Avengers A.I., Vol. 1: Human After All

Avengers A.I. (Collected Editions)

by Sam Humphries, Valerio Schiti (Illustrator), André Lima Araújo (Illustrator)

Collects Avengers A.I. #1-6.

Hank Pym's triumph has turned to tragedy...an unfathomable Pandora's Box of destruction! When a brave new world is unleashed, only one team of Earth's Mightiest Heroes can save us from the future: Avengers A.I.! Featuring the Vision, Hank Pym, Victor Mancha, Doombot, the mysterious Alexis, and Monica Chang, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.! As the Sentient Iron Man armor returns, Dimitrios - a powerful super-intelligence with a grudge against humanity - strikes! The Vision is thrown into The Diamond, a surreal new virtual world...but is he a prisoner there, or a savior? Either way, with the Vision MIA and AIs considered a threat, the new team has little choice but to team with S.H.I.E.L.D. to face down Dimitrios. But what secrets does the powerful Alexis hold? Prepare yourself for the kingdom of thinking machines!

Genres: Comics, Marvel, Graphic Novels, Superheroes, Science Fiction, Graphic Novels Comics, Fiction

146 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Sam Quixote]

Spinning out of Age of Ultron, this is Avengers A.I, an Avengers squad made up mostly of robots: Hank Pym, the human genius of the group who created Ultron; The Vision, an android created by Ultron; Victor Mancha, Vision’s brother; a Doombot (because why not); and a new character called Alexis. They must defeat the evil Dimitrios, a futuristic AI inhabiting an Iron Man armour!

It’s weird how a unique group like Avengers AI show up and out of nowhere a threat appears that they would be ideal to fight! Yeah it’s pretty contrived to say the least, but in that way that all superhero stories are - a villain conveniently rocks up to battle the newly-arrived hero.

Is this series any good? It’s… meh. I didn’t dislike it but it’s not that great either. I liked that Sam Humphries made Hank bipolar, giving his character more depth, but couldn’t care less about this new Alexis character who was just whatever the plot needed her to be in the moment. Doombot’s the funny comic relief and the visuals of Vision fighting Dimitrios in cyberspace was cool.

But generally the story just didn’t grab me. I was never lost in it, I was always very aware that I was reading. Plus Dimitrios is your garden-variety baddie - “Mwahaha, let’s destroy humanity!” etc. - which was plain cornballs.

Human After All is competently put together with the writing and art but it’s not a memorable or exciting story at all. Avengers AI is a decent team book but it’s definitely no must-read title.

[Gavin]

Ok, so this picks up the day after Age of Ultron....Hank Pym's solution to stop Ultron was brilliant, thanks to Logan via alternate Tony Stark giving a suggestion that helped give him just a nudge in the right direction.

Anyhow, in the aftermath, the solution becomes the new problem, a new AI self replicating. So, Hank pulls together the strongest AI on Earth, including Vision, Ultron's son Victor, a Doombot, and some randoms.

The new intelligence is called Dimitrios or something? Wears an Iron Man suit (the one with AI) and has a new VIrtual Reality world or community for AI. Vision has to choose between AI and the Humans, and must decide.

There's a new SHIELD officer in charge of Pym and his group, but not very interesting.

To be honest, other than Vision, Victor, Doombot and Pym, there's not a lot.

I read this last night, and all I know is that Doombot is hilarious "I am not compatible with hugging"

Victor has to figure out who he is, Hank has finally found something to occupy himself, but struggles with Bipolar....why doesn't he take meds? Probably his brain?
This is Vision's book really. I would love a Vision title. Maybe a buddy comedy with Doombot?

This is a touch better than I make it sound, but I worry it will focus on the new AI characters they introduce.

2.5+ish Stars?

If the art had been better, and the writer stronger, the concept is good.

[David]

Revised review 9/18/16: - Now that I've read the second volume. It's an work of utter genius. Totally love this little series. One of the best of Marvel NOW. More folks ought to give this little series a chance.


Initial review: Some central things about this book do not make sense. A computer virus that self-evolves to become more deadly as a virus, somehow gains AI and sentience, but how that happens is left to the imagination. We also learn that the word "android" is a "gendered" term. Say what?! Well, the robot with the boobs says so, so I guess "she" (how can a robot have a gender anyway, well other than mammary shaped body?) The Vision (one of my favorite Avengers) now has the power to send energy blasts from his fists, instead of the gem on his forehead (or eyes) and is also made-up of nanites. There are a couple of other plot holes I'll not mention.

