Sasha Hammer, the Chinese-American industrialist, born to criminal would-be-conquerors, is Detroit Steel: an augmented woman with mechanized warfare armor and ambitious goals to out-invent her enemies.
Villainous Heritage
The granddaughter to financier Justin Hammer and daughter of the American criminal mastermind Justine Hammer, AKA Crimson Cowl, and the Chinese would-be-conqueror Mandarin, Sasha is a natural-born industrialist with a strategic mind for warfare and criminal pursuits.
Sasha assists the child engineering prodigy Ezekiel “Zeke” Stane. They become more than criminal coworkers when they embark on a romantic relationship. She helps him coordinate an assault and mass slaughter against Stane’s enemy, genius inventor Tony Stark, AKA Iron Man, and his company Stark Industries. She eventually has Stane augment her body with repulsor enhanciles, which give her superhuman abilities, and later becomes the pilot of her invention, the Detroit Steel armor.
Augmented Superhuman Powers
Sasha is an inventor with a mind for bio-mechanics and robotic engineering. She conducts bleeding-edge research into man/machine spinal hybrid mechanics. Sasha claims her research will end paralysis caused by cervical, thoracic, or corticospinal injuries. Her research leads to Hammer Industries building fourth-generation counter-warfare in the form of an armored exo-skeleton called Controlled Exo-Enhanciles (C.N.S.). The exo-suit allows man and machine to act as one and becomes known as Detroit Steel.
When her criminal colleague Zeke augments her body with his cybernetic enhancements, repulsor-based technology, she possesses superhuman abilities. These abilities include an energy whip that expels from her fingertips, flight, and increased durability—she can survive a car crash as well as repulsor blasts without any protective gear.
Sasha becomes the pilot of the Detroit Steel armor and many of the subsequent models. The armor, equipped with a variety of weapons, is designed for offensive and defensive warfare. No matter the model, the armor allows her to use her powers.
Corporate Rivals
Tony Stark as Iron Man is Sasha’s natural enemy, considering they vie for the same clients to purchase their warfare-intended body armor and munitions. She often works with other criminals to take Tony off the board so that she can make millions in profits. In having Tony as an enemy, she goes up against his heroic allies, such as Pepper Potts, AKA Rescue.
Criminal Family and Colleagues
Sasha grows up in a family of criminals. Her mother Justine is the hooded Crimson Cowl and founder of the Masters of Evil, while her father is the Mandarin, the crime lord, and former foe to Iron Man.
Sasha becomes one of two heads to Hammer Industries, the company her mother inherits from her father, the criminal financier Justin Hammer. Hammer Industries provides arms manufacturing to former Stark clients when Stark abandons munitions.
Working for the villainous engineer Ezekiel Stane, she develops a romantic relationship with him, and they plot to take down Stark Industries using suicide bombers. They also team up with her father, the Mandarin, and after he abuses Stane, Stane slays him. Sasha and Stane then kill her mother for not stopping Mandarin’s abuse.
Detroit Steel’s Story
Sasha helped Stane transform several human volunteers into human bombs, resulting in suicide attacks in Tanzania and the death of the Filipino Super Hero team, the Triumph Division. Stane’s enhancements allowed him to survive, though badly burned. Sasha later supported him as he geared up for his final assault on Stark Industries: to outfit four squads of suicide bombers to attack Stark’s four most important facilities. When he needed more gear, Sasha made it happen with a few calls. Sasha coordinated the bomb squads and relayed communications between them and Stane, who battled Iron Man in the meantime though he was captured and imprisoned for his crimes, while Sasha remained anonymous.
Heading Hammer Industries, Sasha and her mother Justine met with United States Army General Bruce Babbage to present their new security technology: Detroit Steel—a robotic exo-suit that works with a human operator. The Detroit Steel pilot is Lt. Doug Johnson III, U.S.A.F.—a man Hammer Industries experimented on in a basement in Cuba. Sasha argued that while their warfare product cost millions, it would save the government billions. While the General declined their offer, it was all a part of Sasha and Justine’s scheme to dethrone Stark as the leading head of the munitions industry. When Stark announced he would be departing munitions, Justine and Sasha—who were on their way to meet with some Pakistani guerrillas in Pakistan—received a desperate call from Babbage who desired to purchase Detroit Steel.
Later, Sasha has Stane augment her body with repulsor enhanciles to give her superhuman abilities, and she used them to attack Stark in his vehicle. Following the attack, Sasha and her mother Justine met with Detroit Steel pilot Johnson and asked him to attack Tony Stark and use the armored suit to make a fool of him on American soil. Johnson reluctantly agreed and attacked Stark in his new car, the Stark Resilient, with a coordinated air-strike as well. Though General Babbage called Justine to call off Detroit Steel’s attack. Meanwhile, Sasha coordinated Zeke’s escape from prison and introduced him to both her parents. Zeke began working with them to take a stand against Stark.
Sasha later attacked Pepper Potts, the armored hero Rescue, with the intent to kill her. She coordinated heavily-armored mercenaries in newer models of the Detroit Steel exo-suits and piloted one of them herself. Though, she and the mercenaries left the battle when the pilot of Detroit Steel, Johnson, disappeared. Sasha became the new pilot of Detroit Steel, but it didn’t last long. While at home, Johnson drugged and attacked her in her bed and kept calling himself Detroit Steel. She fought him off with her energy whip but couldn’t stop him from kidnapping her. He used her to get back into the Detroit Steel Suit by threatening to shoot her in front of Justine. Justine let him have his war suit, and Johnson released Sasha. When he returned to the suit, he turned it against Justine and everyone at Hammer Industries. Sasha attacked Detroit Steel with her energy whip, and using it ripped Johnson’s head off.
Sasha then attacked Stark with a modified mechanical exo-suit and her Steel Corps backing her up though once Rescue joined the foray, her and Iron Man made a quick escape. Meanwhile, Zeke helped Mandarin build new mechanical suits and freed Stark’s enemies across the world, ruining his reputation as Iron Man. Mandarin grew impatient and physically abused Stane for his inability to build killing robots, known as Titanomechs, on schedule and relayed his treatment to Sasha. Stark defeated the Titanomechs while Zeke allied with Stark against Mandarin and killed him for the abuse he suffered. Sasha reunited with Zeke, and they apparently killed her mother Justine for enabling Mandarin’s abuse towards Zeke.
