Collin Cooper is a military weapons manufacturing designer who was originally employed by Acton Manufacturing, a United States Defense Contractor.  Collin was placed in charge of a highly classified contract to create the next generation of mechanized infantry assault armored suits. One of the specifications was for the armor to endure a full blast from flamethrowers, napalm and ionized plasma bombs.  That unto itself was a tall order for a set of armor that had many moving parts, seams, seals and joints that would be highly susceptible to gaps where the heat could get inside the suit and burn the armor's wearer to a crisp. All other defense contractors turned down the contract in full knowledge that the lawsuits alone would be enough to make the project too risky.  Acton Manufacturing, on the other hand, was more than willing to do so...seeing as they were also working on black market versions of all their military contracts to sell to the highest bidder overseas or to such organizations as CANIS, the Gold Syndicate or the United Canadian Empire (UCE).

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Collin worked feverishly for years on the project, with the armor prototypes consistently failing all quality control checks and tests.  The one time they did attempt to put an engineer in the suit to test it, the suit's heat exchangers failed and burned the engineer alive in the suit.  With that, Collin was fired from Acton. Since the designs were 'produced' by Acton, the entire armor system belonged to Acton., and as such, were 'vaulted' and stored away as a failed project; a project that supposedly cost Acton Manufacturing $210 million in losses.

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While attending a series of job interviews with other engineering businesses in New York City, a superhero battle occurred a block away from Collin while he was en-route to his interview. There, the superhero was getting trounced by a massive armored man - an armor Collin immediately recognized as HIS design.   Collin ran to the battle, seeing the superhero being severely beaten and seconds from death. Collin jumped on the back of the armored villain's suit and opened a panel and ripped out several electronic components, causing the suit to instantly convulse like it was having an epileptic seizure.  Collin helped the superhero up. The hero was the famous Major Deej.

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After the GUARD Special Detentions Unit (SDU) arrived and carted off the armor and its wearer, Collin mentioned to Major Deej about the similarities of the armor's design to his own when he worked with Acton Manufacturing. After Major Deej took Collin to the Challengers HQ and debriefed him, Major Deej immediately contacted the Pentagon to determine the status of the armor and the potential theft of the designs from Acton Manufacturing. Sure enough, Acton Manufacturing said there'd been a break in a week before and that all plans, equipment, files and digital diagrammatic and documents had been stolen with no evidence of the theft.  Collin, after hearing that, was deeply surprised to hear this. The effort it would take to MAKE a prototype, nonetheless a 100% non-failing armor would be astronomically impossible to do in less than a week's time, nonetheless required highly experience engineers to even perform the needed tasks to do so; it would take over a month just to fix the armor's flaws alone.  Something seemed wrong. Something didn't add up. With that (since he missed his interview), Collin went back home to Harlem and cooked dinner for his family, Lekisha, his social media 'vlogger' of a wife,  and Collin Junior and Lora, both  his son and daughter, respectively (Lekisha was a terrible cook!).

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After dinner, Collin watched the news, which showed the battle with Major Deej and the man wearing Collin's armor. His family saw Collin's involvement in the event and cheered for the heroic actions he did (Lekisha immediately went into a live vlog). That's when a knock came on the door to his house. There were two men saying they were from the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) and they needed to 'debrief' Collin on his involvement with the armor during the incident that day. Major Deej hadn't told Collin of anything relating to this, and interestingly enough, the classification level of the armor should have warranted a Pentagon investigation, not a CIA one. After checking their badges and seeing nothing to say they were other than who they were, Collin left with them, whispering to his wife if he wasn't back in a day's time to contact Major Deej somehow. Once in their car, Collin was immediately injected with a knock-out serum. He tried to struggle to get away, but one of the 'CIA' men said if Collin struggled, he'd have one less kid to feed before they were done with him.

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Collin awoke in a a storage cage in an old, cold run-down open floor warehouse. There, he met with a man in a business suit who stated that if Collin chose to live or not allow anyone in his family to die a painful, unexpected death, that he'd cooperate and fix the access panel issue that allowed Collin to break in and render the armor inoperative. With little choice, Collin agreed and was brought to the main floor of the old warehouse which was packed with tons of modern engineering equipment...and another version of suit he saw earlier that day with Major Deej. This one, however, was painted gold and had a tag on it for the 'Gold Syndicate'. In crates all around the warehouse were dozens of other components and pieces of the armor, most of them at least 50% completed.  Just by looking around him, Collin realized this operation had been going on for a lot longer than one week. This must've taken at least four to five months to get this far.  All of this had to have been stolen, he kept telling himself; no one else would 'give' these people the armor designs. He began to believe it must have been a well-placed corporate spy, maybe.

