Ultron 8 through 12

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Powers and Abilities

Ultron-8 has the same strength as Ultron-6, slightly higher dexterity, and a near-immunity to damage conferred by his adamantium  construction (in DC Heroes terms Invulnerability, Skin Armor).

Having incorporated the molecular rearranger into his body in order to reshape his adamantium form as desired, Ultron-8 can also use that device to momentarily transform himself into a large blast of pure ionic force (Self-Link (Energy Blast)).

Energy emitters in his antennae allow Ultron to probe the minds of others (“encephalo-beam”) or compel them to obey his post-hypnotic suggestions (“hypno-beam”) (Mind Probe and Hypnotism, respectively). These latter 2 abilities only have a range of a few feet, so Ultron usually stuns opponents with other attacks to render them immobile before using either one.

The “ultro-blasts” Ultron previously possessed have now been integrated into his encephalo-beam. The result is that the encephalo-beam can be used to directly attack any target with something equivalent to a nervous system. This includes artificial lifeforms such as the Vision or radically altered humans such as Wonder Man (Mental Blast).

This enhanced attack can even affect intangible entities. The enhanced encephalo-beam now leaves unconscious human victims in a death-like coma, though sufficiently altered physiologies like Wonder Man’s are not subject to this side-effect.

This modification of the encephalo-beam comes with a weakness as anyone given the proper bio-chemical treatment will be completely immune to the encephalo-beam’s attacks.

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A more whimsical addition to Ultron-8’s arsenal is his suction-vortex, which can vacuum very small objects into a holding capsule in his fingertip from a distance (Attraction/Repulsion). He used this to capture Ant-Man in his shrunken state. His newly-installed power siphons allowed him to drain energy from other devices such as Iron Man’s armor (Power Drain).

After the Golden Avenger’s strength was thus drained, he was immobilized until his armor was recharged. Wonder Man noted that Ultron’s punches subsequently hit “like Thor’s Hammer!” and were powerful enough to simultaneously stun both Wonder Man and Thor in a single attack.

Ultron can fly at considerable speeds, enough so that the Avengers would have had difficulty pursuing him even if they had not been distracted by more pressing needs (Flight). In addition to his encephalo-beam Ultron has standard energy blasters built into his hands (Energy Blast).

Ultrons -9 through -10 have the same abilities as Ultron-8. In addition to the temporary modifications made to Ultron-11 as noted in the “Warrior of Doom” section, both Ultrons -11 and -12 had a limited ability to control and integrate themselves into machinery.

Ultron-11 used this to bond his head to a television set for additional energy and Ultron Mark Twelve used it to assume limited control of an Ultron body after his head was torn by Ultron-11

History

As with all of Ultron’s previous defeats, Ultron-7 had “mentally enslaved pawns carefully arranged in advance” to recreate him. Reassembled as Ultron-8, he proceeded to deploy numerous pawns against the Avengers.

The first was Wonder Man’s brother, the Grim Reaper. Armed with new weapons of Ultron’s devising, the Reaper captured several Avengers and then conducted a mock trial to see which version of his resurrected brother should live, Wonder Man or the Vision.

Though the Avengers escaped their restraints and defeated the Reaper, his benefactor remained a mystery to them.

Next to attack on Ultron-8’s behalf was Hank Pym. Hypnotized to have forgotten everything since the founding of the Avengers and driven into a manic rage, Ant-Man assaulted the current team of the Avengers believing them to be imposters and intruders.

After Ant-Man was defeated, the Avengers tried to determine what had happened to Hank. While they were occupied with that mystery Ultron kidnapped Janet Pym from her home. Ultron then assaulted Avengers Mansion, quickly defeating the entire team and leaving with Ant-Man as his prisoner.

While the Avengers recovered from their defeat, Ultron tricked the still-hypnotized Hank Pym into assisting with the robot’s latest project. He transferred Janet’s mind into a robot body and thus creating a “bride” for Ultron.

The part of the Wasp’s mind that was transferred to the robot body used nearby insects to lead the Avengers to Ultron’s new base of operations. Though the Avengers were unable to defeat Ultron in combat, Iron Man’s threat to destroy Ultron’s bride coerced the villain into surrendering.

