The Nanite Agenda

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

 

                                                                                                                     

A-Next Ages: Mainframe

I thought it might be fun to work out the approximate ages of the various members of the MC2’s Avengers. Keep in mind this isn’t definitive unless it’s spelt out on the page and is merely a rough estimate based on in-universe information or- where necessary- statements from the creative teams involved in the characters creation and development.

 

For the fourth entry in this occasional series of A-Next Ages, it’s time to figure out the age of the team’s by the book mysterious machine-man: Mainframe!

 

Unlike my prior three post in the series, we don’t have to look to far to figure out the age of this artificial Avenger. Let’s revisit Mainframe’s debut to start with: A-Next #1. It’s here we get the first hint about Mainframe’s identity. When Loki’s magical energy bolt is detected by monitors built into the Avengers Compound defences, they bring online a ‘long dormant program’. The program sends out an emergency call to assemble to over a dozen locations, but which is only received by two former Avengers; Jubilee and Jolt.

 

This may seem a little pointless to mention, but shortly after when Jubilee asks who sent out the Avengers distress call, Mainframe’s responds ‘That would be me’. So, in the very first issue we had a major clue to Mainframe’s true identity right on the page.

 

After a few more clues, including Mainframe being seemingly killed when torn in half by Namor the Sub-Mariner and the Incredible Hulk in A-Next #3, we got answers in A-Next #7. Having exhausted all of their current supply of mechanical bodies during a battle with Ion Man, Mainframe reveals to Stinger (Cassie Lang) that they are in fact a program based on the encephalograms of Tony Stark to ensure there would always be Avengers.  Left unable to download into a new body and suffering a system-wide shut down, Mainframe is fortunately saved the by the intervention of Cassie and her father, Scott Lang (formerly Ant-Man) in A-Next #8.

 

So, when did Tony Stark create Mainframe? We learn from Jarvis in A-Next #7 that the Original Avengers disbanded some 10 years prior to the new team’s formation, and that the fateful mission which saw so many of the team perish occurred a year and a half prior. This places their final mission at around 11 and a half years prior to the events of A-Next #1 as I’ve discussed previously here.

 

Iron Man (Tony Stark) and the Scarlet Witch (Wanda Maximoff) toiled away for months afterwards deep beneath the Avengers Mansion, eventually succeeding in closing the portal between worlds by sealing Wanda in a stasis pod which used her immense power to hold the aperture shut. Immediately after this event, Tony retires from super heroics, vowing to instead help the world using his other talents.

 

Around this time -though it's unclear whether it was before, after or both before and after the team's final mission- Tony Stark developed and completed work on Mainframe, the sophisticated robotic armour imbued with Tony's own brain patterns, designed to ensure there would always be someone to answer the call to assemble (A-Next #7, Spider-Girl #95). From this we know that Stark completed work on Mainframe around the time he left the Avengers, which was about 11 years prior to A-Next #1.

 

As a program inhabiting an armoured robot suit, it’s difficult to assess Mainframe’s age by human standards, but we do see hints throughout the MC2 titles of the character’s development and personality. This includes his strained relationship with his creator or ‘father,’ Tony Stark. But as for how long Mainframe has been in existence in-universe? Mainframe is only at most 11 years old in A-Next #1 and that’s probably the first ever time the being had been out in the really world. By the conclusion of the MC2 publication history, another full year may have passed, making Mainframe at most 11-12 years old and ironically the youngest member of the Avengers.

 

Until I spend 11 years sitting on a computer in a dark basement, I remain

 

frogoat

DC in the MC2

I had intended to do a more extensive write-up to celebrate the month of May, but work and family commitments have prevented me putting out anything. Instead, I present for your consideration this very brief offering.

 

In Spider-Girl #15 we first meet Mister Abnormal, a silly villain with a malleable body able to stretch and shift in comedic fashion much like the DC Comics character Patrick O’Brian aka Plastic Man. Mister Abnormal’s origin even bears some similarities with Plastic Man’s, with both comedy characters gaining their abilities after been doused with unknown chemicals during acts of theft.

 

It gets better: Mister Abnormal encounters the veteran super hero Speedball (and later Spider-Girl) following an attempted robbery of a comic book shop. We learn that Mr. Abnormal is an obsessive collector who has been stealing action figures, rare toys, trading cards, beanie babies and, of course, comics. What comic collection was he attempting to complete before being so rudely interrupted by Speedball? Police Comics.

 

If you didn’t know, Police Comics was a comic anthology series published by Quality Comics between 1941 and 1953. Police Comics #1 saw the first appearance of none other than Plastic Man, who became one of Quality Comics most popular characters. Eventually, Quality Comics’ characters and trademarks would be bought by National Comics Publications, now known as DC Comics, who publish comics featuring Plastic Man alongside other DC heroes such as Batman and Superman to this day.

 

So now the mind-bending question: Does this mean that within the MC2 Universe the entirety of the DC Comics’ pantheon is merely a collection of fictional characters published in comic books?!

 

Until I stop stretching jokes to illogical extremes to raise existential questions about a fictional universe within another fictional universe, I remain

 

frogoat