Vault (comics)
| The Vault | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | Avengers Annual #15 (1986) |
| Publisher | Marvel Comics |
The Vault is the widely used nickname of a fictional defunct prison facility for technological-based superhuman criminals (predominantly supervillains) appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. 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.
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 40 feet (12 m) 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 to 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).
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