Yet, even with it's flaws, this is a fun book. Hank Pym and Vision, both absent from the Avengers for most of the last decade are joyfully back.

[Mike]

Doombot. All hail the Supremor of Arrogance! May it ever live to crush all but my puny unworthy self. May it never deal with the banality of existence.





Love this dialogue. LOVE. IT. It is gorgeously taut (taut? Is that what you mean Mike?) - let's call it tight (yeah, tight sounds more street). And funny. Great turns of phrase - distiller down to meaningful combinations of words, no fluff. It's a joy to read.



And Humphries and Acuña have really thought about the world from an AI point of view. How does it feel to wink into existence? What would a society evolving at CPU speeds look like? How would you feel if humans turned you off without a moment's thought? And what would you look like once you freed yourself of the artificial evolutionary "supremacy" of the humanoid bipedal form?

Love the upgrades on Vision - which raises the same questions as I can't help wonder when Tony Stark gets yet another way-out-there upgrade to his tech: how much further can this progression lead until they've run out of cool stuff to add - and until there's no one left stop them? Or worse, that the only way to have a fair fight is throwing ridiculously overpowered opponents at them, and the battles become as meaningless as the unaffecting struggles in an Abnett/Lanning Marvel Cosmic mini-series.

Here's a comic that makes me feel like I'm keeping up - even with a few mysteries, and even with a wide cast of characters, I get to enjoy this because it's not Grant Morrison-type skull-fuckery.

I *loved* the climactic battle - a total blast that reminded me of Skottie Young, and ripped away a little reality in favour of how-imaginative-can-AI's-be?

This is fun like McKelvie & Gillen's Young Avengers was fun. Go read this.



Sad this didn't last past 12 issues, but happy there's still six more for me to read.

[Anchorpete]

Hank Pym is not really the star of this book. He is the human face on a team of AIs most people won't recongnize. However, I want to focus on Hank Pym for a moment. I am not sure if they ever established that Hank Pym is bipolar before. Pym has done many different things in his decades of being a Marvel character, from (most notoriously) beating his wife to creating Ultron. I think that writers have attempted to ret con some of his lowest moments, by saying that he had been kidnapped and replaced with a skrull for years, but it still sticks, Pym is the most reckless and unstable Avenger around.
This book features Pym's first real attempt to fix himself. Making him bipolar, I think, is a brilliant idea, and the way Sam Humphries handles it is quite accurate.
Sorry, I am rambling about one part of this book. It is actually a lot of fun, and legitimately funny in certain scenes.I didn't even go into how awesome the Vision is, on this team. Maybe I will save that for my review of the second trade.

[Gary Butler]

53rd book read in 2018.

Number 338 out of 713 on my all time book list.

One word - Doombot

[Brandon]

Hank Pym decides to make an Avengers team full of robots and adroids and artificial intelligences. They're up against an evil A.I. who wants to kill organic life. As Hank Pym keeps trying to build things, and his Avengers struggle with being neither completely human or completely robot, Hank Pym's bipolar episodes start to falter and everything goes wrong.

This series can be fun, at least whenver Doombot is on the page. He's fun, having a modified robot version of Doctor Doom be an Avengers is a funny gimmick and the contrast between his giant ego and his forced support of "good" instead of "evil" is great to see. Hank Pym can be fun sometimes, and Victor Mancha is cool.

I'm disappointed that the artist changed halfway through and though Valerio Schiti is great, it's weird not even going a full arc with a singular artist. There's some cool stuff where the A.I. world and battles look like video games, there's some interesting lettering done by Clayton Cowles where each robot has a different colour speech bubble/box. But the series is just fine. It doesn't do anything particularly well outside of some isolated moments, and honestly I don't care about it that much. But it's not bad. It's just... it's just another short-lived Avengers team. I like Doombot and I like how it's using Hank Pym but that's about it.

[Chad]

Spinning out of Age of Ultron, the A.I. Hank Pym used to beat Ultron has gained sentience and is threatening the world. Dimitrios has gathered every abandoned LMD, cyborg, A.I. etc from Marvel's history to create their own society within the "diamond". A new team of Avengers with ties to A.I. is formed. Hank Pym, the Vision, Viktor from Runaways, a Doombot, and Alexis (the mysterious new character) band together to keep humans and A.I's from going to war.

There's a pretty good story here and the art is good. Doombot is the comedy relief and he's pretty great.

