The Avengers have fought a lot of bad guys over the years. But despite having a rogues’ gallery as long as your arm, only a handful of villains have actually made their way to the big screen. And only one of them can even be said to truly be an Avengers villain first and foremost: Ultron.
First appearing in 1968, Ultron has been resurrected again, and again, and again, and again so many times that you’d need a master’s degree in Marvelology to catalogue them all.
The character’s constant design changes means the talented people in charge of adapting him for 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron had their work cut out for them in terms of coming up with a great cinematic design.
Fortunately, Charlie Wen former head of visual development at Marvel Studios was up to the challenge. Wen sat for an exclusive interview to go over all the ins and outs of designing the movie version of the homicidal robot that Marvel fans love to hate.
When he first appeared in 1968’s Avengers #54, Ultron didn’t have a name, much less any distinct design. The issue’s story concerns the Masters of Evil teaming up to capture the Avengers with the help of secrets provided by the team’s butler, Jarvis.
By the story’s end, one of the Masters of Evil’s newest members, the Crimson Cowl, is revealed to be an unnamed robot decoy, covering for the Cowl’s true alter ego: Jarvis the butler.
Then, by the next issue, writer and artist Roy Thomas and John Buscema apparently realized that suddenly making Jarvis evil for no actual reason wasn’t the best move. Instead made the random robot — now apparently named Ultron 5, the Living Automaton — the true villain all along, who hypnotized the Avengers’ faithful butler into temporary betrayal.
Even with the revelation of this new villain named Ultron 5, readers still wouldn’t learn much about his actual origins for several issues, specifically Avengers #58. There, it’s revealed that Hank “Giant Man” Pym was experimenting with creating “synthetic life,” and built a goofy robot that looked more like the clanking boiler you might have in your basement than the mechanical menace he’d become.
After his initial fight with Giant Man, Ultron somehow erased his science-daddy’s memory and just jumped through a concrete wall like the Kool-Aid man, but with more lasers and inexplicable memory-erasing technology. Keep watching the video to see what Ultron almost looked like in the MCU!
#Ultron #CharlieWenExclusive #Avengers #MCUConceptArt
Meet Ultron: generic evil robot | 0:55
Meet Ultron again: evil hot-water heater | 1:43
Terrifying robot, goofy teeth | 2:36
Tooth and consequences | 3:34
No strings attached | 4:36
Elegantly inhuman | 5:37