Comic books: How 'Ultron' is transformed by big-screen 'Avengers'

"Avengers: Age of Ultron," premiering May 1, introduces four major villains — three of them destined to be Avengers themselves. In the comics, anyway. What happens in the movie is yet to be seen. But from the avalanche of advance material, it seems that director Joss Whedon will channel the spirit of the comics, if not the specifics.

In the comics: The Living Automaton was first introduced in a story in "Avengers" Nos. 54-55 (1968) involving Avengers Mansion butler Edwin Jarvis (alive today in the comics, long dead in the movies) and a second identity as the Crimson Cowl. And as the Cowl, he persuaded a group of bad guys to call themselves the Masters of Evil and attack the Avengers. That ended in failure, of course, or we'd now be reading "The Merry Misadventures of the Masters of Evil" comics. But all we really learned about this new bad guy, who called himself Ultron-5, was that he was a living robot and that he hated the Avengers.

It's important to note that the Avengers' ranks at this point included as its strongman a hero who could grow or shrink to dramatic sizes, a scientist named Hank Pym.

In the second Ultron story a few issues later, the Avengers were attacked by an artificial man who called himself the Vision. But the new guy switched sides and joined the team he had been sent to destroy. Curious about their new member, the Avengers investigated his origins — and discovered those of Ultron-5.

It turned out that Ultron was an artificial intelligence created by Pym himself, months previously. Upon becoming self-aware, Ultron spoke his first words: "Da Da." Very quickly, though, his speech patterns progressed to those of an adult, whereupon he attacked his "father." Rendering Pym helpless, Ultron hypnotized the hapless scientist into forgetting the whole scenario and boarding up his lab.

Left to his own devices in the abandoned building, Ultron upgraded himself four times to Ultron-5. All the while, he remained focused on his mission: Destroy the "inferior" human race, starting with Pym. The Avengers defeated Ultron a second time by decapitating him..

But they'd soon learn that killing Ultron was like stopping a computer virus — his consciousness could escape to another location electronically. He returned in 1969 as Ultron-6, an upgraded version. Once again he was determined to off his "daddy," then the rest of the human race. And once again Ultron was seemingly destroyed. And that has remained the pattern to this day. The Avengers would seemingly eradicate Ultron, he'd go underground to upgrade himself, and the battle would resume.

In the comics:The duo, aka Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, was introduced in 1964 "X-Men" comics as members of Magneto's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. They were reluctant members, though, serving only because the Master of Magnetism had saved their lives from a homicidal mob in their native Eastern Europe. Quicksilver was a super-speedster, and the Scarlet Witch could alter probability — in effect, giving her foes bad luck.

But a year later they were fed up with being mutant terrorists and tried to turn their lives around by petitioning to join the Avengers. Once accepted, they had long careers with Earth's mightiest heroes.

In the movies: The spirit of the comics is intact, as Pietro (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) begin as superpowered henchmen (for Ultron instead of Magneto) and then perform a heel-to-hero turn.

In the comics: As noted, the Vision was created by Ultron to destroy the Avengers, but had a change of heart and joined them instead. He has the power to alter his density, from ghostlike to rock solid. His heroic nature is attributed to the fact Ultron used the brain patterns of a then-deceased Avenger named Simon Williams (Wonder Man, who has since been resurrected).