[Brent]

This is a pretty weird version of the Avengers, with a wigged out Hank Pym and The Vision leading a small cast of characters. I liked the art more than the story, but, it brought, say, something cyberpunky to the superhero story.
Thanks, back issue bargain bin [Missing chapter/issue #5].

[Honora Quinn]

I actually really really enjoyed this! I only really purchased this because it adds extra background information for one of the characters in this who later arrives in the Runaways (2017) series and I found so much more. I really enjoyed the art and the story and I will definitely check out vol. 2!

[Zack! Empire]

To be quite honest I wasn't really expecting much from this collection. I mostly wanted to read it because I wondered how an all android team of Avengers would function. But, I was really surprised at how much I did like this book. Even though I'm not the biggest science fiction fan, I've always thought that robots and androids were interesting, and I've always liked to see them in superhero fiction. I've also always thought the Vision was an interesting character because of his origins, and his interesting visual design.
Sam Humphries also wrote some X-Force stuff, which I thought was ok, but I wasn't that impressed with. I think his writing might be much better suited to this kind of team. While the X-Force is down, dirty, and nasty, this team of robots is bright, inventive, and precise. You can really see that he is more comfortable with this kind of story and the setting.
I also thought the artwork was fantastic. The first four issue's have a very line clear European influence( which the artist acknowledges when he pays homage to Mobius). It's very well suited to this kind of style.
Overall a much better read then I was expecting. This might be one of Marvel's little hidden gems.

[Alex Sarll]

Hank Pym: founding Avenger, and one of the biggest arseholes in superheroism. For the most part, this uses him as I think he works best: fucking up royally (the main plot is that the virus he created to destroy a genocidal AI he created previously has itself turned against humanity. Standard Pym). So he assembles a team of good robots (well, and a robot Doctor Doom, who gets all the best lines), who mostly firefight as the situation gets steadily worse. Oh, Pym.

[Dan]

This follows events immediately after the Age of Ultron. Haven't read a story this good in a long time...much better than previous story.

[Sharon]

Individual issues on marvel unlimited

[Fizzgig76]

Reprints Avengers A.I. #1-6 (September 2013-January 2014). In the wake of Ultron’s attack, S.H.I.E.L.D. and the world has a more acute interest in the threat of artificial intelligence to the safety of humanity. When Hank Pym’s anti-Ultron creation Dimitrios becomes its own threat, Pym is charged with helping create an A.I. Avengers task force to stop it. Dimitrios has a plan, and the arrival of a woman named Alexis could mean big things for A.I. and the future of the world!

Written by Sam Humphries, Avengers A.I. Volume 1: Human After All is a series spinning out of the Age of Ultron limited series. The collection features art by Andre Lima Araujo (#1-4) and Valerio Schiti (#5-6).

A lot of the things going on in Avengers (and Marvel) in this period of time turned me off the series and comics surrounding it. The A.I. storyline had some interesting aspects to it…plus, cheap copies of the whole series sold me to it. Avengers A.I. 1: Human After All does have some good moments, but also seems to have some pacing problems.

The world of comic books has broken down into continuous story arcs. Generally stories run four or six issues, but now sometimes the comics run even shorter (but not back to the traditional one issue stand-alone stories). This comic is a weird hybrid. It has some arcing story (that doesn’t complete in this volume) and it has some stand-alone aspects to it…but it doesn’t seem very balanced in that sense.

The comic never seems to really spike or hit hard. Victor is injured but it is obvious he isn’t dead (and the fact that other than Hank, they are robots eliminates that fear in general). The introduction of Pym’s bipolar disorder seems like a backfill to try to explain the up and down writing of the character (who has always had mental problems) rather than a real look at the mental illness. The series feels jumpy instead of flowing.

Despite this, I think the series does read a bit better than some of Bendis’ Avengers. With a smaller, core team with more of a goal, it gives room for development of the characters. It also combines new characters (like Alexis) with unexplored characters (like a Doombot) and characters that were always supporting (like Victor Mancha). That is a good way to allow storylines to evolve and grow…and Pym is behind many of them.

Avengers A.I. is by no means perfect, but I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn’t bad. I think it has a lot of room to grow, and I think it has to work on pacing and finding a way to build tension with a squad of essentially robots that always seem to rebuild. It faces the general struggles that comics all seem to be facing now and to top that off, it is a super-saturated market with tons of Avengers books. Avengers A.I. 1: Human After All is followed by Avengers A.I. 2: 12,000 A.D.

[Villain E]

I was interested at first, but it got a little annoying by the end. A lot of the drama is intrinsic upon me caring about new characters who weren't fleshed out enough for me to care.

