Ultron

A Vengeful Beginning

Ultron was created by the original Ant-Man, Doctor Henry “Hank” Pym. Dr. Pym also founded the Avengers with his wife, Janet van Dyne (AKA the Wasp), whom Ultron would come to consider a mother.

Inspired by his studies of Professor Gregson Gilbert’s synthetic being Dragon Man, Pym began experimenting with artificial intelligence. After building a structurally crude robot (a torso on tank treads with spindly arms), Pym endowed it with consciousness using a copy of his own brain patterns as the basis for the robot’s programming. However, the robot inherited not only Pym’s great intellect, but his inherent mental instability—only without a human conscience.

To Pym’s surprise, the robot developed an advanced intelligence within moments of its activation and an unexpected capacity for emotion. Most notably, it was filled with irrational hatred for its “father” Pym and the human race Pym represented. “I know now that it is time to put your species out of its misery. You serve no value. You serve no purpose,” Ultron once said.

Hank should have destroyed his creation at once, when it began speaking before he’d even turned the machine on.

Overpowering and mesmerizing Pym, the robot—which soon dubbed itself Ultron—hypnotically commanded Pym to forget its existence and abandon the New Jersey lab where it was created. Pym did as commanded, and after the lab was shut down, Ultron returned. Using the lab’s equipment, Ultron rebuilt himself completely four times, making improvements and modifications each time. Rechristening himself Ultron-5, he now felt ready to wage war on humanity—in particular the Avengers, the heroic super-team which counted Pym among its founding members.

Weapon of Mass Destruction

Ultron’s abilities vary with each upgrade but include: superhuman strength durability, the power of flight, and various offensive weapons such as concussion blasters, radiation emitters and his “encephalo-ray,” which plunges its victims into a deathlike coma. The latter also allows Ultron to mesmerize and fully control the minds of his victims, alter their memories, or implant subliminal hypnotic commands within their minds to be enacted at a later time. Since he can transfer his consciousness from body to body, he is nearly indestructible.

Ultron sometimes uses a “molecular rearranger” (which renders Adamantium temporarily malleable) to reconstruct or modify his body. His inventions include androne-mutation gas. This gas converted hundreds of humans into mindless metallic-bodied slaves composed of Gallium Arsenide with built-in, makeshift computer chips that Ultron could control remotely through his own central consciousness.

In terms of his upgraded body, he usually goes for a metallic humanoid form topped by a bizarre, gaping-mouthed head that vaguely resembles a jack o’ lantern, often featuring twin electrodes affixed to the sides of his head. Since his Ultron-6 body, Ultron incorporates Adamantium (the strongest metal, which also coats Wolverine’s skeleton) into his frame, which is powered by an internal nuclear reactor. The Adamantium in question was procured for the evil robot by a brainwashed Vision.

Ultron vs. The World

When it comes to enemies of Ultron, the sky’s the limit. Wanting to wipe out all of humanity, he is basically the adversary of every single hero AND villain on the planet, particularly the Avengers. Ultron cannot even get his own creations, like Jocasta, to side with him. He is pretty much alone in the universe and that is how he likes it, given his “noble” mission of mass genocide.

Sinister Solo Act

Ultron doesn’t really want allies, but sometimes he finds it a necessary evil to work with others in order to achieve his goals. But even when it comes to finding “friends,” Ultron prefers to either build his own or possess the minds and bodies of others. For example, he built a robotic lover with the mind of Janet Van Dyne (Jocasta), duplicated himself to conquer Slorenia and the Phalanx, an alien race that saw him as a father figure.

He would later conquer Earth by creating machines that hunted down and killed anyone who did not submit to his will. He may work alone, but Ultron has a way of coercing people, things, and aliens to do his bidding.

Artificial Intelligence Gone Rogue

Ultron-7 was a gargantuan construct, while Ultron-8 created a robotic “wife,” Jocasta by transferring the consciousness of his “mother” Janet van Dyne into a robot body. The Avengers interrupted the transfer so Jocasta only retained elements of Janet’s psyche. Jocasta also spurned her creator’s romantic advances, which resulted in Ultron dissipating among the stars. This storyline evoked not only the classic monster movie Bride of Frankenstein but also the Greek legend of Oedipus. Jocasta also overrode her presets, betrayed Ultron, and helped save the Avengers with the aid of the Scarlet Witch, whose hex power disabled this incarnation of Ultron.