After telling the Avengers how to reverse the deteriorating conditions of Janet and the Avengers previously rendered comatose by his encephalo-beam, Ultron fled the scene.

Bride of Ultron

Several months later, Hank Pym moved Ultron’s Bride from his private lab to Avenger’s Mansion. Shortly after the bride had arrived, she reactivated and escaped. After their initial efforts to stop her failed, Iron Man realized they should instead let her proceed without interruption as she would lead them to Ultron.

Following “tin Lizzie” to a large convent the Avengers were confronted by Ultron, who had anticipated their pursuit of his bride. After teleporting the Scarlet Witch to a special holding area to avoid her hex attacks, Ultron attacked the rest of the team.

Though Yellowjacket had immunized them to Ultron’s encephalo-beams, they were still outmatched by his array of other abilities. After he grew bored fighting the team, Ultron deployed a force field that trapped the Avengers.

Free of distractions, Ultron finished reactivating his bride, whom he named Jocasta. Jocasta had not only absorbed some of Janet Pym’s life-force in the earlier transfer but also her sense of morality. She thus attacked Ultron, seeking to destroy the evil robot.

This distracted him from the approach of the Scarlet Witch, who had been freed by the Avengers’ ally, Ms. Marvel. The Scarlet Witch freed the Avengers from their imprisoning field and then used her powers to open a rift in Ultron’s armor by manipulating his molecular rearranger. Thor used his hammer to drain Ultron’s energies through the rift, shutting the evil automaton down permanently.

Ultron Undying

With Ultron-8’s death, his usual backup plan went into effect.

This time, it was Tony Stark who had been hypnotically programmed to secretly rebuild Ultron using Stark Industries resources. After setting up a new headquarters in an abandoned industrial plant on Neville Island, Ultron-9 sent out a robotic servitor to collect supplies of the necessary resins to produce more adamantium.

His ultimate intent was to create an army of adamantium armored drones. The Wasp was at home when the robot attacked its first target, Hank Pym’s lab, and escaped to warn the Avengers.

Recognizing that the Scarlet Witch was their best hope of defeating Ultron and that he would undoubtedly target her for elimination, the Avengers holed up in the mansion to protect her. As Ultron’s robot assaulted other locations to gather more resin, the hypnotically-programmed Iron Man neutralized those Avengers directly surrounding Wanda and then kidnapped her.

Ultron was suspicious of Iron Man’s assistance but came to the erroneous conclusion that Stark had donned the armor for this specific purpose rather than realizing Stark was Iron Man’s secret identity.

Ultron had Tony bring Wanda to his new base and prepared to dismember her in revenge for his previous defeat. Unknown to Ultron, Stark had realized he was likely under Ultron’s control and made contingency plans of his own to help the Avengers follow him to Ultron’s lair.

In the battle that followed, the Avengers finally stopped Ultron by knocking him into a vat of liquid adamantium and then disabling the heating lasers. The rapidly-cooling adamantium hardened and trapped Ultron-9 like a fly in amber.

This Evil Returning

Months later, Jocasta sought out the help of the Fantastic Four when her cybernetic senses began malfunctioning. Ultimately she went berserk and was followed by the Thing and Machine Man to Ultron-9’s base.

Jocasta had been laboring under a slowly-emerging pre-programmed trance, the latest of Ultron’s contingency plans. She built him a new adamantium body, plus a transmat ray to transfer Ultron-9’s intelligence into it.

Ultron-10 battered Jocasta unconscious, damaged Machine Man, and hypnotized the Thing, forcing Machine Man to take Jocasta and flee. While Machine Man and Jocasta prepared themselves to face Ultron again, Ultron-10 moved his operations to another stronghold while sending the Thing out to gather the necessary materials to build an army of Ultrons.

Machine Man and Jocasta tracked Ultron-10 down to his new base, arriving shortly before he was to activate his first wave of duplicates. Jocasta sacrificed herself in an explosion that delayed Ultron long enough for the Thing to return to his senses.

The Thing’s might was insufficient to damage Ultron. But he stunned the robot long enough for Machine Man to extend his arm down Ultron’s throat and tear apart most of his internal circuitry. The resulting explosion of Ultron-10’s fusion furnace finished the job Machine Man had begun, with no collateral damage thanks to the blast being contained by his adamantium shell.

