"
The Vault" is the widely used
nickname of a defunct
prison
facility for
superhuman criminals (predominantly
supervillains) in
Marvel Comics'
Marvel Universe.
The prison's full
official name is the United States
Maximum Security Installation for the Incarceration
of Superhuman Criminals.
It first appeared in
Avengers Annual #15 (1986). It ceased being used
after the facility was destroyed in
Heroes for Hire
#1 (February 1997), although the facility still occasionally
appears in flashbacks in various Marvel publications.
Publication history
"The Vault" first appeared in
Avengers Annual #15 (1986)
by writers
Steve Englehart and
Danny Fingeroth, artist
Steve Ditko and Editor
Mark Gruenwald. It is unclear whether
Englehart, Fingeroth or Gruenwald (or all three) originated the
concept.
The Vault was not the first super-human detainment facility to
appear in
comic books.
Marvel had shown their
characters detained in various penitentiaries (usually alongside
regular criminals) prior to Avengers Annual #15, most
often at "Ryker's Island" (a
fictionalised Rikers
Island
). Also,
DC Comics'
Arkham Asylum predates the Vault by
over 12 years (though Arkham is technically a
psychiatric hospital, not a prison).
There is also
Takron-Galtos, a prison
planet which incarcerated many of the
Legion of Super-Heroes' villains
which first appeared in
Adventure
Comics #359 (August, 1967).
However, "the Vault" was the first prison said to be built
specifically and exclusively for the detention of super-villains,
and the first to be widely used across a line of comic books.
Similar institutions in other comic book universes, such as
"
the Slab" and
Iron Heights in the
DC
Universe, first appeared years later.
After its debut, "the Vault" quickly began to appear throughout
Marvel's line of titles as it became the standard destination of
imprisoned super-humans in the Marvel Universe. Several storylines
were based around the notion of
superheroes being imprisoned in the facility or a
number of inmates coordinating a prison break. In 1991, the
facility was the subject and main setting for an original
graphic novel,
Avengers: Deathtrap, the
Vault (later republished as
Venom: Deathtrap, the
Vault), which was written by Danny Fingeroth with art by
Ron Lim.
After
Heroes for Hire Vol. 1 #1, the concept was
abandoned. Comic book writer
Kurt Busiek
explained some the reasoning for this in a
Usenet posting in February 2001
- " the Vault is a dramatically-flawed idea -- either
villains escape a lot (which is what happened) and the result is
that this supposedly-cool place looks like it's made of cardboard,
or they don't, in which case villains get captured and vanish from
the Marvel U. forever, since Marvel time mitigates against their
sentences ever being naturally completed."
Fictional history
Prior to the creation of the Vault, super-humans in US custody were
usually imprisoned in special wards in Ryker's Island; however,
concern about the danger posed to non-super-human inmates by the
frequent breakouts by the super-human population in the prison led
to those wards being closed.
Another venue, the energy research facility
Project Pegasus, was also briefly used,
though the unsuitability of such an institution for use as a
general prison led to the imprisonment of most criminals there
being discontinued eventually. The US Government then set about
building a unique
penitentiary dedicated and
designed exclusively for the detainment of super-human criminals.
Using
expertise, research and technology pioneered at Project Pegasus
spearheaded by Dr. Henri
Sorel, and extremely robust materials such as adamantium and osmium
steel, they built an underground three-level structure over
below ground level in the Rocky
Mountain range in Colorado
.
Security guards at the prison wore armoured
Guardsmen uniforms. These suits, similar
in appearance to the armour worn by the original
Guardsman, used
technology adapted from Tony Stark's
Iron
Man armour designs. Originally Stark disagreed with this
unauthorised use of his work, and this led him (in his Iron Man
guise) to forcibly remove all his technology from the armour
(
Iron Man #228; March, 1988, during the
Armor Wars). However, Stark's opinion later
partially changed. He went on to contribute to the design of a
later model of the suit, limited to work only in the Vault itself
and the close environs thereof (
Avengers Spotlight #29; February,
1990).
The first individuals to be detained at the Vault were 11 members
of the East and
West Coast
branches of the Avengers, who were suspected of treason
(
Avengers Annual #15). Though they eventually escaped, it
was only with outside aid as they found the facility internally
impenetrable. They were eventually cleared of all charges.
