter, Sergeant Fury Sr., and the Howling Commandos attacked the HYDRA Research Facility No. 4, and captured Werner Reinhardt (aka Kraken) and his troops. Reinhardt had an obsession of Norse history as well as the Inhuman origins; the Inhumans’ artifact, the Obelisk, was his subject. Following Reinhardt’s imprisonment, the Obelisk was sent to Stark to be studied.

Following the end of WWII, Howard returned to his normal, playboy life, having a party with many high-class celebrities. In the end of every party, Howard asked his new assistant, Edwin Jarvis, to give each of these special guests a Stark Special Bracelet as a token of remembering their time together. In the same time, in 1949, Howard also came up with the conception of SHIELD alongside Peggy Carter and Chester Philips following the dissolution of SSR in anticipation of the Cold War.

In the midst of the Cold War, Howard Stark became a prominent role in SHIELD, and kept trying to develop weapons to the US Armed Forces and SHIELD. He too also worked with Hank Pym, before SHIELD’s plan to replicate the Pym Particle eventually led to a quite bitter rivalry between Stark and Pym.

At some point of in late 1960s, Howard fell in love with Maria Stark, and the two got married. On 27th May 1970, Anthony “Tony” Stark was born, and although he was seen quite cold and distant to his own son, he was secretly proud of Tony. Howard would then hold his last Stark Expo in 1974 (before its revival by 2010 thanks to Tony Stark), eventually focusing more on his own enterprises (including Stark Movie Studios) and SHIELD until he and his wife were assassinated by the Winter Soldier (Bucky Barnes) on 16th December 1996, after the rumour on SHIELD replicating the Super Soldier formula was heard by HYDRA.

***

Brad Pym originally joined the 8th Air Force of the US Army Air Force for sole duty, but his near intelligence in mechanics and his obsessions to aeronautics eventually caught attention from Howard Stark. When he was off mission, he secretly constructed the Hornet jetpack, which was meant to be integrated with his parachute as a meant to escape from his plane quickly when the plane was attacked, but it was never finished until his meeting with Howard Stark.

After Brad Pym was critically injured following his plane crash in Sicily, he and Howard (who saved him following the crash) decided to focus on perfecting Brad’s nearly discarded Hornet machine that he designed earlier. Brad was accepted into SSR for a temporal time, and he became the costumed flying ace under the codename Hornet.

With Captain America’s disappearance in 1945, the Invaders decided to split themselves to fight in several different areas. While Howard Stark decided to drop his HYDRA Stomper armor in pursuing his mission to find Captain America and the Valkyrie plane in the Arctic Sea, Hornet, alongside Moon Knight (Russell Donowitz) and his Silver Company led the Allied Forces in the attack on Berlin, forcing Nazi Germany and European branch HYDRA forces to surrender.

Following the V-E day, which marked the end of World War II in Europe, Brad entrusted his Hornet suit and gears to Howard Stark, telling him to keep the collection and Hornet’s real identity in secret. He would then retire from the US Army Air Force, and bought a small garden in East Nowhere, Nebraska for a new living.

Many years later, Brad Pym was married to Doris Pym, and from this marriage, Henry "Hank" Pym was born. As a father to Hank, he steered Hank to study mechanical engineering, and emphasized on precision, concepts, and practicability.

Brad would never realize that as Hank grew older, he would see his son eventually joined the US Army, joining SHIELD and working side-by-side with Howard Stark, and ended up becoming a masked superhero, Ant-Man, in 1970s and 1980s.

AUTHOR’S NOTES:

Yep, the sizes of these two characters in this picture are true to scale.

Finally, another (long overdue) WWII-related Earth-ARV41 entry! I wanted to spice up the role of Howard Stark and Hornet here; in Earth-ARV41, instead of being one of Peter Parker’s alternate aliases, the Hornet was an alias created by Brad Pym aka the father of the first Ant-Man, Hank Pym. And Brad Pym already exists in Earth-616, by the way!

If you’re seeing this, you realize that I am just one of the few people who give Howard Stark a superhero alias based on that of Steve Rogers (the OG HYDRA Stomper) from What If..? S1 Episode 1 (What if Captain Carter was the First Avenger?). Gotta credit @Oni18064 and @Mipower for this idea, by the way.

And for Hornet… I wanted to make the suit as practical as the USAAF (not USAF, note the acronym) fighter pilot gears. His jetpack was also packed with parachute harness, just in case his jetpack’s engine went down. Hornet’s helmet was meant to make Brad comfortable when flying in high altitude (that is, the low-oxygen environment), so the helmet is a mix between one of the unused designs on 2015 Ant-Man’s helmet and Ant-Man’s final helmet design from the same 2015 Ant-Man movie, both done by Andy Park. You can see Park’s several unused attempts on the helmet’s design here:

In the same time, I wanted to make Brad’s Hornet quite Rocketeer coded, so I based the design and pose from the Rocketeer 3D model by Wojciech Michalski from Artstation. (Link here)