Ultra Car was first an ordinary vehicle, then a sentient minivan, and is now a humanoid fem-bot from the Walkyverse. She hates most people, although she's been known to make exceptions. In Dumbing of Age, she is a fictional character in a cartoon.
Walkyverse
| Ultra Car | |
|---|---|
 | |
| First Appearance: | Roomies! 15 June 1999 |
| YOB: | 1995 |
| YOA (Year of Awakening): | 2004 |
| Relatives: | Joe Rosenthal, Rachel ("parents") |
| Seats: | 5 (SUV body), 4 (hybrid body), 1 (fembot body) |
Ultra Car is a grouchy sentient car with a superiority complex. She's high tech, she's state-of-the-art, she's valuable property, and she knows it and proclaims it. Ultra Car won't miss any opportunity to verbally assault the meat people, yesterday's evolutionary news, who surround her. She's not above physical assault, either.
Unfortunately, the downside to being valuable property is that you're valuable property. The begrudging realization of this existential problem is probably what's stuffed up her (now metaphorical) exhaust pipe.
Ultra Car as a normal SUV
Roomies[]
In 1995, Danny Wilcox's dad bought a red SUV. His first documented use of it was driving Danny and Joe to freshman orientation at Indiana University, and also to pick up Danny and Joe at the end of every year of college. Danny would later borrow the SUV when he, Joe, Billie, and Mary went on a cross-country road trip to Mt. Rushmore. On the way, they stopped at BotCon. Mr. Wilcox passed ownership of the SUV to Danny on his twenty-first birthday, after his driving license was no longer revoked due to a certain drunk driving accident.
It's Walky![]
Ultra Car was created by Joe and Rachel from Danny's SUV just before the Martian Invasion. Intending to use Ultra Car to get into the Martian mothership, Joe and Rachel built her using no Martian parts so as to help evade their scanners. Together with Danny and Howard, after nearing the Martian mothership parked in orbit, they went intangible in a similar manner to The Cheese (or Shadowcat) and snuck into it. There, they fought the zombie crew of the USS Destiny and destroyed the mothership.
Ultra Car joins the Shortpacked team.
Later on, Joe and Danny fought Monkey Master in Ultra Car, leading to Danny being severely injured. Ultra Car was badly hurt as well, providing an opportunity for Monkey Master to offer Ultra Car a place at his side, as they were both AI machines forced to do man's bidding. Ultra Car refused, ensuring her place as Monkey Master's enemy.
In order to keep up with Rosenthal Robotics' public image, Ultra Car was later transferred into a hybrid car whose design may or may not have been based on the Cozy Coupe. Originally opposed to the idea, she changed her mind when she realized being an environmentally friendly car would give her yet another thing to be smug at people about.
Shortpacked![]
Ultra Car mailed herself to Shortpacked! to help Robin DeSanto, who requested Joe's services in finding the missing Drama Tag she found a year prior. However, Ultra Car's scanners didn't pick it up, thus making the trip effectively pointless. Reluctant to return home, she accepted a job as the store's stock manager, making extra cash on the side by shamelessly scalping toys. She also briefly moonlighted as the mysterious web-slinging superhero Spider-Car.
Ultra Car reveals her new appearance.
After discovering that Joe had begun mass-producing sentient "Zoomer" cars based on the Ultra Car design, UC flew to Colorado with Jacob to confront her creator in-person. When pressed, Joe admitted that he created the Zoomers in a failed attempt to fill the hole left by UC's departure.
UC later joined Leslie in traveling to an alternate universe in search of Rachel. For Leslie, it was a high-risk opportunity to break up Robin and Joe; for Ultra Car, a chance to be reunited with her "mother". Following their successful cross-dimensional adventure (and a last-minute bailout by Robin), Ultra Car was rebuilt by Joe and Rachel as a humanoid fembot.
UC eventually moved in with Robin and Leslie and entered into a tentative relationship with fellow Shortpacked employee Malaya Eugenio, who decided to experiment with robosexuality after striking out with both men and women. She also adopted a new superhero persona to replace Spider-Car: Schtickshift.
Trivia[]
She's so happy her happiness makes other people cover her shifts.
Gallery[]
Dumbing of Age[]
| Ultra Car | |
|---|---|
 | |
| First Appearance: | June 14, 2014 |
In Dumbing of Age, Ultra Car (still a car) is the main character in her own cartoon series. David Willis has stated that the premise of the show is, in brief: "Ultra Car and a pair of humans fly around space and fight Obsticons", not unlike the original Ultra Car comic and video game. The series had no merchandise and did not do well in the ratings (at least in its target demographic), to the point that not every episode produced was broadcast.[1]
She has done a crossover on a Season 4 episode of Dexter & Monkey Master where her brain was merged with that of Monkey Master (Walky did not have a high opinion of it). This is because the two shows share a reclusive creator.
Ultra Car's current Walkyverse body is the inspiration for Carla, who is appropriately a fan of the Ultra Car cartoon.
Trivia[]
- Like many of the characters in Roomies! and It's Walky!, Ultra Car is based upon a character designed by David Willis during his younger years. She's actually the earliest of his creations to survive to the present day; Danny, Joe, and Howard were created afterward to be Ultra Car's supporting cast.
- The glasses UC wears in her humanoid form have no prescription strength; they're just there because they remind her of the headlights in her old form.
- Fans have speculated that UC's humanoid appearance was at least partially modeled after Ruth Lesse, who originally convinced Joe to study engineering.
- That said, UC's transformation into a humanoid was foreshadowed relatively early on.
- Ultra Car is a fan of the Short Circuit films, in particular Short Circuit 2.
- Joe apparently removed Ultra Car's intangibility drive in favor of additional cupholders sometime between It's Walky! and Shortpacked!
- UC's hybrid form is loosely modeled on the 2008 Toyota Yaris.
References[]
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Filthy", July 14, 2014. https://www.shortpacked.com/comic/filthy. Cite error: Invalid
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