The Ultimates -- the first government-sponsored cadre of Super Heroes -- was assembled to face threats to humanity too insanely powerful forother operatives to handle.

Led by a general who gave an eye in the service of his country, the super-powered roster includes a billionaire playboy in a high-tech suit of armor, a World War II super-soldier whom fate has thrust into the twenty-first century, an environmentalist icon who claims to be an ancient Norse god, and a scientist whose mutant powers allow her to shrink to the stature of an insect.

But even the Ultimates are unprepared for a quintet of mysterious visitors who appear in the midst of the team's top-security base of operations, claiming to be emissaries from the future.

These "Tomorrow Men" say Earth's civilization is at a crossroads -- on the verge of enslavement by a secret, immensely efficient organization known in the future as Tiber. Only the Ultimates have the skills and the firepower to ferret Tiber out of its nests around the world and crush its plans for global conquest.

But there is much more the Tomorrow Men will not say. After all, they don't want to alter the timeline any more than they have to.

But wealthy Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, is dying by degrees of an incurable medical condition. For him, the temptation to make an additional change in the timeline may be too great to ignore -- though mankind's future might be damaged in the process.