Tomorrow marks the release of Avengers A.I. #8.NOW, part of the first wave of the All-New Marvel NOW initiative, and it’s a doozy. The nefarious artificial intelligence known as Dimitrios – spawned from the self-evolving virus Hank Pym used to destroy Ultron – has declared war on humanity, and in the next issue, we see what happens when he wins. It’s a new far-flung future in the 130th century, where mechanical life is all that’s left. They evolve at the speed of technology, so where will they be in the year 12,000?
Crave Online got the chance to fire a few queries toward the man behind this catastrophic yet audacious new event, so here are 5 questions with Avengers A.I. writer Sam Humphries.
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1.) So Avengers A.I. #8.NOW seems to be the climax of your first arc, but NOW tends to signify a jumping on point. Is Dimitrios’ master plan triggering a new status quo for the series?
SAM HUMPHRIES: Nope, this is a continuation of the rocket ship we launched with issue 1. What we see is that Dimitrios is dedicating his superintelligence to one of the most audacious plans ever conceived in the Marvel Universe: the extinction of humanity, and the destruction of all time and space. Unfortunately for everyone else, he succeeds.
2.) Jocasta’s in the mix now, and looking pretty hardass compared to how we last saw her. How is she going to be figure into the equations here?
SAM HUMPHRIES: Along with Monica Chang, Jocasta is a part of SHIELD’s new Robot Hunter Squad. They are tasked with tracking and deactivating A.I.s who have been deemed hostile by humanity.
3.) The Uncanny Avengers are guest-starring, but over in their book, they seem pretty shattered right now. Who from that team will be showing up and what is their response to what Hank and Vision have been up to?
SAM HUMPHRIES: We’ve got Avengers A.I. and members of Uncanny Avengers traveling to the Diamond, the virtual homeland of a billion A.I. In a realm of pure thought, ANYTHING goes. The result is a mind-bending Avengers spectacular unlike anything you’ve seen before, thanks to the mind-blowing artwork of André Lima Araújo.
4.) What kind of madness can we expect from the Marvel Universe in the amazing year 12,000? The ‘Avengers Empire’ sounds interesting, considering all the Avengers World stuff on the horizon. Does this tie into the Age of Ultron timestream malarkey?
SAM HUMPHRIES: All of humanity has been extinguished. The Avengers Empire is an expansion of the Avengers ideal, the mantle kept alive by thousands of intergalactic A.I. heroes — some of whom are “upgrades” of heroes we know in the 21st century. Dimitrios has been strip mining the universe in his attempt to break through and confront the creator of all reality, and he doesn’t mind if he crushes all time and space in the process. The Avengers Empire is the only thing that stands in the way of complete and utter oblivion at the hands of an immortal superintelligence.
5.) Any chance that Kilgore Sentinel might come back? He was kind of adorable in an Iron Giant kind of way when he wasn’t destroying Washington D.C.
SAM HUMPHRIES: He’s too busy relandscaping the National Mall.
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