So, this follows up on the Age of Ultron event, which I forgot about because it was, well, not memorable. During the crossover, Hank Pym went to the past and planted a computer virus in Ultron which was designed to evolve. Now it's evolved and there are lots of Artificial Intelligences, all hanging out in their own internet called the Diamond. They're not doing anything, they're just avatars walking around in a virtual world.

Meanwhile Hank Pym has decided to put together an Avengers team consisting of himself, the Vision (who has also evolved), Victor Mancha (from the Runaways), and a Doombot. They have a love/hate relationship with the SHIELD agent in charge of SHIELD's new AI division. And on their first adventure, they meet another self-aware android who they trust implicitely, no questions asked.

There's some good dialogue here. And I appreciate the discussion of AI personhood and rights. But the way the AI culture is handled is half-assed.

[Krzysztof Grabowski]

Zaskoczyła mnie tematyka komiksu i skład osobowy tego zespołu Avengers, który walczy z nowym zagrożeniem jakim jest Dimitrios, choć im dalej w las, tym bardziej przeciętnie...

A szkoda, bo zespół jest naprawdę nietypowy. Mamy tu Hanka Pyma, mamy Visiona i jego brata Victora Mancha, który jakiś czas temu łączył siły z Runaways. Jest też łączniczka z S. H. I. E. L. D, niejaka Monica Chang. Doombot, bo też tu jest, robi raczej za element komiczny i udało się to autorowi bardzo dobrze. Jakiś czas później do zespołu dołączy tajemnicza Alexis i już mamy ekipę do walki z sztuczną inteligencją, którą posłużono się do pokonania Ultrona w ramach wydarzenia Age of Ultron.

Tyle, że ten wirus uzyskał samo świadomość i zagraża ludziom(typowe). Przejmuje jedną ze zbroi Starka i się zaczyna. Jest sporo akcji, cała masa dialogów, ale nie ma wiele miejsca na rozwój postaci, może za wyjątkiem Pyma. Graficznie komiks prezentuje poziom równy fabule, czyli średni.

Jest jednak coś co mi się tu mega podobało. Starcie, w którym stawką był... Kot. Naprawdę. Takiej pomysłowości się tu nie spodziewałem, kiedy kadry przyjmują formę rodem z anime albo jakichś zwariowanych melodii. Bomba. Brawa. Choć jest to naprawdę urywek tomu, taki na pocieszenie po przeciętnej całości.

[Joshua Bertram]

A hell of an idea, an Avengers team of solely AI-based heroes and led by Ultron creator Hank Pym under the instruction of SHIELD as a way to solve the problem created by Pym's defeat of Ultron. In doing so, he inadvertently created a threat in a self-replicating AI called Dmitrios, and now Dmitrios is rallying all AI into an army.

Araújo's art is clean and matches the visuals with the writing well, creating some really wild imagery, especially the stuff that takes place within the AI world known as The Diamond. This book finally! Matches up the "family" of Ultron, in Pym, Victor Mancha, and Vision, making a unique team rounded out by Doombot and the mysterious Alexis.

It's a really fun read with inspired moments like a decapitated Doombot head calling a statue of Thomas Jefferson a "smug twit."

[Connor]

I picked up this book primarily to find out what happened to Victor Mancha before the Runaways reboot. The team that's been created here is interesting, and I think the villain Dimitrios is suitable. The final battle was cool. I thought some of the humans looked weird, but I really liked the artwork inside the diamond. It reminded me of Moebius.
Plot summary: Hank Pym puts together a team of Avengers Robots with Vision, Victor, a repurposed Doombot. They find Alexis, who ends up being one of the original A.I. or something.
The team fights Dimitrios, who is an evil A.I. that takes control of some Iron Man armor. Vision must choose between saving humans and saying the society of A.I. in a server. Victor is "killed" when the server explodes.

[Paul W.]

The best part of this book is the revelation that Hank Pym is bipolar. It explains his many different personalities throughout the years. While it doesn't excuse his behavior, it does go a little bit of a ways in explaining some of his appearances. Outside of that, it's a pretty bland book. I don't particularly enjoy the characters or the story. There's no weight to it, the story seems feather light for being about the genocide of a sentient species. I hope book 2 is better.