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But before Collin could get the chance to rationalize who was responsible for all this, Collin was told to get to work and make the corrections and fixes to all the armored units and if they liked his work, they might only put Collin in a coma, rather than kill him.

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For the next two days, Collin was beaten, slapped around and threatened on an hourly basis, with no sleep. He'd fixed several of the armored units already, but quickly realized that to do this right, he needed to add a special seal for each armor's new cover, which his captors agreed with. That's when Collin realized two very important facts; one, that ALL of the equipment, drawings, digital files and designs, as well as all the hardware, was all in this one location - the very warehouse he was in; two, that he could easily cross-connect the suit's heat exchangers under each armor's panel into the cooling system wherein once the armor's weapons systems came online, a catastrophic heat failure would melt the armor and most likely kill whoever was in the armor as well.  To ensure that no one would ever be able to use his designs for evil, Collin quietly applied the heat exchanger cross-connection to all the active suits while replacing all the seals. All Collin had to do now was wait for the fireworks, and when that happened, Collin intended to destroy the warehouse with all the armor and designs for good, even if it cost him his life.

 

By the third day, two of the captor's men (Collin still, to this day, isn't sure who they were or who they were working for) donned each of two operational armor sets that had been completed. Collin was brought to the 'CIA man' in the middle of the warehouse. The plans was to have the two in the armor use the armor's weapons systems to kill Collin. When the armor's weapons systems activated, the suits began to glow an orange red; their weapons began to burn and quickly melt, all while the armor itself began melting with the men inside the suits screaming in horror all throughout. While the captor's men were distracted, Collin broke away and got ahold of an energy blaster from one of the men, shooting two of them in the process. Collin made his way behind an overturned metal lab table, but got pinned down under heavy return fire. For the next minute, Collin held-off his attackers, but soon realized his gun's energy pack was quickly emptying. That's when salvation arrived.

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Major Deej burst through the warehouse ceiling, along with his superhero team, the Challengers, and a contingent of GUARD troopers.  In less than 10 minutes, the warehouse was secured and the bad guys were defeated, leaving a thankful Collin alive and relieved.

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After Collin was debriefed on the entire episode, the armor and lab were sent to GUARD's HQ where, after a few weeks, the engineers there stated that the armor and its systems 'were unlikely to be utilized for or by any government program' due to the major power faults and induced flaws that were seemingly overwritten into the armor's original plans; flaws that originated at Acton, completely unknown to Collin or his engineering team. Acton Manufacturing swore its innocence in anything alluding to this, claiming corporate espionage and sabotage instead. As per Pentagon (and GUARD) directives, Acton was forced to relinquish all rights to the armor and its designs, and pay a hefty Department of Defense (DoD) fee for 'lost classified materials', eventually leading to the imprisonment of two Acton Manufacturing executives that were seemingly evidenced to have been part of the 'lost chain of propriety' to the classified materials...according to last minute discovered evidence produced by Acton Manufacturing's 'investigations' (most likely, these executives were made scapegoats for the company).

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Collin was asked  to join GUARD to lead one of their engineering support teams for one of their Guardian supergroups, however, after a few months, Collin was offered a different 'deal' on the side; a deal Collin was more than willing to quit GUARD for.

 

An old man in an obvious disguise contacted Collin and offered him $150 million in funds and copies of all the data and designs of the armor that were 'vaulted' by GUARD after Collin's incident with Major Deej and the armor. Collin was told GUARD had no intention to ever allow those designs to see the light of day ever again, and that if Collin used the funds to build 'something' better and use it for the good of the world to prevent what nearly happened to him and Major Deej from ever happening to anyone else again, that he'd ensure that no one would ever attempt to stop him...so long as the armor didn't look or act like the original armor designs and that its use was for the benefit of mankind...and a weapon to use against evil. When Collin dared to mention he'd already recognized the disguised old man to actually being the legendary World War II hero, Major Invader, the 'Major' whipped out a unique assault weapon and said 'you ever tell anyone else, I will personally be...upset...with you', to which the 'Major' quickly put the weapon back and started walking away muttering to himself about updating his disguises. Collin laughed at the situation and quickly yelled out to the muttering 'Major' that they had a deal. The 'Major' turned back, shook Collin's hand, smiled, called Collin a 'damn good man' and started walking away. A second later, Collin's phone's email alerts showed an email with a new untraceable bank account number with $150 million dollar of funds readily available under the name of Fred Edward Works. When Collin looked back up from his phone, the 'Major' was nowhere to be seen.