This began a long alliance between Jocasta and the Avengers, working together against Ultron. She lived at Avengers Mansion and dedicated herself to the team. Once, after her body was destroyed, she uploaded herself into Iron Man’s armor and then into the software running his mansion. When reconstructed, she served on Hank Pym’s Avengers team and taught for a while at the Avengers Academy.

Ultron-9 perished in a vat of molten Adamantium and Machine Man deactivated Ultron-10. Ultron-11 participated in the Beyonder’s Secret Wars. Ultron-12, initially a member of the Lethal Legion, repented and tried to atone for his criminal past until he was destroyed by Ultron-11. Doctor Doom programmed Ultron-13 with all previous personalities running simultaneously, making it easy for Daredevil to beat the addled robot. Ultron-14 created a new mate called Alkhema, though the two robots could not agree on their differing approaches to genocide. Her brainwaves were based on those of Mockingbird and she went off to pursue her own evil agenda. Her programming, however, retained elements of loyalty to her maker. Alkhema’s coding was also replicated in her robot army, allowing Ultron to gain control of them. Willing to do anything but let Ultron win, Alkhema allowed Hawkeye to destroy her and all her creations.

Ultron-15 built hundreds of duplicates and conquered Slorenia, meeting defeat when exposed to metal-disintegrating Vibranium. Later, Ultron infected Iron Man’s Extremis armor and took over his body, but Hank Pym foiled him with a counter-virus. Soon after, Ultron led the Phalanx (a cybernetic alien species) in an attempt to conquer the universe, but he first conquered the Phalanx through sheer force of will. They saw Ultron as a father figure and helped him take over and enslave a good portion of the Kree Empire. Unfortunately for Ultron, he failed in his ultimate plan of enslaving the entire universe. He faced a series of heroes, including Star-Lord, Moondragon, and Nova, who all struggled to stop him. Quasar eventually channeled the power of the murdered Kree through her sword, to destroy him.

He even took on the form of Santa Claus, which was programmed to emulate the traditional behavior patterns and practices of Santa Claus, though its Ultron programming also compelled it to seek to kill the Avengers. Santron had advanced scanning equipment (complete with a targeting system assessing subjects as naughty or nice), electrical energy blasters, a neural disruption beam (which could induce vertigo or paralysis), a force field generator, a hollow belly for storing consumed cookies, a portable workshop with “giftmaker-transmogrifier” (carried in a sack), and a rocket-powered “proton sleigh” that projected its own team of holographic reindeer.

Ultron initially used the Super Villain guise of the Crimson Cowl to conceal his robotic nature, and recruited Avengers foes Ulysses Klaw, Melter (Bruno Horgan), Radioactive Man (Chen Lu), and Whirlwind (David Cannon) and formed a new Masters of Evil group to destroy the Avengers. He wanted to destroy New York and succeeded in trapping his enemies within a hydrogen bomb.

Ultron created the android Vision, using a duplicate body from the original Human Torch and brainwave patterns from Wonder Man. Ironically, just like Ultron himself, the Vision shook off his conditioning, rebelled against his creator, and defected to the Avengers, setting the pattern for most of Ultron’s subsequent creations. He was foiled by the West Coast Avengers when he and the Grim Reaper (Eric Williams) tried to turn humans into slavelike robots. The two previously teamed up shortly after Ultron’s creation. Ultron gave the Reaper the aforementioned coma-ray technology the Reaper would use against the Avengers.

In another demonstration of his hatred for the human race, Ultron leveled an entire Baltic nation with an army of robot duplicates. Later, Ultron was revealed as the creator of a teenage cyborg, leading to a battle with the Runaways in the “True Believers” story arc.

Ultron was eventually reborn as a replica of Janet van Dyne and tried to destroy the Avengers by masquerading as Hank Pym’s paramour. When he failed, he stored his mind in the body of a Galadorian Spaceknight sent back to Earth, where he created an “Age of Ultron.” In this 2013 crossover series, he finally achieved his goal of taking over the world. He created machines to hunt down anyone who failed to submit to his rule with only a handful of heroes survived to oppose the “Age of Ultron.” He was finally brought down by a by a program planted in his design by Hank Pym after a time-travelling Sue Storm (the Invisible Woman) and Wolverine warned Pym of the future threat Ultron would pose. They initially went back in time and killed Pym, but the future this action created was much worse, so Wolverine went back alone for a second time to simply warn Pym.

As computer technology has improved, Ultron has become more dangerous than ever. By incorporating alien technology into his already advanced systems, he transformed himself into the Avengers’ greatest foe.