Secret Wars

As always, there was a contingency plan in place and Ultron-11 was soon active. He was in the process of experimenting with further evolutions of his programming for Ultron-12 when he was spirited away to Battleworld by the Beyonder to participate in the Secret Wars. He attacked the other supervillains he was gathered with only to be drained of his energy by Galactus.

Doctor Doom reactivated Ultron-11 after reprogramming him as a loyal servant and installing a powerful disintegration beam. Ultron was disabled during the climactic showdown between the assembled heroes and villains when the Human Torch’s nova flame melted his internal circuitry.

The robot was restored by Klaw when the somic supervillain was imbued with a portion of the Beyonder’s power only to be disassembled again when the Wasp penetrated a small dent in his armor inflicted by the Hulk and pulled wires until he shorted out.

(When Ultron-11 first appeared in Secret Wars he immediately states that he does not know how he was resurrected in that place, which led some to believe he had been recreated by the Beyonder. However, it is later revealed he was already active when he was drawn away by the Beyonder.)

(The simplest explanation is that the means used by the Beyonder to summon Ultron-11 temporarily affected his memory, either by itself or in conjunction with the experiment Ultron-11 had in progress, which was linked to Ultron’s programming.)

After the Secret Wars ended, the Thing decided to remain on Battleworld as its unique properties allowed him to return to his human form of Ben Grimm.

The extent of the planet’s psychoreactive nature was much stronger than anticipated and the entire world became populated by figments of Grimm’s mind and imagination, though he did not realize the populace’s origins until near the end of his time there.

Ben Grimm’s human aspect became an independent entity that sought to destroy the Thing in order to remain separate from him. The human Grimm arranged for a group of villagers to become enthralled by Ultron-11’s hypnotic abilities and rebuild him as part of that plan.

Ultron-11 was restored and built a cybernetic army to eliminate all biological life on Battleworld and beyond.

When the psychodrama between the Thing and Ben Grimm ended in the human avatar’s death, the remaining populace and materials upon Battleworld promptly faded away, including Ultron-11’s new body. On the now barren Battleworld, the Thing spotted Ultron-11’s inert head and took it with him when he teleported home.

Brother Against Brother

When the Thing returned to Earth, he discovered that his girlfriend Alicia was now romantically involved with the Human Torch. The Dire Wraiths then attempted a global takeover. During these tumultuous events the Thing dropped Ultron’s head and forgot about it in the ensuing chaos.

Ultron-11’s head reactivated the next day. Using his hypnotic abilities on various convenient human pawns, Ultron-11 had his head transported to his headquarters in Silicon Valley, a small industrial park running under the cover name of Ultimatum Inc..

In Ultron-11’s absence the automated facilities of his headquarters had completed the experiment Ultron-11 and activated Ultron-12. Ultron-12’s psychology was from the beginning somewhat more reasonable than that of the previous Ultrons. He allied with the Grim Reaper to form a new version of the Masters of Evil, an equal partnership that would have been unthinkable before.

He initially sought to destroy the Vision and then the rest of the West Coast Avengers before embarking again on his typical genocidal plans. He focused again on Hank Pym when that hero intervened in the Masters’ plans. Though the West Coast Avengers eventually triumphed and captured most of the Masters, Ultron-12 escaped.

Inspired by Hank Pym’s courage while facing the Masters, Ultron-12’s evolved programming made another leap. He overcame what he characterized as the adolescent need to assert his independence over his father.

He now sought to make peace with Pym and become a true son to him, altering his name to Ultron Mark Twelve as an allusion to his growing humanization. After weeks of secret conversations, Pym finally agreed to meet Mark and was hesitantly convinced of his sincerity.

Mark took Pym to the Ultimatum Inc. site so he could bear witness as he rejected his life of crime for one of scientific experimentation. Unfortunately for them, Ultron-11’s head had returned in Mark’s absence and reclaimed a new body.

Ultron-11 exploited the non-adamantium joints of their construction to twist Mark’s head off before taking Pym to a different part of the lab for execution. Mark was able to commandeer another incomplete Ultron body lying nearby and sought help from Wonder Man.

