Essential Avengers: Avengers West Coast #91: WAR TOY!
February, 1993
ULTRON'S adamantium mate -- WAR TOY!
Weird that she gets two names. A name name and something like a codename? Ultron doesn't get called Ultron and War Boy or anything like that.
Anyways.
Last time on Avengers: Ultron broke out of super-jail, became an absolute unit and an Ultimate Ultron, lured the Avengers into splitting the party, attacked the Avengers Compound to steal a bunch of Ultron corpses and kidnapped Mockingbird just because. He forced Dr Pym and Dr MacLain to make him a new girlfriend out of adamantium and Mockingbird's brain. Also, Hawkeye became Goliath again because of divorce feelings.
At the end of the previous issue, Ultron unveiled his new galpal, Alkhema. Alkhema has a pretty cool design. She also has robot boobs. Ultron probably insisted on those.
This time:
Alkhema wastes no time in making Clint look like a chump despite his new re-upgrade into Goliath.
And she still has a pretty cool design.
With Clint embedded into a cliff, Scarlet Witch takes charge because someone has to and everyone is looking at each other and asking what they should do.
It is weird that Wanda has never led an Avengers team. She has more experience as an Avenger than anyone who isn't named Iron Man, Wasp, Ant-Giant-Goliath-Yellowjacket-Dr-Pym-Man, Thor, Captain America, or Hawkeye.
And every other person I just listed got to lead an Avengers team. Her ex-hubby Vision got to lead an Avengers team and he wasn't with the team as much as early as she was.
I'm just saying. Give her a team. She's sorcerer supreme now. Have her call in her seniority to assemble a team to handle some big sorcerer supreme scale problem.
Anyway. Getting side-tracked. Anyway.
Wanda splits up the team. Spider-Woman and Wonder Man get get Ultron. US Agent and Vision go after Alkhema but to take it easy in case she really is Mockingbird. Wanda herself is going to go help Clint annnnnd he's gone. He's vanished. He left a Goliath shaped dent in the cliff and took off somewhere. Dammit, Clint.
US Agent grouses that Wanda put herself in charge but Vision just responds that someone needs to be making the calls and she stepped up.
Vision also volunteers himself to confront Alkhema first, as he has analyzed her energy attacks and determined that its no problem for him, a dude that can intangible.
Vision: "Eh?" -gets blasted- Alkhema: "Ever occur to you, Whitey, that a computer-age cutie like me might be capable of changing frequencies -- maybe even to one that can disrupt your innards the way you've often done to others'?"
OH NO SHE'S SMART!
Well, I guess Mockingbird does have a PhD. OH NO SHE'S SMART!
US Agent decides Mockingbird or no Mockingbird, Alkhema is too dangerous to treat with kid gloves and socks her in the face.
Which. Punching an adamantium robot face isn't smart! For multiple reasons! One of the reasons is that Alkhema specifically has a ton of features like the ability to electrify her chassis! Which she did do so US Agent not only punched metal but also got zapped!
Alkhema: "That's what you get for hitting somebody made of adamantium and charged with electrical energy, Flagface! Then again, I find hitting you a distinct pleasure."
And then she punches him in his much more easily bruised meat face.
Meanwhile, Wonder Man and Spider-Woman engage Ultron. And Spider-Woman webs up Ultron's ankles so he trips and falls over so Wonder Man can jump on top of him and start punching.
It's not likely to actually make a difference (what with that thing where punching adamantium is actually kind of stupid) but I do appreciate the image of Ultron tripping and falling right on his ass.
Anyway, Goliath Hawkeye didn't just fuck off because he couldn't bear to fight a roboticized version of his soon-to-be-ex.
Clint realized that as Goliath, his primary ability is punching bigger. And punching bigger doesn't solve adamantium. So he shrank down, which he can also do despite being Goliath, to go sneak inside Hank's lab and see what he can see. Maybe a reverse-robotization device??
But he hears Hank groaning under some rubble and grows fifteen feet tall so he can dig him out, only to get dizzy from the rapid size changing and pass out.
Dammit, Clint!
Back at the fight, the fight is going poorly for the Avengers. But great for anyone who loves silly action choreography.
Ultron gets his hands on both Spider-Woman and Wonder Man and he repays their have a nice trip see you next fall by smashing their faces together.
"Now kiss," he might have said but didn't.
In terms of silly action choreography, this is only slightly behind using a character like a club to hit another. Grievous harm with a body, they call it.
Alkhema asks "Ulty" while she chokes out US Agent whether all humans are so easily squashed. She's ten whole minutes old and she's full of curiosity about the world and US Agent's windpipe is just great for squishin.
Ultron: "'Ulty'?! Perhaps I left a bit too much of Mockingbird in your cyber-emotional makup."
Then he wonders where Scarlet Witch got off to.
Scarlet Witch's self-assigned task in this fight was to go dig Goliath out of the cliff. But he left on his own to go inside the lab. So where has Scarlet Witch been?
