Synopsis / Summary / Plot
Tasked by New York Mayor Luke Cage to investigate some mysterious supervillain deaths, Wasp was surprised when 1 of them (her old foe Whirlwind) came back to life and declared he was now Vic Shade. They continued investigating cases as Avengers Incorporated and last issue were joined by Moon Knight in a case which led them the coroner who turned out to be her ex-husband Henry Pym (ex-Ant Man, etc) who was supposedly dead after merging with his evil robot creation Ultron.
He explained how he'd won free from Ultron in the future and come back
to his own time. But he believed that Ultron was also back here and
hatched this complicated plan to 'kill' and induct supervillains into
his Lethal Legion to combat the robot. But at the very end of the issue Vic Shade announced that he was Ultron and apparently killed Pym.
Now
we are shown Hank Pym talking to 1 of the nanomachine robot ants that
he's been creating and calling it Victor Shade. He's going to send it
like the others to invade the brain of a supercriminal he wants to
enlist and put them into a death-like state while playing a sound file
of the words "Justice is served" to make people blame it on the Scourge Of The Underworld.
Such 'dead' villains are sent to him in his assumed role of consultant
coroner. He revives them and makes them an offer they can't refuse -
join his army or be given amnesia and be delivered to the cops. (He
misses out the bit about promising them new identities when the
mission's over.)
But he tells this 'ant' something extra. He's
realised that Ultron is actually within himself as a data virus in his
brain. And the robot is controlling him to create this army for its own
purpose. The ants have been copying Ultron code into the villains'
brains and the result will eventually be a distributed processing Ultron
spread across a living army under his control. But Henry has
temporarily gained control of his own brain long enough to execute his
own counter-plan. He's choosing a special piece of Ultron code to
implant in *this* ant along with code from the Vision and the original Human Torch.
He ends with a statement/memory that we've seen several times before,
that the ant won't remember this and neither will he when Ultron
reasserts control.
Now Vic Shade remembers everything and says
that giving him that name was a call for help which unfortunately
Vision, who had used that name before, didn't respond to. He now admits
that he is indeed Ultron but he's Ultron-12, previously called Mark. Wasp and the other ex-West Coast Avenger
Moon Knight remember that Ultron Mark 12 learned to be good and 'died'
protecting his 'father' Pym against the previous iteration Ultron-11. And he now explains that he shocked Hank unconscious to prevent Ultron from turning him into a mindless drone ...
... like it now does to all the villains including Black Ant, the robot that replaced the dead Ant-Man III Eric O'Grady (who takes time out to explain that they never really agreed to work for Pym, Ultron made them pretend to). Speed Demon is sent to attack Wasp. But Janet Van Dyne utters the code word "Assemble" ...
... and Vision ghosts in through the ceiling and then turns diamond-hard as SD
runs nose-1st into him. It seems Jan had guessed what might happen and
had called on allies before coming here. Bad Ultron sends Bullet, Oddball and Piecemeal against Vizh but Luke Cage and Valkyrie (Jane Foster)
bust through a wall to take them on. Black Ant isn't really under the
sway of the robot and shrinks to escape, but runs into the young Wasp (Nadia Pym/Van Dyne), Ant-Man (Scott Lang), and his daughter Stinger who has a new battle cry "Ant-Vengers Assemble".
Mark Ultron helps Henry Pym up as Jan-Wasp, Moon Knight and Vision form a defensive perimeter to fend off Cobra, Mortar and Supercharger. This is the 1st meeting of Nadia-Wasp and her father Henry (by his 1st wife Maria). Hank claims that the shock from Mark drove Ultron out of him. He also tells her that Maria named her Hope,
and he tells her that hope is what she'll give them. He enlarges 2
computer tablets and the pair of geniuses start working on nano-code to
defeat Ultron. Blizzard and Sunstroke now take their turn
at the bat with their contrasting heat/cold powers. But Jan reckons that
Sunstroke needs solar energy to fuel his power, which is in short
supply in this basement. This encourages Moon Knight to take him down,
while Valkyrie finds Blizzard mild compared with the cold of Asgardian Jotunheim.
Ultron now causes Lodestone
to use her magnetic power to build it a skeletal robot body to inhabit.
And it forces all its drones to rise up in their battered states to
continue the fight. The heroes don't want to kill any of them. But now
Pym and daughter have finished their programming and they give control
of the nanos in the villains to Ultron-12. Who leaves his host in a
swirl of nanomachines, leaving him to be Whirlwind/David Cannon
again. The nano-cloud sucks all the nano-virus out of the Lethal Legion
leaving them free but battered. That includes Lodestone who no longer
animates the Ultron skeleton. Which the nano-swarm now inhabits. After a
rebuild to give it the appearance of human clothes it gives itself the
name Mark Twelve, who Wasp is ready to recognise as the latest Avenger.
But
Henry Pym declares that Ultron is gone but he's still not dead. Jan
knows that this means Hank is going to resume the hunt and she tries to
persuade him to stay with his family and friends. But the Legion swear
that they too want to continue the mission they thought they were on.
Some for revenge against the monster that did this to them. Others to
make the world safer for their families. So Pym takes them to regroup in
Sub-Atomica. Black Ant and Whirlwind remain as prisoners.
Vision
scans Mark and finds no trace of the Ultron virus in him, and Mark says
he can't detect the villain anywhere near. Vizh calls him Uncle Mark
because the original Ultron was his 'father'. Nadia reckons that he's
her brother because Henry Pym was father to both of them. Mark changes
his robotic face into a human male, but Nadia thinks it still looks too
much like Davey Cannon. Jan ponders her recent role as a detective but
realises that it was leading a team of Avengers (again) that saved the
day. And she wonders whether the combination has something going for it.
And maybe next time she'll even wear her costume.