By Brian Michael Bendis & Frank Cho (Marvel)
ISBN: 978-0-7851-2368-2
The Patriot Act changed America as much as the destruction of the World Trade Towers, and it’s fair to say that popular arts grow from the social climate as much as the target audience.
In post 9-11 America, creators and consumers now think different thoughts in different ways. Thus the company that first challenged the middle-class suburban status quo of the comic industry in the late 1960s made Homeland Security and the exigencies of safety and liberty the themes of a major publishing event in 2006.
After a TV reality show starring superheroes The New Warriors went hideously wrong and resulted in the deaths of hundreds in Stamford, Connecticut, popular opinion turned massively against masked crusaders.
The Federal government rushed through a scheme to licence, train and regulate all metahumans but the plan split the superhero community and a terrified and indignant merely mortal populace quivered as a significant faction of their former defenders, led by the ultimate icon of Liberty, Captain America, refused to surrender their autonomy and anonymity to the bureaucratic vicissitudes of the Superhuman Registration Act.
The Avengers and Fantastic Four, bedrock teams of the Marvel Universe, fragmented in scenes reminiscent of America’s War Between the States, with “brother pitted against brotherâ€. As the conflict escalated it became clear to all involved that the increasingly bitter fighting was for souls as much as lives.
Both sides battled for love of Country and Constitution and both sides knew they were right…
The Ultron Initiative, re-presenting the first half-dozen issues of Mighty Avengers (volume 1, May 2007-February 2008) by Brian Michael Bendis & Frank Cho, is a gloriously wry and raunchy rollercoaster ride blending blockbuster action with cocky optimism and often outrageous humour which only serves to intensify the shocks and horror of a truly terrifying scenario starring Marvel’s ultimate mechanoid monster.
Following the divisive and brutal Civil War, staunch advocate of the SRA Tony Stark constituted a new Government-approved, S.H.I.E.L.D.-backed team of Avengers to take care of business whilst he worked on his Fifty States Initiative idea.
The objective was to eventually field squads of trained and licensed superheroes in every State of the Union, but first he had to restore public confidence…
The initial and so-sophisticated story-arc begins as he recalls recruiting Ms. Marvel, Black Widow, Wonder Man, the Wasp, Sentry and first-timer Ares, God of War just in time to tackle an invasion of monsters led by the Mole Man. Just as the new team send them packing Iron Man suddenly succumbs to a body-and-armour warping assault that apparently absorbs Stark and leaves in his place a gleaming naked metalloid reproduction of Janet Van Dyne…
Ultron was originally created by size-changing erratic genius Henry Pym AKA Ant-Man before – in a Fights ‘n’ Tights riff on the classical Oedipus myth – the manic mechanoid evolved, hating his “father†and desiring his “motherâ€.
Having transferred that hatred to the Avengers, here the metal maniac has usurped his mum’s form, parading around naked in a shiny metallic semblance of the Wasp, whilst boasting of collaterally wrecking the Mole Man’s kingdom in “her†campaign to destroy the true foe.
The new Ultron easily overmatches even the most mighty Avenger and Jan is compelled to call in her estranged ex-husband to try and deal with the mess he originally created. Everybody is praying that somewhere within the gleaming murderous form Tony Stark still lives…
In Avengers Initiative training facility Camp Hammond, Pym and new girlfriend Tigra are enjoying some downtime when the call comes, and he is hustled off under close arrest by S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel just as, above New York City, Ultron hacks herself into the spy agency’s networks and shuts down all their operations. With Black Widow forced to take manual command of the organisation – everybody in earshot at least – the team begins a fresh if doomed attack only to receive a glimmer of hope in the form of an unhackable, failsafe, low-tech pre-programmed Iron Man suit with an inbuilt contingency plan…
Jan-tron meanwhile has re-tasked orbiting satellites to scourge the Earth of organic life and is in the process of advertising it to terrified TV-watching humanity when Pym arrives.
Notoriously unstable, he knows the other heroes don’t trust him – he barely trusts himself – and as Wonder Man and Sentry race to destroy the chain of orbital death dealers he struggles to find a way to back door his way into his ferociously hyper-evolved invention. In retaliation, Jan-tron goes on the attack, commandeering a brigade of spare Iron Man Armours to engage the team whilst she seemingly butchers Sentry’s wife Lindy…
However with the Avengers proving more difficult to stop than calculated and the satellite ring disabled, the A.I. is forced to resort to the uninspired tactic of taking over Earth’s nuclear stockpiles even as Ares and Pym devise a way to destroy Jan-tron.
The only catch is that they have to activate it from inside her primary body – and even if it works there’s no guarantee that Stark’s physiology will survive the process…
With covers-&-variants by Cho and Francis Leinil Yu and stunning design sketches by the former included, this is a slick, sly and sublimely entertaining all-action rollercoaster romp which deliciously sets the scene for many compelling and far darker sagas to come, but also reads astounding well on its own merits.
Definitely one for inveterate thrill-chasers everywhere.
© 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.