Ultron: Where Do I Start?

Say hello to your new robot overlord.

If all the pomp and promise of Marvel’s impending Age of Ultron event is to be believed, it’s Ultron the Marvel U will be bowing down to. And it’s not the first time Ultron’s reared his head in comics. Since his creation in 1968 by Roy Thomas and John Buscema, he’s become one of the preeminent Avengers adversaries and his origin only makes it even more captivating. You see, Ultron was originally created by founding Avenger Ant-Man — aka Hank Pym — as a docile robot with Pym’s own brainwave patterns. But Pym’s robot got a mind of his own, rebelled and set about improving on himself in order to strike back at his father and his friends.

Over the years, Ultron has reinvented himself on numerous occasions — usually proclaiming his model number, even — becoming a sinister version of Microsoft or Apple announcing the next iteration of one of their operating systems. But this isn’t Windows 7 — it’s much, much worse. In this week’s Where Do I Start?, we delineate the key stories of Hank Pym’s robotic black sheep and find the 5 (or should I say 6) stories that’ll help you best understand Ultron.

Essential Avengers, Vol. 3: There’s no Ultron: Year One (yet), but this extra-large collection contains not only the beginnings of Ultron in Hank Pym’s lab but also his rebellion against his master and his second attempt at lashing out against the Avengers a year later. Written by Roy Thomas with art by John and Sal Buscema, the issues here really show how Ultron came to be and also the kind of labored mind that it would take, in this case Hank Pym’s, to create something that would be such a thorn in the side for the Avengers for decades to come. As an added bonus, this also included the origins of the modern Vision, a fellow robot whom Ultron has shared numerous stories with over the years.

Essential Avengers, Vol. 7: There’s 25 issues in this massive Essentials tome, but for today’s case I’m narrowing my focus to a single two-part story-arc: Avengers #161 and #162. A very young Jim Shooter and George Perez deliver the pinnacle, for me at least, in Ultron stories. Hank Pym is drugged and tricked into thinking the Avengers are imposters, leaving the team in dissaray just enough for a new Ultron — Ultron-7 — to land on their doorstep. What is he after? A bride of course. Bringing in shades of The Bride of Frankenstein, Ultron wants to transform a new Pym creation into a mate, but ultimately this would-be mate turns out to be Ultron’s undoing. Some say “The Korvac Saga” is Shooter’s best Avengers story, but my money is on this little gem for showing how big a threat Ultron can be.

West Coast Avengers, Vol. 1: Family Ties: Overlooked by most, I’d hold up this first story-arc of the ongoing West Coast Avengers series as one of the most telling in all of the Ultron stories there’s been. In this, a newly created Ultron-12 comes face-to-face with his would-be son Vision and experiences a change of heart. Ultron-12 makes an uneasy peace with his own would-be father, Hank Pym, and calls himself “Mark” as in “Ultron Mark 12”. This potential heroic turn for Ultron is cut short when his previous iteration, Ultron-11, returns and promptly destroys the deviant creation.

Avengers: Ultron Unlimited: Once again, George Perez delivered a definitive Ultron story — this one, with writer Kurt Busiek. In Busiek and Perez’ “Ultron Unlimited” story-arc,Ultron’s bride Alkhema faces off with the Avengers but is interrupted when a new model Ultron comes on the scene and promptly slaughts an entire European country. And unlike some other books who would gloss over that, this one really delves into the horror or decimating an entire country in pretty decompressed detail. In the ashes of this country, Ulron creates an army of robot Ultrons and goes after the Avengers and the people he sees as his family. This provokes a relatively classic line-up of Avengers along with newcomers like Justice and Firestar to fight back against Ultron with his creator,  Hank Pym, ultimately finding a way to stop him. This is a classic Ultron tale, and wouldn’t be too bad a choice to see picked if they ever featured Ultron in the Avengers movie series.

Annihilation: Conquest Vol. 1 and 2: Most of Ultron’s battles are against Earth’s Avengers, but in this unique crossover Ultron goes into space at the hands of epic cosmic writers Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning. In this two-part collection, Nova, Quasar and the team that would later become the new Guardians of the Galaxy face off against Ultron after he cements himself as the ruler of the technology-based alien species the Phalanx. This massive storyline really broadens the scope of what Ultron is capable of.