West Coast Avengers #1 by writer Gerry Duggan, artist Danny Kim, color artist Arthur Hesly, and letterer Joe Caramagna officially brings back the classic spin-off team, which had its last incarnation all the way back in 2019. But the new West Coast Avengers has a twist, with Tony Stark leading a team of ex-criminals including a seemingly-reformed Ultron unit.
So who is on the new West Coast Avengers? How did Ultron turn good? And who is the secret Avengers villain lurking behind it all? We'll answer all these questions and more as we break down everything you need to know about the new West Coast Avengers #1. Needless to say, we'll be getting into some serious spoilers from here on out.
What's the deal with Ultron?
As most Avengers comic fans know, Ultron is the creation of Hank Pym, the original Ant-Man - an evil AI bent on destroying the Avengers and eventually all organic life on Earth. But there's an Ultron unit on the new West Coast Avengers who has seemingly turned against his genocidal ways to become a hero, and we're introduced to him right off the bat as West Coast Avengers #1 opens.
The thing is, we don't know how this happened just yet. All we really know from context clues in the issue is that whatever it took to get Tony Stark to give Ultron a chance on the Avengers, it was apparently quite controversial. And we can also say with some certainty that this is a totally different reformed Ultron from Mark Ultron, who debuted way back in Avengers Inc.
Why is Tony Stark wearing his old armor?
As seen in the recently relaunched Iron Man #1, Justine Hammer, the new Iron Monger, used a magically enhanced computer virus to render all of Tony Stark's highly advanced armors inert. In his own title, this has led to him building the so-called Improvised Iron Man armor which is much more low tech.
But in West Coast Avengers, he's got another solution - he's returned to his classic Silver Centurion suit from the '80s, which he wore for a while as part of the original West Coast Avengers. This suit has some advanced tech, but it's still apparently old enough to have escaped Justine Hammer's sabotage.
Who's on the team?
When we first meet the new West Coast Avengers, Tony is joined in the field by James Rhodes/War Machine, his longtime ally and a member of the original West Coast team, along with Ultron, and Jessica Drew/Spider-Woman, herself a former double agent for Hydra.
There's one more member who is likely unfamiliar to most readers - Blue Bolt. Blue Bolt is based on an old Marvel character from the '40s. But in this case, he's a new iteration of the character, a villain with electricity powers who is trying to reform as a hero with the West Coast Avengers. He's also been described as "the biggest jerk in the Marvel Universe."
What's going on with Firestar?
The last member of the team who we already know will be joining up starting presumably in West Coast Avengers #2 is Angelica Jones, the mutant hero Firestar. She's a former Avenger and member of the X-Men whose recent past has taken her to some dark places.
When Tony catches up with her towards the end of West Coast Avengers #1, she's drinking heavily to drown her sorrows, as she's just getting through having to serve as a secret double agent for Orchis, leaving many of her fellow X-Men believing she was actually an anti-mutant traitor.
Who is the secret villain?
Naturally, there is a big name bad guy hiding behind the scenes in West Coast Avengers #1, and the villain's introduction is both horrifying and worthy of an Avengers-level threat. We'll go ahead and spill the beans - it's Ultron.
No, not the team's erstwhile good guy Ultron. A different, more monstrous Ultron, who offers a critically ill woman some kind of immortality along with an end to her pain, which he accomplishes by decapitating her and inserting her head into a Matrix-like machine network, converting her from an organic lifeform to a mostly inorganic cyborg.
That's a sufficiently upsetting body-horror moment that sets the stage for a classic Ultron plot of trying to eliminate humans, this time by absorbing them into his mechanical army. The story continues in West Coast Avengers #2 on December 25.
Ultron tops the list of the best Avengers villains of all time.
