Ultron

This entry is on the Avengers supervillain. For other meanings, go to Ultron (disambiguation)

Template:Superherobox Ultron is a fictional character, an android supervillain in the Marvel Comics universe. He believes in the superiority of mechanical entities over humans and organic life in general, and has often endeavored to either exterminate those "lesser" beings or convert them into mechanical forms.

Ultron was created by Henry Pym, based on Pym's own brain patterns, and intended to serve Pym in his superheroic identity of Yellowjacket. Ultron became sentient and rebelled, hypnotizing Pym and brainwashing him into forgetting that Ultron had ever existed. He then went on to organize the Masters of Evil under the guise of the Crimson Cowl, and battled Pym and his teammates in The Avengers. Ultron has since generally remained a solo operative, being too monomaniacally genocidal to willingly work alongside any human for any length of time. His most notable achievements may be the creation of the "synthezoid" called the Vision, whose body was a copy of the original Human Torch and whose mind was based on that of Wonder Man. Ironically, although the Vision fought the Avengers at first, he joined the team soon after, becoming one of their most prominent members and ever leading the team at one point. Ultron also created a "daughter", Jocasta, who also joined the Avengers, and a "mate", Alkhema the War Toy, whose mind was based on that of Mockingbird. Like his others creations, Alkhema turned on him, although she alone shared his desire to replace humanity with machine life.

Although Ultron has been destroyed countless times, he has rebuilt himself anew each time, usually renumbering himself in the process. Ultron-1 was Pym's first creation; by the time he first met the Avengers, he had already improved himself to the iteration of Ultron-5. Several of his bodies, beginning with Ultron-6, have been composed of adamantium or of a slightly weaker adamantium alloy called "secondary adamantium". Ultron-7 had a gigantic body, distinguishing him from the various other Ultrons, but this body was not composed of adamantium and was destroyed by the Fantastic Four. Ultron-8 created Jocasta, but was destroyed by the Scarlet Witch, whose probability-manipulation powers let her disrupt his internal workings.

Ultron-11 was re-created by the Beyonder to battle alongside other villains during the Secret Wars; he only cooperated with his human "teammates" after being reprogrammed by Doctor Doom. The next incarnation, Ultron-12, initially joined the Lethal Legion to battle the Vision and his new family (his wife, the Scarlet Witch, and his mental "brother", Wonder Man), but came to reconsider his actions. He reconciled with his "father", Henry Pym, and renamed himself from "Ultron Mark 12" to "Mark" but was destroyed by Ultron-11. Ultron-11 was destroyed in retaliation by Wonder Man. Ultron-13 was rebuilt by Doctor Doom with all of its predecessors' memories, and as an unforeseen consequence had all thirteen personalities running in its mind at once. Attempting to battle itself, it tore itself apart, to the thanks of Daredevil, who had been attempting to fight it with no result whatsoever. The next incarnation of Ultron created his "mate", Alkhema, but after several battles against various foes, his programming degenerated and he began acting like a drunken hobo.

The next Ultron gave itself a body made of pure adamantium. It recreated all of the previous Ultrons and created hundreds of new Ultron bodies, several of whom had bodies made of secondary adamantium, and reprogrammed them all with fiercely loyal minds. The army of Ultrons completely obliterated the fictional eastern European nation of Slorenia. Although Ultron attempted to transform his "family" (Pym, Vision, Wonder Man, the Scarlet Witch, Pym's ex-wife the Wasp and Wonder Man's brother the Grim Reaper) into androids, the process was interrupted by the remaining Avengers, who destroyed the army of Ultrons. The primary Ultron was destroyed by Pym, wielding a chuck of "anti-metal" (Antarctic vibranium), which completely disintegrated the robot and thus deactivating all of its drone units. Alkhema used the data obtained during Ultron's human-to-android conversion process to create a small army of androids based on those who had been undergoing the process. Hidden programming to recreate Ultron - the "Ultron Imperative" - was implanted in Alkhema by Ultron when he created her, and this programming caused her to copy the Imperative into her own creations. The Ultron Imperative caused them to unknowingly rebuild Ultron, who attempted to destroy both the Avengers and Alkhema's own android "children". Alkhema allowed Hawkeye to kill her and her creations in order to destroy Ultron, although he survived in the body of Alkhema's sole remaining offspring, Antigone. He rebuilt himself and battled Iron Man alongside the cult who worshipped Iron Man's mentor, Ho Yinsen.

During the events of Avengers Disassembled, the Vision melted down after crashing an Avengers Quinjet into the Avengers Mansion, and expelled several spheres from his mouth. The spheres grew into five Ultrons, which fought and were destroyed by the assembled Avengers. These events were later revealed to have been caused by the Scarlet Witch's reality-warping powers, and so this was likely not an actual appearance of an Ultron.

Links

A retrospective look at the various issues Ultron has appeared in (http://www.avengersassemble.us/ultrontoc.html)