Well, Alkhema is only ten minutes old so who knows if she even recognizes the name Scarlet Witch. But she has a sneaking suspicion that the Quinjet barrelling towards Ultron is maybe Scarlet Witch.
Since her powers are being inconsistent lately, Scarlet Witch has just decided to fuckin crash an entire Quinjet into Ultron.
(We really are going through Quinjets like copy paper recently.)
Sadly. Despite mass and momentum and all the physics of it, a Quinjet crashing right into the big, buff killer robot doesn't even knock him off his feet. He braced for impact, you see. Instead, the Quinjet crumples against him and Scarlet Witch is knocked unconscious in the impact.
Ultron: "This one has, perhaps, even more courage than the others. Logically, we must execute her first." Alkhema: "I'd make it fast, Ulty." -glancing off- Ultron: "Alkhema, I thought I had made it clear I did not care for -- adamantium -- ?!" Goliath: hits Ultron a lot with the adamantium plate he found
Heh heh.
Although. An adamantium chunk is durable enough to use as a bludgeoning device against Ultron, I can't stress enough how just hitting harder doesn't actually solve the problem of Ultron.
And Goliath doesn't have the stamina to beat Ultron to death with the adamantium chunk, even if that were possible. Because all the bonking depleted his stamina and he shrinks back down to Normal-Sized.
Buuut. Ultron also decides that whole thing was a pointless waste of time and, in fact, fighting the Avengers at all is a pointless waste of time.
He's planning on killing all biological life! A few individual biological lives can't really be taking up such a disproportionate amount of his time!
He and Alkhema fly off. With Alkhema telling "Ulty" that she wants to talk about this kill all biological life thing and him continuing to protest the nickname.
Vision tries to give chase but can't keep up with them. He returns to the group to harsh rebuke from Wonder Man for leaving while Scarlet Witch's status was unclear.
But part of it is Wonder Man protesting too much because he feels lower case i inhuman himself due to the recent changes in his powers.
Also, Mockingbird is still a meat person. Yay, Mockingbird! Yay, meat!
Ultron didn't really need or want the whole brain. He just copied Bobbi's brain patterns to build his new girlfriend's mind on and then forgot about Bobbi when the lab semi-collapsed.
(Retroactive continuity: apparently this is the point where Mockingbird was replaced by Skrull Mockingbird. It's a lot implausible to suggest that the Skrulls snuck into the lab without being spotted by the Avengers or by Ultron and double kidnapped Bobbi and left an imposter in her place. But per later issue New Avengers: The Reunion #2, that is exactly what happened. As far as I'm concerned, the Mockingbird in Avengers West Coast is the real Mockingbird, unless its incredibly funny in the specific moment that she's an alien imposter.)
Clint is so happy to see her unharmed he finally manages to just come out and tell her- Well, no. He can't even manage that. But he does ask her if she really wants to get divorced and she does not so the two make out a bunch.
Makes me wonder if the same thing would have happened back when Ultron was making Jocasta out of the Wasp.
We may never know.
Vision tries to apologize to Scarlet Witch for not checking on her immediately.
But after her hopes were dashed multiple times by him in this story, she's done with holding out hope.
Dr Pym and MacLain wander out of the lab wreckage to Explain It All. They were hypnotized by Ultron into making him a new girlfriend. We knew that. But the doctors specify that they only synthesized a mind for Alkhema based off Bobbi's brain. He didn't copy over the whole thing. Alkhema has some of Bobbi's speaking quirks but not her memories.
Hank also is here to help guide the plot. Ultron has been talking about destroying all biological life but all he's done so far is build a girlfriend. He didn't even take the Ultron drones with him so the speculation earlier that they were important in his evil plot has been proved false. He just wanted them because they'd be nice to have. And he just wants a girlfriend because one would be nice to have.
Nothing Ultron has done in this story so far has anything to do with his big wipe out all life scheme.
He's just been fucking around.
Which means Hank just pulls right from his ass that Ultron's plan is to just raid Sun Lake Weapons Center and hope there's something there that will aid his goals.
Which is a decent bet because Sun Lake Weapons Center is an off-the-books military black site where they store weapons that don't officially exist. Atomic weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons! Any of these are likely!
AND ULTRON HAS A LEAD AND ALSO THE AVENGERS DON'T HAVE A QUINJET RIGHT NOW!
But that's okay. Remember Hank's intelligent air car with the brain of an ant that thinks Hank is cool? Rover? The air car? Yeah, he has the newest version of Rover shrunken and tucked away in his lab somewhere.
Yay, Rover!
Even at top speed of 250 mph, they won't get to Sun Lake before Ultron but hopefully they'll get there fast enough to matter!
Ultron and Alkhema get to Sun Lake Weapons Center and immediately begin doing two things.
One: absolutely waste the defenses. It's effortless. The US military is not prepared to deal with adamantium-clad death machines.
