Hero of the Week- Machine Man

 

From Wiki- Machine Man (also known as Aaron Stack, Mister Machine and serial number Z2P45-9-X-51 or X-51 for short) is an android superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character was created by Jack Kirby for 2001: A Space Odyssey #8 (July 1977), a comic written and drawn by Kirby featuring concepts based on the eponymous 1968 Stanley Kubrick feature film and Arthur C. Clarke's 1968 novel.^[2] Shortly thereafter, Machine Man spun off into his own Kirby-created series. He is a robot, the only survivor of a series, raised as a human son of scientist Abel Stack, who was killed removing his auto-destruct mechanism, and further evolved to sentience by a Monolith.  Machine Man, whose real name is Z2P45-9-X-51, is the last of a series of sentient robots created at the Broadhurst Center for the Advancement of Mechanized Research in Central City, California, by robotics expert Abel Stack for the US Army. The previous 50 experimental robots went mad as they achieved sentience and became psychotic due to a lack of identity. X-51 was the only survivor, as he was treated as a son by Stack and given a human face mask as well as being exposed to a monolith. After Stack died trying to protect him, X-51 assumed the human name Aaron Stack and escaped confinement, only to be relentlessly pursued by the army. While on the run, the newly christened Machine Man initiated contact with humanity in order to better understand it.^[5]  Back to me:

I never read Kirby's run on the series, but picked it up after Ditko took over in issue #10. I quite enjoyed it, but then, he was the "living robot" and that was right up my alley.  Marvel sure has quite a few of these sort of characters, don't they?  I looked into the current model, meh, as always.  Anyway, some twelve years ago or so, I had an idea for Marvel's iron team.  I still think it would be fun.