"Age of Ultron"

            The following is a review of the Marvel Comics event “Age of Ultron” (as presented on Marvel Unlimited) and NOT a review of the Marvel Studios film “Avengers: Age of Ultron.”

            Okay, some of you may not know the comic book history of Ultron, which is NOT the same as the film history of Ultron, so I am going to give you a crash course.

            Hank Pym was a founding member of the super hero team the Avengers. He is a scientist who works specifically with shrinking/growing particles and artificial intelligence. Pym created Ultron to be a resource to better the world. But Ultron became self-aware (he can now think for himself). All of the times he came to attack, the Avengers always beat him.

            But in “Age of Ultron,” Ultron finally won. He killed a huge amount of humans in his first salvo to rid the planet of organic life. Of course, some heroes had to band together to combat him, but there are not many. The heroes travel to the Savage Land (a tropical city in Antarctica with prehistoric creatures, including dinosaurs) to find a base of operations of S.H.I.E.L.D. superspy Nick Fury. The heroes learn that Ultron has been time-travelling and his base of attack is actually coming back from the future. They discover Doctor Doom’s (the prime nemesis of the superhero team, the Fantastic Four) time platform was there and still operational. So a team forms to go to the future to stop Ultron there and attempt to find a way to stop him from conquering the present. After the group leaves, Susan Storm-Richards (the Invisible Woman of the Fantastic Four) and James Howlett/Logan (Wolverine of the X-Men) decide, however, that the best way to defeat Ultron is to travel to the past and stop Pym from ever creating Ultron. The butterfly effect is mentioned (if you don’t know what the butterfly effect is, it’s a theory that doing anything in the past during time travel, even minor things, can have a significant effect on the present/future). But upon confronting Pym in the past, Logan decides the only way to truly prevent Ultron from being created is to kill Pym before he ever creates Ultron. Upon Pym’s death, Logan and Sue return to the Savage Land and though the time platform to return to the present, to discover a world without Pym is even worse than the Age of Ultron. The Avengers disbanded after Pym’s death, and a new team, the Defender rose in their place. Sue and Logan realize they must go back to the past and prevent Logan from killing Pym and find a new way to defeat Ultron.

            Okay, I hope I didn’t give any major spoilers there in case you ever decide you want to read it. And now my previous review readers know the most important point must be addressed (and those first-timers will learn it for now and for future reviews); my score. First, though, I’m going to explain how this works: I score on three things: my own personal thoughts, accessibility, and a numeric score.

            We’re, of course, going to start with my personal thoughts. I’m going to say that I rather enjoyed it. The story interested me the whole way through, I never experienced any dull points, but I do have to say the story would have benefited for a bit more dialogue and not pages with only artwork and no spoken words, so I will have to mark down for that. Also, Marvel Unlimited did not always put the tie-in issues in the right chronological place, but this has no true impact on my score, and I didn’t find it to completely detract from the story. And sometimes, as you know, time travel does not always work out in a story. In my opinion, it was executed well. It didn’t come off to me as a gimmick like some time travel stories do as well. It wasn’t time travel just for the sake of time travel. Some of you may have read my review of “Age of Apocalypse” and will recall I said how amazing it is that one person can make a difference, just like the classic film “It’s A Wonderful Life.” I also felt that the butterfly effect was properly executed, and it felt natural to me. I thought the members of the Defenders, their code names and true identities made sense to me. They didn’t just make a team of just random popular characters, and most of them were primarily founding members of the Avengers with a few more and a few less membership (such as Captain America then being Colonel America, Cyclops being Cable, to name a few). The tie-in issues were written to my liking, and I felt they fit in nicely (but not all correctly chronological, which is the fault of the programmers of Marvel Unlimited and not the actual writers of the comics).

            Okay, moving on, let’s go to accessibility. For you newbs, I tell you how easy it is to understand the story (which is mostly reserved for Marvel comics/prose novels, of course) to those who know nothing about the characters and storylines. I think the story is very accessible. The events were not written in a way that forces the reader to know the prior storylines in the comics, and most of the characters’ backstories had no effect on this story. It is almost, but not quite, an alternate reality. The beginnings of the event were all there, and I think casual/non fans could easily pick it up, read it, and understand it. Having prior Marvel knowledge would also help, but I don’t feel it’s necessary.

            Of course, now you’ll want to know if I felt this story is a good read. I score on a scale of one to ten, one being this is stinky garbage, ten being amazingly awesome and I will talk about it nonstop to anyone who tries to talk to me for the next week. This is going to surprise you if you have been a regular reader of my blog because you’ll know I’m very hard to please, I give it a nine. It’s rare for me to give a ten (and I don’t think I’ve ever given one before) so a nine is a very high rank. There were a few complaints here and there, but I found it very enjoyable, and I honestly hope that, if you decide to read it after my high score, you’ll enjoy it too. I feel it’s worth the read.

            Well, if you’re here now, you’ve either read this whole post or just scrolled around some parts, but whatever, you are THE BEST! Your support means a lot to me, and I hope you’ll return to more of my posts. I don’t just do reviews, either, I write editorials, short stories, poetry, all kinds of things which I hope you will come to enjoy if you decide to come back. Please feel free to leave me comments, follow me on Twitter and retweet, that’d be great and really help me decide what else this blog will need, feel free to give me requests for content and I will try to fit you in, just please come back and check out my other fifty-some-odd posts I’ve done so far, and until next time, Tim Cubbin… out!