[Zac Stojcevski]

A sophisticated and engaging telling of two different realms of existence and the boundary blurring between man and machine, the deus e machina pertinent to the Avengers as it is to Western humanity. Enough engagement to have us waiting for the next instalment..,

[Andrew]

Would of been a 4 or even a 4.5 but loses points for jamming the following into the story for no apparent reason other than virtue signaling:

A random 3 panel character stops to pray to Allah and says “Allah Akbar” (not kidding)

Hank Pym is bipolar?

The art is great though.

[ems]

two of these stars are for doombot

[Jdetrick]

This is....ok. I was hoping for more, and there are lots of interesting ideas here, but the book seems unfocused and it never builds on the foundation it lays out.

[Karen]

Bipolar Pym is an interesting choice. Came to the series for Victor, stayed for ... well, still Victor, but also Doombot. Some really cool visuals came out of this with the Diamond.

[Graham]

Really interesting Moebius inspired art. But, the story was a little hard to follow and engage with.

[Shannon Appelcline]

So here's the first problem: the idea of an artificially accelerated civilization was done better by Rick Remender in Uncanny X-Force and by Jonathan Hickman in The Ultimates. Even more importantly, the idea of an emergent robot civilization was handled very specifically and extensively (and better) by Rick Remender in Secret Avengers. So the whole foundation of Avengers AI is not only derivative, but a poor man's derivative. It feels like yet another repetitive take on the science-fiction ideas that have run through a lot of Marvel's comics lately.

Here's the second problem: Hank Pym seems jocularly out of character for the first few issues, really hurting disbelief. Victor seems unlikely himself too, and Humphries practically rebooted the Vision.

Here's the third problem: Humphries' plot twists and often his characterization seem really heavy-handed, often requiring a lot of disbelief that things would suddenly twist in this way (like the widespread hysteria about robots, to use just the biggest example).

Here's the fourth problem: Humphries seems to have read a Wikipedia article about bipolar disorder, so that he could use some catch phrases, but he has no idea what a bipolar cycle really is, or most importantly that there are medications to treat it.

Here's the good part: Doombot.

It's not enough to hang a whole comic on. I was skimming by the last two issues.

[Scott Lee]

Intriguing. If I were buying this issue by issue I wouldn't be ready to commit for the long haul, but it was better than I thought it would be. I'm an old Avengers hand and so I picked it up in the process of grabbing all the marvel now I could get my hands on after being out of comics for most of two years. I had no idea what I was picking up, and especially after reading Age of Ultron and finding it confusing and, honestly rather lame--it's Age of Ultron but Ultron is almost entirely missing from the book--and realizing this was a spin off I wasn't expecting much.

This is essentially a reflection of the X-books/Uncanny Avengers in that it is a civil rights story writ large on a comic book science-fiction scale. Only here you have A.I. instead of Mutants as the persecuted minority. Hank Pym and the Vision are as interesting here as I've ever seen them, and the Vision has never appeared more "human" than he does in this book. I guess that's what draws me to it. If someone can write a good enough story to make Hank and the Vision interesting enough to function as its stars I have to see where it's going.

[Joe Young]

Sam Humphries - writer
Andre Lima Araujo & Valerio Schiti - artists

In order to defeat the malevolent artificial intelligence Ultron, Henry Pym created a self-replicating virus that could reproduce and evolve faster than Ultron could cope with it. Ultron was indeed defeated, but by releasing a rapidly evolving artificial intelligence into the wild, Henry Pym inadvertently created a new form of conscious life. Now the world's artificial intelligences are uniting and threatening to wage war on humankind. It's up to Henry Pym, along with a ragtag group of artificial intelligences including the Vision, Victor Mancha, a captured Doombot and newcomer Alexis, to protect the humans from the A.I. and vice versa! Can Pym usher in a new age of cooperation between humanity and the burgeoning race of A.I.? Or, is he fighting a losing war against history, sounding the last call of a doomed species?

Excellent work from Sam Humphries, who is quickly becoming one of my favorite modern comic book writers. Stellar artwork from Araujo and Schiti as well. Highly recommended.

5/5

[B]

I saw Avengers A.I. in the Age of Ultron Companion.
Age of Ultron Companion

And I was pretty excited about Doombot.

Having read this collection, I maintain that more Doombot is better.

Now, in a large sense, this character does not make sense. Doombots only talk like Doom when they are acting as decoys. Generally Doombots exist only to look threatening and then to suddenly explode when glanced at. Here, Doombot arguably has that characteristic as well, but it's not clear why it thinks it should act LIKE Doom. Or where it came from in the context of this story.

Also, there's a whole bunch of other stuff but whatever. Here's hoping for the Doombot limited series.