It’s the end of the world as we know it and after the reveal of overlord Vision in the last issue’s finale, the world’s remaining heroes must come together to try and find Ultron in an event about Ultron.
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Bryan Hitch
• The impossible has happened!
• The Earth has been taken by Ultron…what few super hero survivors there are try desperately to stay alive.
• And it is Luke Cage who discovers the secret behind Ultron’s victory over all of mankind.
• A secret that will have fans of Marvel comics arguing for years to come!
Look, I don’t hate events. I’ve actually enjoyed most of the ones Marvel has put out over the last, what, six or so years? And I enjoyed Bendis’ writing in most of them. He brings interesting core concepts like “what if those you once fought with are now your enemy?”, “what if you couldn’t trust those you thought you could?” and “what if the bad guys ruled the world?” and most of the time he follows through with interesting characters, genuinely great action and lasting impact on the world they take place in. Which makes me wonder just what happened here. Brian Michael Bendis has this weird internet infamy where no matter how good he is on a book, he can just get ripped to shreds by certain people, but every once and while I’ll look at a book of his and I can finally see where they’re coming from.
Book Four of “Age Of Ultron” opens where Book Three closed, with Luke Cage realising that his attempt to face Ultron by offering to sell him an Avenger has gone tits up when he finds the Vision in Ultron’s place. And maybe this has nothing to do with the book, but reading Vision as G-Man from Half-Life 2 did actually make those two pages better. Then Vision reveals that Ultron isn’t even in the present. This is an event about Ultron taking over the world and he’s in the future somehwere? Okay? We actually start to get what might be good action series of She-Hulk attempting to storm Vision’s castle with Luke Cage attempting to flee from some Ultronbots.
Until we don’t. It’s just shot dead before it can even get going, literally, and leaves us with the rest of the book to follow a bunch of characters that barely get anything to do but walk to the Savage Land for… some reason.
Decompression isn’t an inherent problem in modern comics. Just because a comic from fifty or sixty years ago could fit three issues worth of story in a dozen pages doesn’t lessen the quality of a modern comic. Or, at least, that’s what I thought until I read four issues of decimated Manhattan skylines. And this issue isn’t much better. The last three issues, while bland and generally uninteresting, at least served to bring the reader into a devastated world and introduce those few left in it trying to make things right. All this issue does is follow three different groups groups as they make their way across the world over the course of eight days (which, thankfully is only shown in a one-page transition), but once they’re there they just stand around talking about what to do next. Which is exactly what they were doing before they left!
While Bendis might be crafting one of the most emotionally void stories of his career, Bryan Hitch is at least doing what he does best. Making cities look good after they’ve been destroyed. But while his art isn’t bad, by any stretch of the imagination, but there’s only so many double page spreads of a destroyed New York I can handle before I want to watch a Roland Emerich film instead. And I think that’s where the main problem with this book comes from. The story is just go-nowhere and only seems to serve for massive destruction and pointless character deaths.
We get three main character deaths this issue and each one somehow manages to get more and more awkwardly handled. One, right off the bat, seems like Bendis just got bored and couldn’t decide where the character should go. The second is drawn so awkwardly that I honestly didn’t realise it was a death scene until my third read-through. And the final is one of the most uncomfortably written off-panel death’s I’ve ever read in a comic. And that’s all that happens this issue. We get three deaths and people walking to the Savage Land and another supposedly rousing last page of the heroes going to “get” Ultron. Because we’re four issues in and they don’t even know where he is. Is that secret from the soliciation? That we’re reading a book called “Age Of Ultron” and the guy can’t even be bothered to show up? Because that’s less of a secret and more the height of laziness.
At least Captain America stood up this issue.
Final Verdict: 2.9 – Pass this up until you can read it collected and maybe then it won’t feel like such a waste of time.
