Age of Ultron #10 review

The Avengers fight the Intelligentsia, a spaceknight turns into Ultron, Hank Pym defeats said mad robot with a computer virus and psychology, the Age of Ultron is averted. And time breaks.

Thus concludes another Marvel event. Or rather, 'concludes'. The main focus of the story, the alternate world created by Ultron, is tied up, but a whole bunch of related threads are begun. And rather shamelessly, if you ask me.

Because the book ends with a series of epilogues: Ultimate Spider-Man sees something scary over New York; Hank Pym gets an idea; and the Big Mystery Character so Big and Mysterious That This Comic Comes In a Plastic Bag vows vengeance against whomever got her shifted across universes. Each of these vignettes is followed by a house ad telling us where the storylines continue. It's like a free sampler, but for 'free' read '$3.99'. As I said, shameless - Marvel doesn't even pretend the Age of Ultron event meant anything, that it might have earned a moment in which readers might consider, and compliment, the ride. Nope, it's more 'now toss your dollars on these new bonfires'. Because if these spin-offs - Hunger, Avengers AI and a Guardians of the Galaxy arc - are as well-thought- through as Age of Ultron, they'll be thin gruel indeed.

For Marvel have given up on following their well-established rules of time travel, leading to one hot mess. Wolverine and Sue Storm have changed their own timeline a couple of times, when decades of storytelling have it that if you go back and, say, kill Dr Doom as a baby, when you return to 2013 he's still around - you've simply created a timeline in which Mr and Mrs Von Doom have had a terribly sad life. And the heroes have likely created extra Logans and Sues in their own timeline - Rich Johnson explains it all over at Bleeding Cool.

I'm not quite sure what Tony Stark's line 'we broke the space-time continuum' means, beyond various heroes making faces at montages - are aspects of alternate timelines seeping into their universe? Is the Thing now in his Blackbeard persona from Fantastic Four #5, 50 years ago? Is Wolverine getting the memories of alt-Logans? The illustrations are striking, but baffling - a few words from Brian Michael Bendis - him being the writer and all - would help enormously here. 

Are we getting a Marvel version of Crisis on Infinite (actually, I think that would be seven) Earths? Please God not a Flashpoint-style Earth Mash-Up.

As for the enigmatic wifey, actually, I can reveal all, as Marvel themselves spoiled it weeks back. It's Angela,  minor Spawn character, of interest to some because she was created by Neil Gaiman, but me, I read 1602. Why Marvel fans are expected to get excited about a scowly tart twirling tickertape I have no idea. Her upcoming stopover in Guardians of the Galaxy won't prompt me to purchase because, well, I really don't know anything about her beyond press release stuff; this isn't DC bringing back the original Captain Marvel, it's Marvel reviving someone most everyone had forgotten - if they'd actually heard of her in the first place.

There are incidental pleasures in the book. The odd Bendis line (...a group of fairly intelligent criminal masterminds'). SWORD's term for a cosmic threat being Code Phoenix. The artwork of Bryan Hitch, Paul Neary, Brandon Peterson, Butch Guice, Carlos Pacheco, Roger Bonet, Tom Palmer, David Marquez and Joe Quesada is suitably flashy. The artwork of Alex Maleev is distinctly unflashy, and makes Hank Pym talking to Hank Pym my favourite scene.
What a bitch
Peterson's cover is an effective mood piece. Beats me who that figure with the glowing circles is, though. The Harlem Globetrotter Cosmic?

Overall though, this issue could win an award for the disparity between amount of hype surrounding it, and success in terms of emotional, intellectual and visceral payoff - it's just superheroes going through the motions, and more promises of great things. Heck, we're told Hank's plan to take down Ultron on the recap page and it goes off without a hitch - not a single reversal of fortune. If you haven't already bought this so-called event, don't worry, there'll be another one along in a minute. And I doubt that would repay your interest, either. 

Comments

  1. You don't understand the significance of this major upset, Martin - with the space/time continuum broken, now any Marvel character can meet up with any other Marvel character! Marvel Zombies could invade the regular Marvel universe! Uncanny X-Force could visit the Age Of Apocalypse! Spider-Man could meet Ultimate Spider-Man - or even Spider-Man 2099! They could even do an entire event where the 2099 line met the Marvel universe in the present if they wanted to - literally anything that has never happened before in the Marvel universe could now happen!

    It's great about Angela, too. I remember thinking what a great victory it was for the little guy when Neil Gaiman got the character back from that indy publisher in order to sell her to Walt Disney. It's a working-class fable, really.

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    1. You're so right - if there's a point to miss, I'll miss it. Fifty years from now historians will look back on the issue as the foundation of modern comics. I'm now thinking of having the cover made into a tee shirt. And coasters. Yes, definitely coasters.

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  2. The great irony is that Age of Ultron was never about the Age Of Ultron--which the main series showed us virtually nothing of--or even about Ultron, who comes out of this looking like an idiot. Was this series even about anything at all, other than trying to make use of an unfinished product laying around Marvel's drawers and launching new series?

    And since a good 8 pages of this issue were reprinted (and partially re-dialogued)from the 2-year-old Avengers #12.1, well, the stench of ripoff becomes ever stronger. Marvel should be ashamed for foisting this half-baked "event" on us.

    [And BTW--spoiler alert--couldn't Hank Pym have used that failsafe before Ultron killed billions in Annihilation Conquest? Thyat sort of made the Age Of Ultron carnage look tame by comparison. I'm just saying...]

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    1. It really does seem as if whatever this series was originally meant to be, what resulted isn't it; when Marvel brings out preview books, you can't assume they really are showing us coming attractions. Whatever, for example, happens to those Chinese wonder twins from some overpriced 'special' a couple of years back?

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  3. I've actually enjoyed the issue far more than I expected. While it's not very good (still better than the horrid Flashpoint or even Siege and Fear Itself), i'm curious about the consequences of the story.
    it's what follows that's going to be truly interesting.

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    1. Very possible, Bruno, but ten issues ... this story should be memorable in and of itself, not simply as a stepping stone to more 'events'.

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  4. pym 3 ultron 0 or has pym won more

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    1. More, surely? They've been at it since the Sixties!

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  5. Glad I avoided this mega-event, and sorry you had to wade in it! Pretty looking art though...

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  6. " It's like a free sampler, but for 'free' read '$3.99'."

    Heh :)

    I'm enjoying your most recent reviews even more than usual. Perhaps that's because - black hearted cur that I am - you're expressing an untypical degree - for this blog - of frustration. Since I share your feelings, and since I'm not blog-venting at the moment, I'm finding TooDangerous thoroughly therapeutic. Is DC obsessed with blood rather than virtue? Is Age Of Ultron dumb and exloitative? Are the last issues of the Legion a perplexing mess?

    Yes, yes and yes. Thanks for saying so in the clear and fair way you have.

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  7. ps; If only I could remember that "exploitative" has a "p" in it ... My apologies.

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    1. Thanks for the kind words, Colin. It hasn't been a vintage week - but I've lots of comics still to read. Surely Vibe won't let me down ... and I got Superman: Secret Identity for my birthday!

      I'm missing Too Busy Thinking About My Comics being updated, but there's so much great reading there already. (If anyone reading this hasn't tried Colin's writings, a great entry or four to sample would be those concerning Henry Pym, accessible via the index on the right hand side at http://toobusythinkingboutcomics.blogspot.co.uk/. )

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  8. "Surely Vibe won't let me down..."

    Of course not ....

    "I'm missing Too Busy Thinking About My Comics being updated, but there's so much great reading there already."

    I couldn't agree more with the second half of this sentence!

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