It’s time for one of those short, sweet, little posts where I pull at a strand of continuity until I find something that probably wasn’t intentional. This time, it’s a piece of info I found while researching my post A-Next Ages: Mainframe: The Nanite Agenda.
So, what the heck is The Nanite Agenda anyway? Well, as I’ve discussed briefly in both my Iron Man in the MC2 and History of the MC2:The Avengers, Iron Man (Tony Stark) and the Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff) closed the portal to the alternate world which had claimed so many of their teammates and friends. The portal required Wanda to remain in stasis, holding the breach closed with her powers.
In an attempt to help Wanda, Tony designed and built a Nanite Agenda intended to super-charge the human body. Stark’s friend Jim Rhodes tests the Agenda on himself before Tony despite the risk. The process at first seemed to be a success, mutating Rhodey and gifting him with steel-hard skin, concussive energy blasts. However, with the Nanites continuing to multiply, this made Rhodey less and less human over time (Spider-Girl #95).
This information is all conveyed via flashbacks which further explain why the nanite-driven Rhodey goes on a rampage after accidentally being hit with a hex bolt cast by the recently-revived Scarlet Witch. Stinger notes that Rhodey was familiar enough with Starktech to disable Mainframe’s Lazarus Protocol, preventing the summoning of replacement armoured bodies. Tony responds that Rhodey is in many ways Starktech. Poor Rhodey. But the Nanite Agenda would seem to run deeper than just within James Rhodes.
That’s right, there are Nanites running about within Mainframe’s various mechanical bodies. We first learned this in A-Next #8, when Stinger (Cassie Lang) and Ant-Man (Scott Lang) journeyed inside Mainframe’s body in attempt to save the armoured Avenger following a system-wide shut down. It’s there that Stinger and Ant-Man encounter Nanites designed to repel foreign invaders within Mainframe’s robot shell. Fortunately, Scott is able to hold off the Nanite’s long enough for the heroes to save Mainframe.
This small detail about Mainframe’s Nanites, separated
by several years of publication, actually makes some sense of the timeline for
several smaller moments in the History of the MC2: Mainframe’s creation,
the last mission of the Avengers, the team’s later official disbanding
and the transformation of the James Rhodes. As mentioned, Spider-Girl
#95 shows the creation of the Nanite Agenda after Mainframe’s
own creation, so we can safely assume the Nanites within Mainframe are
more rudimentary versions or precursors.
It’s also stated by Tony Stark himself that he built the Mainframe robot after retiring from super heroics (Spider-Girl #95). While Tony claims he retired ‘when the Avengers officially disbanded,’ we actually see the moment in A-Next #7, and Tony hangs up his armour and leaves the Avengers Mansion permanently shortly after sealing the portal with the Scarlet Witch. According to Edwin Jarvis, the interim team of Avengers that filled out the roster at that time continued on afterwards until finally the group fell apart and no one answered the call to assemble. Presumably, as Tony never joined this interim team following the loss of so many of his comrades, he isn’t speaking literally but instead poetically or emotionally.
Still further, we see that Tony apparently had plans
in place to ensure ‘that whenever the need arises there will always be Avengers’
before embarking on the team’s fateful mission. I’ve always believed
this to be a reference to Mainframe but with the Mainframe robot apparently
only built after this mission, it raised further question. Here’s what I propose: Tony had already
at least begun designing the Mainframe program, perhaps even produced
the encephalograms of himself and linked the Mainframe program to the Avengers
distress call systems. I further suggest that it’s only after returning from
his final mission and sealing the portal with the Scarlet Witch that Tony
actually builds Mainframe a physical body in the form of the robot shells
we know today. And, just to really stray into the realm of speculation, perhaps
while developing the armoured robot bodies defensive Nanites, Tony
hit upon the Nanite Agenda as a solution to help liberate Wanda
from her comatose confinement.
The fact that the Nanites within James Rhodes went haywire after being struck by Wanda’s hex bolt is ironic considering they were intended to help the Scarlet Witch. But the fact that Mainframe was so easily defeated by the Nanite Agenda is due to being comprised of an earlier version of the Nanites.
Until I manage to devise a technology advanced enough to beat up its little brother, I remain
frogoat