Machine Man (Redirected from X-51)
Machine Man is a comic book character created by writer/artist Jack Kirby for Marvel Comics. The character, an android, was created in 2001: A Space Odyssey #8 (1978), a comic written and drawn by Kirby featuring concepts based on the eponymous Stanley Kubrick film and Arthur C. Clarke novel. Shortly thereafter, Machine Man spun off into his own Kirby-created series.
Biography
Machine Man, whose real name is X-51, was the last of a series of sentient robots created by robotics expert Dr. Abel Stack for the US Army. However, all previous 50 experimental robots went mad as they achieved sentience and killed themselves. X-51 was the only survivor, as he was treated humanely by Stack and given a human face mask as well as being exposed to one of the monoliths from 2001. After Stack died trying to protect him, X-51 assumed the human name Aaron Stack and escaped confinement, only to be relentlessy pursued by the army. While on the run, the newly-christened Machine Man (Mister Machine in his very first appearances) initiated contact with humanity in order to better understand it.
After being captured and later freed, Machine Man was found by psychiatrist Peter Spaulding and mechanic Gears Garvin. They set-up Machine Man with a human identity as Aaron Stack, insurance salesman, but he continued having superhero adventures on the side. In a meeting with Ben Grimm of the Fantastic Four, he also found and fell in love with another sentient robot, Jocasta, before she was destroyed by Ultron.
In more recent appearances, he has fought alongside the Avengers, which lead to the invitation to become a team reservist. Later he helped the X-Men against the villainous Bastion and his Sentinels. As a consequence, he was infected by Sentinel programming, assuming a more robotic look in the subsequent series X-51: The Machine Man, and losing self-control whenever he was faced with a mutant. S.H.I.E.L.D. also started chasing him.
Alternate timelines
Machine Man 2020
Machine Man's most famous storyline was the 1984 alternate future mini-series Machine Man, written by Tom DeFalco with art by Herb Trimpe and Barry Windsor-Smith, where Machine Man is reactivated in the year 2020 by a group of outlaw scavengers called Midnight Wreckers (lead by X-51's old friend Gears Garvin), and forced to battle his old enemy, the industrialist ice queen Sunset Bain, as well as mercenary Arno Stark, the amoral Iron Man of 2020.
Earth X
Machine Man was also one of the main stars of the Earth X trilogy. Transformed by a monolith into a transparent version himself, Aaron was forced to become the new Watcher by a blind Uatu, the previous Watcher, who had not viewed any event on the planet for 30 years. Tricking Uatu, who had attempted to force Machine Man to reject his humanity, Machine Man managed to use his access to Watcher technology and data to help humanity defeat the coming Celestials, by revealing to Earth's superhero community the true origins of mankind. After defeating the Celestials, Machine Man used his newfound position to contact parallel Earths to help them eradicate the Celestial menace.
Bibliography
- 2001: A Space Odyssey #8-10 (1978)
- Machine Man Volume 1 #1-19 (1978-1981)
- Machine Man Volume 2 #1-4 (1985, reprinted as Machine Man 2020 in 1994)
- Cable/Machine Man ’98 #1 (1998 annual)
- Machine Man/Bastion ’98 #1 (1998 annual)
- X-51: The Machine Man #1-12 (1999-2000)
External links
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