But two: argue with each other.
I mean, Ultron made Alkhema out of Bobbi Morse. A woman who is famously not prepared to put up with bullshit. A WOMAN WHO WAS IN THE MIDST OF A VERY UNAMBICABLE DIVORCE.
Alkhema is not prepared to put up with Ultron's bullshit. She objects to him calling her his War Toy. And she thinks his plans to wipe out all life are dumb.
Not because she doesn't think biological life should be spared. She just.
...
Ultron wants to wham bam thank you ma'am and get the whole thing over with. Alkhema wants to draw out the fun, the pleasure she gets out of it.
She's talking about taking her time and making a meal out of each kill. But it's also like they're talking about sex and Ultron does not sound like a very generous lover. I'm just saying.
That's the big difference between Ultron and Hank Pym, by the by the by the way. Because of Geoff Johns I have to know that and now so do you.
Anyway. Alkhema wants to take her time killing people and not just wipe them all out in one go.
Ultron: "What you want is immaterial. I am your creator... your master." Alkhema: shooting him in the back "Why, Ulty -- I do believe we're having our first quarrel!"
The linking factor between all of Ultron's girlfriends is that all of Ultron's girlfriends hate him and turn against him. But he keeps making his girlfriends out of the brains of people who hate him so I guess that's on him.
Also, Alkhema is kind of fun.
The two killer robots start fighting and this could have been a problem that solved itself. But, alas. Common enemies lead to common cause.
The Avengers West Coast arrive and start putting into motion the plan they brainstormed while en route. And Ultron and Alkhema call a truce to try to kill them some Avengers!
(While Dr Pym, Dr MacLain, Vision, and base commander Colonel Fletcher make their way to the missile silos.)
Goliath gets to shove Ultron into a wall. Wonder Man and Spider-Woman punk Alkhema before she gets back up and beats the crap out of both of them.
And Ultron demonstrates that his Encephalo-Beam can do more than just put people in comas or whatever else we've seen it do. He uses it to drive US Agent into a furious rage against specifically Goliath.
While US Agent tries his level best to murder his tall associate, Ultron and Alkhema come to a longer-lasting truce.
Ultron assures Alkhema that even if he wipes out most of humanity in one fell swoop, humans are tenacious and enough will be left over to give Alkhema her fun killing and torturing people individually.
The Avengers had said that they were trying to keep Ultron and Alkema away from the silos so the two killer robots naturally traipse right over to the first open silo they see.
Where they find Vision strapped to a warhead, Mockingbird frantically wiring something up, and Drs Pym and MacLain feverishly working at some computers.
But Ultron is 100% sure that whatever silly scheme is going on here is no danger to him and his new girlfriend.
Lol.
The big scheme was to turn Vision into a big adamantium magnet. Something that is both possible and desirable to achieve. To stick Ultron and Alkhema to a rocket long enough to launch it up to SPACE and make Ultron space's problem.
Vision is fine. He just intangibled once the rocket was sufficiently in motion to not need the adamantium magnet anymore. Fell right through the rocket and drifted back down to ground level.
And, sure, the rocket's non-nuclear payload wasn't enough to destroy Ultron's adamantium body but if he was launched into space by the explosion, that means he's not going to be a problem for a while.
See! Launching Ultron into space is how you fight smarter, not just punching adamantium harder!
(I did notice though that the idea of Ultimate Ultron kind of fizzled out. Vision broke all of his robo-ticks. And he stopped using his powers to hijack other devices, too. He's still big and beefy a physical threat but Ultron is always a physical threat. Ultron just kind of forgot he was the new hotness as soon as he made himself a new girlfriend.)
And as far as Goliath is concerned, everything is good forever. Ultron is taken care of. US Agent's brainwashing was broken by the rocket launch so he's not trying to kill Goliath anymore. Goliath and Mockingbird are getting back together.
Goliath: "This calls for a celebration!" Wonder Man, thinking: Does it, Avenger? Then why's Wanda acting like a woman who's finally accepted in her own heart, that her marriage is truly dead and buried? And I can't even comfort her, like I want to... because I can no longer trick myself into believing that I'm any more human than the Vision!
It's funny when a love triangle just falls apart. Vision is supposedly not interested in any relationships at all. Wanda has given up the hope she's been holding onto that this stupid character derailment would be rerailed. And Wonder Man has given up his own hope that he could pick up Wanda on the rebound because he no longer believes he's even human.
Maybe Wasp and Wanda should hook up?
Anyway, this issue is followed by events in Wonder Man's series and the Darkhold miniseries but that's got nothing to do with me. My reading order is taking me to a couple issues of Avengers before we jump back to cover a stretch of Avengers West Coast!
Follow @essential-avengers because I'm going to cover Infinity Crusade eventually and I'd like to see another tumblr-based Avengers liveblog make that same promise. Like and reblog!