By Brian Michael Bendis, Mark Waid, Bryan Hitch, Brandon Peterson, Carlos Pacheco & others (Marvel/Panini UK)
ISBN: 978-1-84653-542-0
Blockbuster crossovers are an intrinsic part of the comics business these days and before us doddery older fans can even catch our collective breath here’s the next big change (actually the second phase of the MarvelNOW! root and branch reboot), with attention focused on the Avengers as the launch of the next movie looms before us.
From March to June 2013 a massive, time-bending Armageddon extravaganza revealed the ultimate triumph of Ultron – the insidious and genocidal artificial intelligence originally invented by troubled tinkerer Henry Pym (AKA Ant-Man, Giant Man, Goliath, Yellowjacket, Dr. Pym, The Wasp, et al), and the stupefying saga was augmented by more than a dozen sidebar stories occurring in Fantastic Four, Superior Spider-Man, Ultron #1AU, Wolverine and the X-Men, Avengers Assemble Uncanny Avengers and Fearless Defenders…
This impressively bombastic, streamlined and rocket-paced epic collects the core 10-part miniseries Age of Ultron and also includes as thematic epilogue Age of Ultron #10AI, with the drama beginning on a recently devastated Earth with human scum bartering lives and dignity amidst the ruins.
Hawkeye is on a solo mission to rescue a fellow superhero captured by barbaric, debased survivors of some apocalyptic attack which overnight blasted civilisation back to the Stone Age.
After freeing the barely-living Spider-Man from the dregs, the archer learns that the wall-crawler had been intended for trade with the new rulers of the world – legions of soulless, silently hovering, ever-vigilant Ultron Sentinels…
Scripted by Brian Michael Bendis, chapters #1-5 are illustrated by Bryan Hitch and Pauls Neary and Mounts and detail how the last Avengers and other metahumans – Captain America, Iron Man, Emma Frost, She-Hulk, Luke Cage, Storm, Invisible Woman & Wolverine amongst others – link up with similar pockets of superhuman resistance, such as Moon Knight and the Black Widow in San Francisco and Black Panther, Taskmaster and Red Hulk in Chicago, to discover just how Ultron achieved his shocking ultimate victory…
By sacrificing two comrades the assemblage determine that the attack came from the future via a contemporary proxy and, thanks to the intercession of a long-forgotten ally, the bulk of the team head off into tomorrow via Dr. Doom‘s time machine to crush the malign machine-monster forever.
Wolverine however has another idea, and despite being overruled by the majority and followed by Invisible Woman, travels into the recent past to assassinate Pym before he built the Artificial Oedipal Atrocity…
Issues #6-9 (with art from Brandon Peterson, Carlos Pacheco & Roger Martinez) reveals the horrific implications of Wolverine’s time-busting red-handed revisionism when he and Sue Richards return to find a world in even more horrifying condition.
With Pym gone the Skrull-Kree war engulfed Earth and in the savage aftermath 6th century sorceress Morgana Le Fey and Dr. Doom united to decimate the survivors…
After seeing what the time-shift had done to old friends such as Tony Stark, Charles Xavier, Cyclops, The Thing, Doctor Strange, Star-Lord, The Hulk and even himself, Wolverine knows he has to back and undo Pym’s fate…
And in a furious future the Avengers Task force is losing the battle against Ultron’s perfect, mechanised human-free society…
It all comes together in the shock and surprise-stuffed tenth chapter (illustrated by Alex Maleev, Hitch, Butch Guice, Peterson, Pacheco, Roger Bonet, Tom Palmer, David Marquez & Joe Quesada) as the much-travelled mutant meets a most unexpected obstacle and Pym himself devises the solution to save humanity and the much-abused time-line.
It’s almost enough: however the chronal catastrophes have had a disastrous “Butterfly Effect†on the fabric of reality and beings from beyond the multiverse (and indeed originally from another publishing company) are drawn into events yet to unfold in the months to come…
The collection concludes with a charming and clever epilogue issue reviewing and revising the origin of Hank Pym – Man of Many Names and Sizes – in ‘It Was Not a Wonderful Life’ (written by Mark Waid, illustrated by Andre Lima Araújo & Frank D’Armata), adroitly setting the scene for forthcoming series Avengers A.I.
With covers by Hitch, Neary & Mounts, Peterson, Sara Pichelli & Marte Gracia plus 30 variants by J. Scott Campbell, Mike Deodato Jr., Rock-He Kim, Marko Djurdjevic, Ed McGuiness, Skottie Young, Jung-Geun Yoan, In-Hyuk Lee, Adi Granov, Pacheco, Francis Leinil Francis Yu, Peterson, Jorge Molina, Joe Quesada, Mark Brooks, Salvador Larroca & Paola Rivera, this a spectacularly visual treat for fans of the time-buster genre which also reinforces Marvel’s game plan to make the stories more accessible to casual readers and non-comicbook fans.
Naturally the book also includes the now-standard added extras provided by many AR icon sections (Marvel Augmented Reality App) which are your gateway to story bonuses once you download the free code from marvel.com onto your smart-phone or Android-enabled tablet.
™ & © 2013 Marvel & Subs. Licensed by Marvel Characters B.V. through Panini S.p.A. All rights reserved. A British Edition published by Panini Publishing, a division of Panini UK, Ltd.