Supervillain Origins: Ultron

Supervillain Origins: Ultron

This powerful, sentient robot is one of the greatest threats the Avengers have ever faced. Welcome to Watchmojo.com, and today we will explore the origins of Ultron.

As with most comic book characters, there are often re-imaginings and different versions to a character’s past. We have chosen to primarily follow the storyline that unfolded in 1968’s Avengers #54 and #55, before being expanded upon in issues #57 and #58.

In this evil robot’s first comic book appearance, it was disguised as the mysterious leader of the Masters of Evil, referring to himself as the Crimson Cowl. Bribing the Avenger’s butler Jarvis, he gained information on the Avengers lair.

As his minions captured the superhero team, The Crimson Cowl’s robot identity was eventually revealed. Of course, just to make things extra complicated, it turned out that Jarvis was behind the entire scheme to begin with using the robot as a cover and tactical computer.

However, in the following issue, this was shown to be just a red herring as Jarvis had really been under mind control, and it was the robot that really really was behind everything after all.

Ridding itself of the disguise, Ultron-5 the living automaton revealed itself and ordered its men to kill Jarvis now that he’d served his purpose. Of course, Jarvis managed to survive, only to inform a hero called The Black Knight about what happened, and that he must save the team being held within an H-Bomb meant to blow up Manhattan.

Freeing the team, together they stopped the bomb, only to discover that Ultron was not there and had been watching the events unfold from a secondary location.

In the wake of this event, the mysterious amnesiac android known as Vision began to recall his own origins. As it turned out, he was created by Ultron-5 to destroy his newfound friends.

As his memories returned Vision remembered that his name came from the phrase “A vision of death for the Avengers”, prompting him to attack them. During the fight with his comrades, Vision struggled to regain control from his base programming before inadvertently leading the Avengers to be captured again.

With Vision deciding to confront Ultron-5, he defeated his maker when Ultron leaped toward the hero as he phase shifted. Passing right through Vision and hitting his volatile cranial electrodes, Ultron exploded apart. Despite what appeared like his total destruction, Ultron’s head wasn’t recovered from the scene.

Soon after, Ultron’s origins were finally revealed when Henry Pym had decided to search his own back-up electronic memory bank. There, he discovered something that he had somehow forgotten, that years before he had created a synthetic life form called Ultron-1. Instantly hostile, the sentient machine subdued Pym and decided to eliminate mankind. However, Instead of killing its creator, it erased the Pym’s memories of the event and began upgrading itself.

Following this, Ultron returned, with his surviving head having used mental control to force Vision to rebuild him as Ultron-6, a version forged in the invincible metal called Adamantium. Subsequent appearances often saw Ultron evolve several more times.

Over the years, the menacing Ultron has continued to pose a major threat for the Avengers and humanity. He has appearing in various media, eventually becoming the main adversary for the heroic team in 2015’s “Avengers 2: Age of Ultron”, a film sharing few resemblances to the 2013 comic book series of the same name.

Are you a fan of the mind controlling, un-killable and super genius arch villain? For more in-depth origins of your favorite comic book characters, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.