Busiek and Perez team up to bring back Ultron. And it’s awesome. This story is regularly viewed as a high-water mark for the late ’90s Marvel revival.
In Avengers #0, we see that the American public isn’t so sure that they like the team that has formed as The Avengers post-Heroes Return. Specifically, the character Triathalon is from a fringe church called the Triune Understanding, and when The Avengers choose not to accept him as a member, they’re accused of religious bias.
Ultron decides to press this as an advantage and builds a robot army that wipes out an entire small nation. The Avengers–and the world–learn of this brutality by seeing it covered on TV…
…Which is pretty chilling.
Ultron uses the bodies of the dead Slorenians to create cyborgs/zombies. The Avengers go to Slorenia to try to clear it before the U.N. Army arrive.
Meanwhile, Ultron captures some members–including Vision–and decides to use their brain patterns to create even more robots.
They’re in tubes!
Hank feels guilty, again (as he should).
But he redeems himself…
And Hank saves the day.
But the best part: Ultron’s mommy!
Alkhema–a female Ultron–is a major part of the story. She launches the initial attack in issue #19, and she tells us in the last panel that Ultron may be dead, but she is still around…
