HERO OF THE WEEK: ULTRON (Marvel)Real Name: Ultron
First Appearance: Avengers #54 (July, 1968)
Fight Club Ranking: #202
Featured Fights:
- vs MACHINE MAN & THING: Marvel Two-In-One #92 (Oct 1982)
It looks like robotic bosses with purple highlights are this year's must-have fighting game accessory! Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite revealed its fused final boss in a pair of trailers last week, combining Marvel's Ultron with Mega Man X baddy Sigma to create "Ultron-Sigma".
This will mark Ultron's first appearance in the Marvel vs Capcom video game series, so it makes a bit of sense from that perspective. It's nice to see a new addition to the series - hopefully one of many. With that in mind, I'm doing my best to resist looking at it in terms of an ill-timed tie-in.
Age of Ultron events in comics (2013) and movies (2015) are still fresh in mind, and not especially fond memories, but MvCI will hopefully be the exception to the rule. A purple mecha-boss with endless armies of drones also strays awfully close to Brainiac in this month's DC fighting release Injustice 2, but again, it's probably best not to hold that against the MVC3 sequel.
Ultron will appear as a playable character independent of his boss form, which looks like a lot of fun in the gameplay trailer also released last week! Infinity Gems are back in a big way in MVCI, and you can see Ultron using the Space Stone to drastically reduce the area available to his opponent!
Thor, Hulk, Captain America, Hawkeye, Iron Man, Rocket Raccoon, and Chun-Li are among the other favourites also featured in the story trailer. The line-up seems to support rumors that the Marvel side will focus heavily on their popular film properties. Although, one does wonder if Thanos wouldn't have made a stronger boss choice, if that really is the case.
There's been a lot of consternation over the expected omission of X-Men characters, who were a much bigger part of the series in the nineties. They've been persona non grata in a lot of arenas in recent years, allegedly due to tensions between Disney and X-Men film licensers: FOX.
The X-Men's role in the Versus series was largely due to their extreme popularity in the early nineties, which spawned Capcom's first Marvel fighting game in 1994: X-Men: Children of the Atom. Sprites from that game continued in subsequent releases, including Marvel Super Heroes (late 1995) and their inaugural crossover X-Men versus Street Fighter (1996).
That steady run clearly fostered a strong X-following among gamers, but from a comics perspective, I tend to think a break could be a good thing. In terms of function, we could see interesting substitutes for popular characters like Wolverine, Magneto and Deadpool, introducing heroes like Drax, Scarlet Witch and Winter Soldier into the series. Missing Sentinel? How about Ant-Man/Giant-Man?
I'd love to see Capcom introduce more martial artists into the series, too! Iron Fist was cool! I'd love to see the likes of Black Panther, Daredevil, Elektra, Bullseye, Black Widow, Blade, Shang-Chi and even Batroc the Leaper! Hey, don't laugh! This is the series that briefly made Shuma-Gorath a household name! Even Taskmaster and Super-Skrull were pleasant, Batroc-type surprises in MVC3!
Traditionally Capcom have been excellent at getting the most out of their characters. Here's hoping Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite blazes some interesting new trails when it arrives later this year! For now, Ultron walks the path of our Hero of the Week!
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