Ultron Retrospective Part 2: The Origin of
Ultron
by Robert Clough
I'm pleased at the positive comments received on part 1.
Part 2 will
cover issue #58, which doesn't actually feature Ultron, but he
does appear
in an extended flashback sequence.
Avengers #58 (1968)
"Even An Android Can Cry"
Writer: Roy Thomas
Artist: John Buscema
Inker: George Klein
Letterer: Sam Rosen
Editor: Stan Lee
The issue opens with T'Challa being summoned to the
Mansion for some
unknown mission. In fact, a full meeting of the group had
been called to
assess the Vision's desire to become an Avenger! The
"big guns", Thor and
Iron Man, were called in because the situation was so
unusual. In an
effort to find out how powerful the Vision really is, Cap
arranges a
little fight where Vizh holds his own against him, Iron Man and
Thor.
Everyone is satisfied that Vizh is powerful enough, yet they all
are
bothered by the fact that he doesn't know who...or what he
is.
The Vizh probes his memories again and has a
breakthrough. He recalls
Ultron waking him up from his tube in his lab, declaring the
Vision to be
his slave. Vision is under Ultron's control, yet is already
consumed
with ontological and epistemological questions (ie, why am I
alive, and
why is the world the way it is?). Ultron tells him that
such nonsense is
for humans, and takes Vizh through a shakedown of all his
powers. Ultron
starts babbling that Vizh will destroy "the one I hate
most". Hank Pym
suddenly recalls once again that the Vision was similar to one of
his
robots, an artificial human that he called a synthozoid, but
couldn't
remember why he stopped working on it. So the Avengers trot
out to
Hank's house out in the country.
To Hank's surprise, it's boarded up and abandoned, and all
the
equipment inside is covered with dust. Worst of all, Hank
can't remember
why! Hank activates an "electronic memory bank"
and he suddenly
remembers a number of astonishing things. He recalls
tinkering with his
synthozoid, and before he even activates it, it starts
talking! The
robot starts talking like an infant, and then its speech patterns
starts
to quickly advance. Unfortunately, the robot starts zapping
him with
shock blasts. Pym realizes that the robot thinks he's its
father, and
wants to kill him..."like a living, mechanized Oedipus
complex!" The
robot zaps him into near-unconsciousness, and then hypnotizes him
into
leaving the house and never coming back. The robot,
Ultron-1, then left
to complete further evolution on himself, and wouldn't challenge
the
Avengers until he was Ultron-5.
Hank's lab is pretty much as he left it, with one
exception. The
memory tape that contained Wonder Man's brain patterns had been
stolen
(Wonder Man had been presumed dead after his one and only
encounter with
the Avengers back in issue #9). Ultron had used Wondy's
brain patterns
for the Vision! The Vizh is then voted into the Avengers.
Comments: This was an interesting issue for a number of
reasons. First
off, there were no real fights, except for the skirmish between
Vizh and
the founding Avengers early on, and the fight between Goliath and
Ultron-1 in a flashback. These sort of
"resting-place" issues usually
happen to be some of the best-loved in the series. Second,
Buscema's art
is exceptional, with one minor flaw: when Hank, Steve and Clint
are
unmasked at the end, you literally can't tell them apart, except
for the
costumes. Buscema tries to make their hairstyles a little
different, but
it doesn't help much. Of course, he wasn't the first artist
with that
problem, and certainly wasn't the last. The issue is
notable for two
splash pages: the first page, with T'Challa silently creeping
along a
wall, and the last, the famous page where the Vision, being
accepted as
an Avenger, turns away from the group and begins to cry.
Still a great
Avengers Moment (TM).
Ultron's origin doesn't really change much, but the
Oedipus complex
part of it is greatly expanded upon by Shooter. The
Vision's origin gets
far more convoluted, but I won't get into that here...
Next: Roy Thomas and Barry Smith give us the first adamantium
version of
Ultron in one of the great Avengers trilogies!