West Coast Avengers #9

History

West Coast Avengers Vol. 4 launched in November 2024, written by Gerry Duggan with art by Danny Kim, spinning directly out of Duggan's preceding Invincible Iron Man run, in which Tony Stark and James Rhodes had already relocated to the West Coast and begun laying the groundwork for a new team. Alanna Smith served as editor. The series was conceived around an explicit villain-rehabilitation premise — Iron Man and War Machine recruiting former adversaries into a structured work-release program — with Ultron as the headline reformed villain and the all-new character Blue Bolt (Chad Braxton, designed by Kim) as a second, more abrasive test case, making his debut in issue #1. The series concluded at issue #10, mirroring the ten-issue run of Vol. 3 (2018), and its complete story is collected across two trade paperbacks: 'The Gospel of Ultron' (issues #1–5, ISBN 9781302960339) and 'War of Ultron' (issues #6–10, ISBN 9781302962869).

Trivia · 8 facts

• West Coast Avengers (2024) #9 was published July 23, 2025, written by Gerry Duggan with art, inks, and colors by Danny Kim and Arthur Hesli, lettered by VC Joe Caramagna, and edited by Alanna Smith.
• The issue is titled 'Ultron Civil War' and centers on the Church of Ultron — the cult of machine-converted cyborg followers built by the team's own Ultron — coming into direct conflict with a rival machine faction led by the newly introduced Omega Ultron.
• Omega Ultron's appearance in this issue represents a fresh antagonist identity within the larger Ultron mythology Duggan constructed across the series, distinct from both the 'The One' faction established earlier and the West Coast team's reformed Ultron.
• The Vol. 4 series as a whole introduced Blue Bolt (Chad Braxton) as an all-new Marvel character in issue #1 — a career henchman with unrefined lightning-based powers placed on the team via a prison work-release program devised by Tony Stark.
• The team's roster in Vol. 4 — Iron Man, War Machine, Spider-Woman, Firestar, Ultron, and Blue Bolt — was explicitly built around reformed or morally compromised characters, a structural concept Duggan carried over from continuity threads in his preceding X-Men and Invincible Iron Man runs.
• Issue #9 is the penultimate chapter of the ten-issue series; the final confrontation with Omega Ultron and the resolution of the team's Ultron's fate play out in issue #10.
• The full Vol. 4 run is collected in two trade paperbacks: West Coast Avengers Vol. 1: The Gospel of Ultron (issues #1–5) and West Coast Avengers Vol. 2: War of Ultron (issues #6–10, ISBN 9781302962869), which includes issue #9.
• Vol. 4 is the fourth incarnation of the West Coast Avengers brand; the team first appeared in a 1984 limited series by Roger Stern and Bob Hall, and each revival has been cancelled within ten issues (Vol. 3 in 2018–2019, Vol. 4 in 2024–2025).

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