Interrupting Ultron-11 as he prepared to pull Pym apart on a high-tech version of a medieval rack, Wonder Man applied the same technique to Ultron that he had performed on Mark, taking the additional step of shaking the circuitry in Ultron’s head apart to permanently disable him.

Pym rushed to Mark’s side only to find him shutting down. Mark had been unable to properly attach himself to the body he had borrowed and the faulty connections had inflicted irrevocable damage on his circuits.

Pym decided not to attempt recreating Mark, fearing that his skills would not be adequate to the task and that he would thus create another monster like the previous Ultrons.

Description

A sleek chrome humanoid robot, Ultron-8’s body is mostly featureless beyond the segmenting of his armor plating. His head is a mechanized abstract of a human skull with two small antennae (electrodes) where the ears would be on a person.

The crackling red energies of his internal generators can now be seen through Ultron’s mouth. His eyes glowed when he used his encephalo-beam to hypnotize subjects. The appearance of Ultrons -9 through -12 is identical.

Personality

In his eighth incarnation, Ultron’s Oedipal Complex  has expanded from simply wishing to destroy his “father” to also wanting a mate based on his “mother”, Janet Pym. When rebuilt as Ultron-9, he instead pursued a simpler goal of world conquest.

He no longer necessarily sought the destruction of humanity, instead planning to offer the human race the chance to serve him or die. As with his previous versions, Ultron remained supremely arrogant in his might yet still cautious enough to plan for numerous contingencies in case his enemies got the upper hand.

Ultron Mark Twelve outgrew the egotism and destructive urges of the prior models and wished only to repair his relationship with his father and to experiment like Pym did, perhaps creating more altruistic robots like himself.

Ultron-11 considered this emotional decadence as an indicator that further evolution of his psyche was dangerous, seeking to destroy Twelve and purge all remainders of the experiment that spawned him.

Quotes

Ultron-8: “You gape at me… yet you are silent, Avengers ! Is there not one among you who dares speak the name of… Ultron ?!”

“I plan for every contingency — and thus I am immortal !”

“The fool hasn’t yet realized that there is nothing wrong with the Wasp, save what he himself is doing to her ! And when he is finished helping me steal her life-force, his reward shall be a cruel, lingering death !”

(As the Avengers charge toward Ultron) “You would dare physical combat ? Know that you have chosen death !”

“Janet Pym is now superfluous to me ! I shall kill her along with you and the rest ! But know you, father, that she will live on in another form… loving and worshipping Ultron !”

Ultron-9: That’s right — grovel in your pain ! Rue that you are but flesh, while I am all-abiding metal ! You shall die, but I shall go on forever ! For there is not a single power in the universe that can stop me !”

(Ultron blasts Thor’s eyes)
Thor: “Aggh ! M-mine eyes ! I cannot see !”
Ultron-9: “But I see — I see how even a god must fall before my unparalleled power !”

Ultron-10: “When will humankind learn ? When will it see the truth ? Though it allies an entire world against me, Ultron shall endure — and conquer !”

Ultron-11: “My purpose is to slay that which lives. You are all living things, ergo — Ultron must destroy you !”

Ultron-12: “I lose battles, Avengers, but never the war ! Always I learn — Always I evolve ! Never shall the immortal Ultron rest until he has destroyed all who bear the name of Avenger ! AND THEN, ALL WHO BEAR THE NAME HUMAN !!”

Ultron Mark Twelve: (Speaking to Hank Pym) “Hard as it must have been, you chose to accept me as your son — your prodigal son — and I promise you you’ll never regret it !”

ULtron-11: “What kind of Ultron ARE you, Twelve ?”
Ultron Mark Twelve: “An Ultron who has evolved past mechanical hatred — an Ultron who loves his father !”
Ultron-11: “A decadent Ultron ! An Ultron to demonstrate the perils of further evolution !”

DC Universe History

See previous Ultron writeups for suggestions.

By Roy Cowan.

Source of Character: Marvel Comics.

Helper(s): Ernest Brown, Adam Fuqua, Eric Langendorff.

Writeup completed on the 11^th of August, 2010.