On the cover of the new Entertainment Weekly released today, Marvel unveiled our first look at Ultron, the new villain who will take on our favorite team of superheroes in next summer’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.  Also revealed were more details about the plot, including why there is more than one Ultron in that photo.

Apparently when the new movie begins, the Avengers – Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo), and Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) – are in desperate need of a break from being on call 24/7 to fight crime.  As a solution, Tony Stark creates Ultron – a sentient robot designed to assess threats and fight crime with Stark’s Iron Legion of drones.  Things go south however – as they always seem to do when one builds a crime-fighting robot – as the hyper-intelligent Ultron comes to the unfortunate realization that the best way to truly stop crime is to ends the human race.  It seems Ultron is also capable of uploading himself into the Cloud – way to go, Apple – and then reproducing himself in stronger forms.  Hence the Multiplicity-like cover.

James Spader, with the help of some motion-capture technology, is the actor playing Ultron.  Also added to the cast for this sequel are Elizabeth Olsen (Godzilla) and Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick-Ass).  Disney will release Avengers: Age of Ultron on May 1st, 2015.   Keep checking back here before then for all of the latest news, on-set photos, and trailers.