Menace was, as you might guess, a horror title. This is actually from the last issue, although it's not the cover story (that was "Locked In!") The robot has no name in the original story; the name Parker gave it is a reference to being in the 11th issue. In the Agents of Atlas ongoing, he's revealed as the 11th robot in what's called the "Menacer" series, and Suwan has a much more recent model, albeit one that can't compete on its own with all the Uranian science components M-11's gotten from Bob.
The original story is only 5 pages, revolving around a scientist who refuses to release his robot until it's perfect, to the annoyance of his business manager who wants the 5 million bucks they can get for it. The robot obeys commands, but doesn't know when to stop obeying. You tell it to pick up a chair, it picks up one, then another, and keeps going until it's picked up every chair. A flaw the manager isn't aware of when he gets impatient and tells the robot to kill "the man in the room." Which is the end for the scientist, but also the end for the manager, as another man in the room.
In Agents of Atlas, the scientist, realizing the people who commissioned him planned evil things, sacrifices his life force to the machine so it will have emotions and free will. The fun is that, with the '50s sci-fi robot design, M-11 doesn't make facial expressions. So no one, including his teammates, can really tell what's going on in his head. There's no indication Bob can read his mind, or that Venus' emotional abilities have any effect whatsoever.
Sometimes Parker plays that for mystery. Everyone is standing silently in Bob's spaceship, and M-11 suddenly shouts "Archiving!" before going silent again. Sometimes it's for comedy, when Gorilla Man thinks the robot needs a push to get angry to win the fight with M-21 and gets a personality module based on "The Greatest" installed. M-11 spends a few pages talking like Muhammad Ali before Bob reveals the module didn't work at all and M-11's just humoring Ken.
And sometimes M-11 sparks conflict. He's the one that contacts Bob and Ken about Jimmy Woo, and it's only late in the mini-series everyone figures out why. In the ongoing series, Jimmy has just about talked their way out of a fight with the Avengers when M-11 recognizes Wolverine's voice. Because Logan blew him up during a mission in Cuba in the '50s, and M-11, like Michael Jordan, took that personally. But Logan doesn't put the pieces together - so much for House of M giving him his memories back - and M-11 won't explain his actions to anyone. It's just a thing they have to deal with.
Oh well, not like killer robots and X-Men get along all that well anyway.
2 comments:
I like that this is one character design that they didn't update at all for the character's return. Just keep him in his 50s design, job done.
It's a good design for a "killer" robot, that's for sure. And with the way Kirk changed Marvel Boy's look, the two of them fit together almost perfectly. Very "The Day the Earth Stood Still." It's a visual pairing that works nicely considering Marvel Boy made a lot of upgrades to M-11's design.
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