After those events the prison filled with inmates, as super-human
criminals were transferred there from all over the country. It
quickly became the site of numerous breakouts and break out
attempts. One of the most frequent escapees was the
Spider-Man villain
Venom, who escaped from the institution at least
twice (
The Amazing
Spider-Man (Vol. 1) #315 and 331 (May 1989 and April
1990)), in the process killing many people. One of these escapes
eventually lead to the formation of a group of individuals who
called themselves
The Jury, who
intended to destroy Venom once and for all. At another point,
during the events of the
Avengers: Deathtrap, the Vault
graphic novel, he led a revolt among the inmates which necessitated
the intervention of both the Avengers and
Freedom Force. Truman Marsh, the
current warden, goes insane over the stress of the breakout. Marsh
had set off the Vault's self-destruct and due to several mistakes,
it was going to destroy half the state, killing millions. By the
time Venom kills Marsh, the warden was fully willing to kill all
the innocents in order to destroy the supervillains.
Iron Man,
Hank Pym and one
of the inmates,
Thunderball,
neutralize the bomb.
A Guardsman named Hugh Taylor was killed by Venom in a later
breakout. This led his father,
General Orwell Taylor, to assemble a
group of embittered former Guardsmen from the Vault. Calling
themselves
The Jury, the group
then illegally used modified versions of their armour to try hunt
down and exact revenge against Venom, beginning with their first
appearance in
Venom: Lethal
Protector #1 (February, 1993). The group was later
reformed under the leadership of
U.S.
Agent.
In
New Warriors (Vol. 1) #25
(August, 1992),
Vance Astrovik was
sentenced to imprisonment in the Vault, after being found guilty of
the manslaughter of his father. While he was en route to the
facility, a group of his teammates in the New Warriors overwhelmed
the Guardsmen, whom Vance has befriended and attempted to aid his
escape. Astrovik chose to stay in captivity and serve his time
(
New Warriors (Vol. 1) #26; June, 1993). While
incarcerated, he helped foil a riot. Part of Vance's success was
his willingness to campaign for better living conditions. For
example, Terraformer, a captured member of
Force of Nature, simply desires a
plant in his cell. Vance manages to give him one off the Warden's
desk. This serves to lessen the ire of many of the prisoners (New
Warriors
Vol. 1 #36; June, 1993). Astrovik was
released from the prison in New Warriors
Vol. 1 #43
(January, 1994).
On at least one occasion, a criminal was not freed from the Vault
itself, but rather while they were en route to the Vault. The
mutant terrorist group known as the
Resistants attacked a prisoner transport
van, killing or incapacitating the Guardsmen operating the van, and
freed the mutant criminal known as
Mentallo.
Mass breakouts did occur at the institution on at least four
occasions. The first occurred as a result of
Iron Man having disabled the Guardsmen's armour as
a part of the Armor Wars in
Iron Man Vol. 1 #228 (March,
1988). The resulting jailbreak occurred in
Captain America (Vol. 1) #340 (April
1988), though the escapees were quickly recaptured.
The second large-scale breakout, instigated by
Loki, was one of the major contributing
factors to the numerous supervillain attacks on various heroes
during the "
Acts of Vengeance"
crossover, with the jailbreak
itself occurring in
Avengers Spotlight #26,
Damage Control (Vol. 2) #1
(December 1989) and
Quasar
#6 (January 1990). The villains enjoyed more freedom then expected
as the warden accidentally calls Damage Control before the
Avengers. The facility was restored to functionality by the time of
Avengers Spotlight #29 (February 1990), after Loki's
alliance of criminal masterminds had collapsed and most of the
escaped inmates had been recaptured.
Another breakout was recounted in a flashback in
Thunderbolts Annual '97 (1997)
(it had actually occurred prior to the events of
Thunderbolts (Vol. 1) #1; April 1997), although only a
handful of escapees were named. The fourth and final mass breakout
occurred in
Heroes for Hire (Vol. 1) #1. In that final
prison break, the facility was destroyed by the
U-Foes.
Successors
As a result of the facility's destruction, the US government
abandoned the concept of a single penitentiary for super-humans,
instead dispersing the detainment of such criminals in a number of
normal prisons such as
Seagate Prison
and
The Raft (a part of Ryker's
Island, located on an adjacent island). Later the idea of a
dedicated institution was revived, this time in drastically
different fashion with the experimental
Lang Memorial Prison also known as the
"Ant Hill" or "Big House", where criminals were reduced
dramatically in size through the use of
Pym
Particles; a method of escape was deduced by an android
duplicate of the
Mad Thinker in
She-Hulk, and in the aftermath of the chaos that followed
the project was abandoned. Another dedicated prison, nicknamed "The
Cage", is an isolated island in international waters with a force
field nullifying all superhuman powers. It is unclear whether the
Raft or the Big House are still in operation as both have recently
suffered major prison breaks (
New Avengers #1 and
She-Hulk Vol. 3 #5, respectively). However,
Carol Danvers later stated that the
Raft was still the location where supervillains were "dropped off"
in the limited series
Captain Marvel
#1, and
Titania, a She-Hulk
villain, appeared in
She-Hulk in a shrunken form after
escaping The Big House in a story set months after Vol.3 #5.
