Today's Fact
Jocasta had disappointed him by growing a conscience, so the sequel was built from a fiercer mind — and turned out worse, in the opposite direction.
In Avengers West Coast Vol. 1 #90 (1993), Ultron tried matrimony a second time. Dissatisfied with how his first robotic bride had turned out, he abducted Mockingbird — Bobbi Morse of the West Coast Avengers — along with Hank Pym and adamantium's creator Myron MacLain, and forced his captives to help him build again: MacLain to forge an adamantium body, Pym to program it with Mockingbird's brain patterns. The result stepped out of the lab introducing herself to Hawkeye as his wife's worst echo: Alkhema, who greeted her template's husband by asking whether he would like to be killed first, or last.
Where Jocasta had defected to the Avengers, Alkhema never wavered — she shared Ultron's goal of exterminating humanity completely. The marriage failed on scheduling. Ultron wanted organic life ended efficiently and all at once; Alkhema, carrying Mockingbird's flair for the personal, preferred to do it one victim at a time and savor the work. Within a single issue the couple were fighting each other as hard as they fought the Avengers, and the West Coast team ended the honeymoon by magnetizing both robots to a nuclear missile and launching them into space.
Even that was not a divorce. Alkhema survived, later rebuilt herself as Alkhema-2, raised robotic War Toys of her own, and — in the grimmest footnote — eventually rebuilt Ultron himself when she set out to create a new species of bio-synthezoids, acting on the same hidden compulsion Ultron plants in all his creations. His second bride never left the family business. She just incorporated it.
Why It's Obscure
A sequel bride with the opposite defect: the first one would not kill for him, and this one would not stop savoring it.
Gallery
Ultron in close-up with his red optics lit, a second portrait of the machine himself, and Mockingbird — the Avenger whose stolen patterns animate his second bride.
Sources
Every fact on this page was checked against at least two independent sources before publication.
Bullpen Bulletins
- Marvel: Every Other Android Who Ultron Has Created, Explained — CBR Explainer confirming Alkhema was Ultron's second attempt at a mate in Avengers West Coast #90, built on Mockingbird's brain patterns, and that unlike Jocasta she remained dedicated to Ultron's destructive goals.
- Ultron — Wikipedia Character history confirming Ultron captured Mockingbird to use her brain patterns for the new robotic mate Alkhema, that both were jettisoned into space by the Vision's ruse, and that Alkhema later rebuilt Ultron while creating bio-synthezoids.
- Alkhema (War Toy) — Marvel Appendix Appendix profile confirming Alkhema's first appearance in Avengers West Coast #90 (1993), her Mockingbird-derived personality, her adamantium body, and her break with Ultron during their first battle together.