Ivan Antonovich Vanko (Russian: Иван Антонович Ванко) was a Russian physicist and the son of the disgraced scientist Anton Vanko. When Vanko's father died penniless due to the actions of Howard Stark, Vanko swore to seek revenge by targeting Howard's son, Tony Stark. Recreating an Arc Reactor based on his father's design and designing an armor similar to Iron Man's, Vanko attacked Stark in Monaco, under the moniker of Whiplash. Though he was incarcerated, he was subsequently broken out and recruited by Justin Hammer in order to use his skills to create a functional advanced armor to compete with Stark's, but Vanko repurposed the armors into the Hammer Drones, hijacking them and the Mark I War Machine Armor, in an attempt to kill Stark and destroy his legacy. He was defeated by the combined efforts of Iron Man and War Machine, following which he chose to end his life by initiating a self-destruct feature within his armor.