With the recent
Civil
War Event, a new maximum-security prison for superpowered
individuals was created by the government in the very place that no
superhuman could escape from unaided — the
Negative Zone. The Prison was nicknamed
'Fantasy Island' by its inmates and 'Prison 42' by its designers,
Tony Stark & Reed Richards, as it had been their 42nd idea out
of a hundred for 'A Safer America' after the Stamford Disaster.
Although it suffered one major breakout from the Secret Avengers,
causing the release of all of its unregistered superheroes, Tom
Brevoort has stated that 'Project 42' remains a prison for
particularly powerful supervillains, while for regulars 'There's
still the Raft and Riker's Island.' It was later revealed in
Civil War: Front Line #11 that
it had never been intended for anyone other than supervillains, and
that the heroes imprisoned there would have been released once the
war was over.
In the
War of Kings storyline,
the Negative Zone prison is later attacked by
Blastaar.
Staff
- Howard G. Hardman (former warden)
- Truman Marsh (former warden) - He is killed when Venom prevents
him from destroying half the state.
- Andrew Lewis (designer of both incarnations of the Vault) -
Owns Lewis Security Systems, he designed the Rocky Mountains Vault
and was used as pawn by the Mad Thinker and Threska. He also built
the Negative Zone Vault and blamed Reed Richards for his wife's
death.
Known inmates
Original Vault
Negative Zone Vault
Other versions
Mutant X
In the "
Mutant X" the Vault also
operates as a prison, it is featured in issue #26. One of its many
inmates is the classic vampire Dracula, imprisoned in a
technological coffin. Forces attack the Vault, killing many
Guardsmen and taking Dracula. For lack of any better options,
Henry Peter Gyrich, a government
employee, calls in the "The Six", a superhero team, to fix the
situation as best as possible.
In other media
Television
- The Vault appeared in the Iron Man episode "The Armor Wars,
Part One." The story is an adaptation of the Armor Wars storyline.
After filling the ventilation with sleeping gas, Iron Man breaks
into the Vault to disable the Guardsman armors. He ends up fighting
Hawkeye and the Guardsman which ends with Hawkeye being defeated
and Iron Man using the Negator Packs on the Guardsman uniforms
(though he later learns that they do not actually use his
technology). Blizzard, Grey Gargoyle, and Whirlwind were shown as
inmates at the Vault.
- The Vault appears in The Spectacular
Spider-Man episode "Opening Night." Spider-Man is hired by
Norman Osborn to test the security system in a plan to escape.
However, Green Goblin ends up taking control of the security system
and even releases the prisoners. Black Cat also infiltrates the
prison to free her father Walter Hardy (depicted as the Burglar that shot Uncle Ben). Montana, Ox,
Fancy Dan, Mysterio (actually a robot), Silvermane, Molten
Man, and Rhino are shown as
inmates at the Vault and are released by Green Goblin.
Video game
- A prison based on the Vault appeared in the X2: Wolverine's Revenge game,
and was called The Void. As mentioned by Professor X in the game's
data files, it specifically contained mutant supervillains, as
opposed to human supervillains like the Vault. The prisoners
included Magneto, Juggernaut, and Omega Red, but these three were freed by Sabretooth during the game.
Toys
- In 1998, Toy Biz released a small
line of "Vault"-themed action figures
featuring villains from the Marvel Universe. The line composed of
figures of Stegron, Typhoid Mary and Ultron. The packaging of each was designed to
resemble the interiors of a cell in "the Vault" as they had been
presented in the comics. Toy Biz also released a Guardsman figure
in their Spider-Man toy line.
- In the Spider-Man edition of Monopoly, the properties the
players must buy are replaced by various super-villains the players
must capture, and the hotels are renamed Vaults.
See also
References
-
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.comics.marvel.universe/msg/97d5f38002cf6fde
- CIVIL WAR ROOM #7: TALKING TO TOM BREVOORT -
NEWSARAMA
- Marvel Graphic Novel: Avengers: Deathtrap: The
Vault
- Fantastic Four: Foes #1
- Captain America #340
- Spider-Man: Breakout #1
- Fantastic Four: Foes #6
- She-Hulk vol. 3 #10
- Thunderbolts '97
- Marvel Graphic Novel: Avengers: Deathtrap: the
Vault
- The Vault
External links
Wikis
Quiz
Map
Search
