Ultron Retrospective Part 8: This Evil Returning
by Robert Clough

The Big U, interestingly enough, never returned to the pages of the
Avengers after #202.  After popping up in the next two comics and Secret
Wars, he becomes one of the West Coast Avengers' main villains.  The next
two stories don't feature the Avengers per se, but feature three folks
who were Avengers at some point.  Without further ado...


Marvel Two-In-One #92 (October, 1982)
The Thing and Jocasta
"This Evil Returning"
Scripter: Tom DeFalco
Penciler: Ron Wilson
Inkers: A. Sorted
Letters: Joe Rosen
Colors: Don Warfield
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Tour Guide: Jim Shooter

  The Thing spends a few pages going through some hijinx trying to get
back to the U.S.; he had spent the last couple of issues in Egypt.  Back
in New York, a mysterious cloaked figure is hassled by some punks in an
alley; she zaps them with some kind of ray and escapes.  She is later
revealed as Jocasta, and goes to the Fantastic Four for help.
  She had just left the Avengers (after #211), claiming that the team had
betrayed her by not considering her for membership.  (In fact, Cap was
about to name her as the permanent "pinch-hit" Avenger before she got
upset and left, but she doesn't know that)  So she was pretty bummed out,
feeling like the Avengers treated her like a "pet, or a forgotten piece
of furniture."  So she struck out on her own; unfortunately, she started
to get nightmares that were messing with her senses, and so she turned to
Reed Richards for help. 
  Reed calls up Captain America for the skinny on Ultron, although
doesn't tell him why he needs to know, or that Jocasta is around.  Reed
suspects that Ultron may be the cause of her problems somehow.  Ben has
gone off to see the FF's insurance adjuster, one Aaron Stack, aka Machine
Man.  Jocasta accompanies Alicia Masters to her new sculpture
exhibition.  Jo suddenly freaks out and starts smashing statues, and then
runs off to "go to him."  Alicia calls Ben, who runs off from the
insurance meeting, but not before mentioning a "lady robot" to Stack. 
Intrigued, Stack sheds his human disguise to become Machine Man and
starts tracking Jo.
  Jocasta goes to the plant where Ultron was last defeated and recreates
a new body for him.  She immediately breaks out of her hypnotic spell and
attacks him, but Ultie stops her cold.  Machine Man zips in and tries to
save her, but Ultron destroys his leg and then walks off, no longer
interested in fighting.  Instead, he plans on bringing about the
"millennium of the machine."  At that moment, Ben Grimm attacks him, but
Ultron subdues him rather easily and uses his hypnosis trick on him,
having him attack Machine Man...

Comments:  Well, let me begin by saying that DeFalco is one of my least
favorite writers around, that Wilson is mediocre at best, and that seeing
the credit "A. Sorted" for inks did not exactly raise my confidence
level about the art.  However, two characters that DeFalco has always
done a relatively decent job for are the Thing and Machine Man, and
they're both written fairly well here.  The whole Jocasta scenario is more
troublesome, though.  Why didn't Reed tell Cap that Jocasta was there? 
You'd think that he'd at least try to get Cap's side of the story.  (For that
matter, why didn't the Avengers ever try to track her down?  Maybe that
"furniture" theory was right!)  I suppose that the Jocasta post-hypnotic
theory made sense, although one wonders why the big U didn't have her
resurrect him after #171.  There were some decent character moments here:
Jocasta with Alicia, Aaron Stack at his office, etc.

Marvel Two-In-One #93 (Nov 1982)
The Thing and Machine Man
"And One Shall Die--!"
Script: Tom DeFalco
Pencils: Ron Wilson
Inks: D. Hands
Letters: Joe Rosen
Colors: George Roussos
Editor: Jim Salicrup
Master Mechanic: Jim Shooter

  The Thing, under the spell of Ultron, is attacking Machine Man.  Ultron
is ranting about wiping out humanity, telling Jocasta that she must
submit willingly to Ultron.  Machine Man subdues the Thing by zapping him
with electricity, and manages to stun Ultron, grab Jocasta, and escape.
   MM runs off to the garage of his good friend Gears Garvin, the
mechanic who repairs him from time to time.  Jocasta realizes that Ultron
never cared about her, that she was just a pawn, and that they'd never
beat Ultron.  MM tries to reassure her.
  Ultron is planning his latest scheme: creating a bunch of identical
robot bodies, with which he will wipe out humanity.  (At least he's
consistent).  He still has the Thing as his slave, and they go off to
procure some supplies. With the Thing's help, Ultron builds an army of
duplicate bodies that just await their programming.
  Back at Garvin's Garage, Machine Man's friend Peter Spaulding tells him
that he's nuts to take on Ultron alone.  MM tells him that there's no
time to call the Avengers or FF (even though they had time to call Peter
and hang out at the garage for awhile), that they had to move fast. 
Spaulding and Garvin get into one of their usual arguments, while MM and
Jo move.  Jo is upset, and confides in MM that she feels utterly alone in
a world of humans.  MM says he knows the feeling but has learned to
adjust; and he wants to help her too.  A romance (of sorts) is born.
  MM and Jo track down Ultron, and Gears comes along for the ride as
well.  Ultron manages to split up MM and Jo.  MM deals with a flying
missile trap and the hypnotized Thing, while Ultron tries to talk Jo into
joining him one more time.  Jo refuses, and activates the power cannon
that Ultie was holding, blowing it up.  Of course, this doesn't bother
Ultron much, but it blows her to bits.  Ultie is somewhat upset, but
starts rummaging around, trying to rebuild her.  MM and the Thing (now
free of hypnosis) start attacking Ultron, but he mostly shrugs it off. 
He threatens to activate his clone bodies, but MM pulls off an
unbelievable gambit: he reaches down Ultron's throat and pulls out some
of his circuitry.  This messes up Ultron's fusion reactor.  Ultron begs
Machine Man to save him, because he's the only one who knows how to
rebuild Jocasta.  MM merely stands by, allowing Ultron to die.  The Thing
asks him if he could have Ultron, but MM says that Jocasta would never
have accepted a deal like that, and leaves it at that.

Comments: There are some big-time plot holes here.  We knew Reed was
studying Ultron; why didn't he get more involved?  Why couldn't Jo and MM
call up the Avengers and FF?  The way MM beat Ultron was also a bit
absurd; at the very least, reaching into fusion reactor should have
melted MM's hand.  Wiping out Jocasta also seemed rather pointless,
although she led a rather pointless existence after her first storyline. 
At least it triggered the obsession that MM would have with her, that was
done rather interestingly in the MM limited series.  As for the art..."D.
Hands" was the inker...nuff said.  The amazing thing about this story is
that the treatment of Ultron would only get worse in the future. 
Speaking of which....

  Ultron next appears in Secret Wars, which I don't own anymore.  But a
brief summary of those issues:

A bunch of Earth's heroes and villains get zipped off to a far-away
planet, and are told by the being "from beyond" that if they defeat their
enemies their greatest desires will be theirs.  The heroes include the
Avengers, the FF, Spider-Man and the Hulk.  The villains include Kang, Dr
Doom, the Wrecking Crew, Klaw, Magneto, Ultron and others.  Ultron pretty
quickly is made the robot slave of Dr. Doom, and pretty much is just a
very powerful pawn.  I believe Doom has him kill off Kang at one point. 
After the whole thing finishes up, Ben Grimm decides to stay on the
planet, and eventually encounters Ultron's head.  That will be our next
jumping off point...

--Rob Clough, undying