 

The next morning, Collin received a registered package with all the papers, documents, drivers' license, passport, etc., for a Mister Fred Edward Works, all with his picture and signature already in place, along with documentation and keys to an old warehouse north of Kittery, Maine. In the package were also new house keys, a title to the house, a land deed and classified security access card and ID for access to the DoD's computer network, all with instructions for 'Mr. Works' new (made-up) job with the 'DoD' for which he was now assigned to in Kittery, Maine.  With that, Collin told his wife and family of his new classified government 'job' (but not saying a single thing about the Mr. Works secret identity nor anything the 'Major' and he'd discussed) and that he was to work there, operating at 'his own hours', allowing him to come home a few times each week and on the weekends until the family was ready to move up to Kittery, Maine to their new, large home. Lukisha immediately 'vlogged' minutes later on the open social media platforms about her husband getting his new 'government' job and their move to Maine in the near future. Collin's wife and children were all happy about the new job and the new chapter in their lives they were about to embark upon once the kid's school year was over.

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The next few months, Collin worked feverishly at his new secret lab taking the information and files from his old designs, the designs from those that 'stole' his armor's designs, and tons of 'recommendations' from GUARD and MIT on how to make the armor viable. Most of the recommendations noted that the suit wasn't highly efficient and would most likely be replaced by more efficient armor designs in the next decade. Collin didn't care. He worked on integrating the old and new designs as well as the recommendations...and of course, adding his own features and weapons. When all was said and done, Collin created the Mark I version of the 'Iron Works' armor (Collin's given made-up name, Fred Edward Works, seemingly by plan when logically deciphered, reads as "F.E. Works" or more to the point, "Fe Works", wherein "Fe" in the chemical acronym that stands for "Iron", ergo, "Iron Works").

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For the next year, Collin mastered how to operate the armor and its weapons systems, where, on occasion, he'd use the armor to thwart a major burglary or a super-villain attack (at the Portsmouth Shipyard). There, Collin told the world his codename was Iron Works and the media immediately went on to call him the newest superhero of Maine (New Hampshire, wherein Portsmouth Shipyard predominantly resides in, attempted to take credit for Iron Works supposed state citizenship, however, the Governor of Maine was too quick to write up the press releases and proclamations; thus perpetuating the long-running animosity of the Portsmouth-Kittery, New Hampshire-Maine associations all related to the shipyard's overlaying border location). Thus, Iron Works instead became Maine's celebrated superhero, rather than New Hampshire's.

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A few years ago, Iron Works was contacted by a vigilante called 'Minuteman' during a crisis in which a terrorist organization calling itself the "United Canadian Empire" (UCE) attempted to take over all of New England using several hidden and armed nuclear warheads to hold New England hostage to its new nation's name of "New Canada" under UCE's rule.  Thanks to Iron Works and Minuteman's and a band of fellow New England superheroes stopping this nuclear crisis, Iron Works was allowed to become a registered superhero.  Collin used the false identity of Fred Edwards Works as his 'secret identity' for the files, and as such, there is no single connection between Collin and F.E. Works or the superhero, Iron Works.  Within a week's time after Minuteman's team gained international fame in their heroism, Iron Works was asked to join not only Major Deej's "Challengers", but also Minuteman's new team of "Yankee Minutemen". To throw off any chance of suspicion (and the possibility of Major Deej realizing it was Collin under the armor), Iron Works instead joined the Yankee Minutemen.

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Today, Iron Works has his new Mark II armor (with advanced weapons and improved shielding) as his main armor. Collin has at least three armors sets available to use at any time, and of course is working on the next version, the Mark III armor even as you read this. As such, Iron Works has become quite the celebrity in New England, even with Collin's brother, Adam Cooper, liking Iron Works more than any of the other Yankee Minutemen (Collin's children, sadly, like the Challengers' heroes and Major Deej more).  Iron Works has yet to be contacted by the old 'disguised' Major Invader, but it seems that Mr. Works does receive an annual 'bonus' in his bank account every year for an additional $1.5 million for 'project and personal use' by said 'Major'.  Collin's family has now moved to Kittery, Maine, thus allowing him to be a bit closer to his family and work. Collin spends as much time as he can with his children and, of late, has been asked to become a Cub Scout leader for his son's Cub Scout Pack, to which Collin has yet to agree to...but will need to soon! As for Collin's secret identity, the only one that Collin believes knows who Iron Works 'really' is, is a certain old disguised man believed to be Major Invader...or so he thinks. Of late, a shadowy figure has been tracking Collin's comings and goings; a shadowy figure that seems intent on discovering Collin's secrets...

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