Hey, remember M-Tech? Oh, you do not.

Not one of Marvel's most popular attempts at a line of books, no; although to be fair, it wasn't the least popular, either. That's faint praise, just saying it wasn't bad enough to be memorable; and neither Deathlok (not featuring the traditional zombie-like cyborg we know) nor Warlock (not the Adam Warlock version) nor today's book lasted long: X-51, featuring Machine Man.

I had a full run of this at some point, although it only lasted a mere twelve issues. I do believe the sales were remarkably poor, considering Machine Man was coming out of crossovers with the X-Men and Cable; and the book featured guest appearances from the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and Mystique, the Vision and the Avengers, and the X-Men. That said, poor X-51 spent a good chunk of his first eight or nine issues controlled by Bastion's Prime Sentinel/Zero Tolerance programming nonsense, which was trying to turn him into a mutant-killer. Worse, his redesign/makeover didn't do him any favors, either: Aaron looked less advanced than he had under Jack Kirby, more like a purple Robocop with no helmet. (This may have been intentional: give him a scary and intimidating design while he turns heel, then a dramatic and heroic redesign when he turns back.

Through most of the series, Special Agent Jack Kubrick tries to piece together X-51's story; Jack's name being a nod to his creator Jack Kirby and 2001 director Stanley Kubrick. (Remember, whether you call him Mr. Machine, Machine Man, Aaron Stack, or X-51, he first appeared in 2001 #8.) HAL is also name-checked this issue, X-51 #8, "Aftermath" Written by Karl Bollers, art by Joe Bennett and Bob Wiacek. Falling under control of the Sentinel programming, X-51 fights the X-Men, in a story that I believe takes place concurrently with the Apocalypse: the Twelve storyline. This squad, having rescued Wolverine from his role as the Horseman Death, wandered around the outskirts of the rest of that storyline doing their own thing, which I like.

X-51 would get another new look, closer to his old, before the end of the series; but he was also one of the narrators in Earth X at the time, with a completely different look. There, he was transparent and inhuman; and later still he would get probably his most popular design, in Nextwave. Sometimes, these things take a few tries.