So who is Ultron again?

I've probably discussed this before but with Avengers: Age of Ultron coming out, perhaps it's time to review.

Ultron is an indestructible evil robot with an Oedipus complex. Founding Avenger Hank Pym invented him way back in the '60s. Ultron turned on his creator and briefly duped the Avengers' butler, Edwin Jarvis, into betraying the team. The thing with Ultron is that he can continually reinvent himself so there have been various models each with a new number attached, like a car, but I think they've given up that naming convention. The comic Ultron has the evil jack o' lantern face that the movie gets right.

Made of the rare metal adamantium, Ultron is indestructible except by extraordinary measures. The only way to harm him is to hope a non-adamantium component in his robotic shell breaks, and the Scarlet Witch's hex power has done this over the years. Among his powers is an "encephalo-ray" that can put anyone it strikes into a state resembling death.

I'm calling Ultron "him" instead of "it" because he has a malevolent human personality. We found out in recent years that Pym based Ultron's personality on his own, which raises a lot of questions about how responsible the father is for the actions of the son. I don't think Pym is responsible for all the evil his creation has done because Ultron's personality has taken on a life of his own and doesn't necessarily act as Pym would. (For awhile in the '80s there was a kinder version of Ultron that was trying to become friends with Hank, which was unsettling.) Besides, Ultron created the Vision so Hank is indirectly responsible for the good the Vision has done. Ultron regards Pym as his father, Pym's ex-wife the Wasp as his mother, the Vision as his son, the Vision's sort-of brother Wonder Man as his stepson and the Scarlet Witch as his ex-daughter-in-law. Ultron once used the Wasp's brain as a template for the robot Jocasta but she refused to serve Ultron and became an Avengers ally. Ultron also used the brain of Mockingbird (Bobbi Morse on Agents of SHIELD) as a template for the evil robot Alkhema.

In the pages of the Avengers, Ultron has had many fierce battles with the team. The worst was in one of the greatest Avengers stories, Ultron Unlimited in 1999, where Ultron destroyed the fictional nation of Slorenia, killing untold people. The Avengers fought back and Hank Pym battled his demons over the robot's creation and finally destroyed him by unleashing a special element that dissolved all metals, including adamantium. He's since been resurrected, as much as any non-living creation can be.

There is also an Age of Ultron comic but it has nothing to do with the movie. It's a story of how Ultron conquered the planet and Wolverine and the Invisible Woman went back in time to kill Hank Pym and prevent the robot's creation but ended up making things much worse because as Marvel superheroes never learn, time travel always backfires.

Enjoy the movie. There will be a test at the end.