I try to avoid spoilers, I really do - but sometimes they sneak up on you.
So it was with some disgust a couple of months ago when I saw a blurb revealing one of the surprising events that take place at the end of Age of Ultron.
It's difficult enough for entertainment vehicles to surprise us, whether it be comics, movies, TV or what have you - but it's almost impossible when there are armies of writers who delight in spilling the beans about upcoming events.
Of course, the companies are just as bad, releasing information to the news media ahead of time to maximize news coverage of events.
This issue offers the wrap-up to the time-spanning storyline about the conquest of Earth by the robot Ultron, and the final pages feature a surprise character. If I had not known about it, my jaw would have dropped.
But since it was spoiled already, my reaction was a subdued, "Cool."
This series has been a bit erratic all along - did we ever find out what happened to the team of heroes who went into the future? Why do we take a look into the Ultimate Universe? Didn't that big bad already appear there in a different guise?
But the wrap-up is satisfying, if a bit on the "what just happened again" side of things.
The art is terrific, using a small army of artists, including Alex Maleev, Bryan Hitch, Butch Guice, Brandon Peterson, Carlos Pacheco and Joe Quesada (among others), and the result is (mostly) terrific.
It remains to be seen how the series affects the Marvel universe proper (if at all), but it's been a (mostly) fun series.
I just wish it had been allowed a few more surprises.
Grade: B+
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2 comments:
My wife often yells me at me when I watch a bad movie for the second time. "You said this movie is awful. Why are you watching it again?" I answer, "Because I can't believe it's this bad."
So goes Age of Ultron. Maybe someone out there likes it, but I was terribly disappointed. Perhaps the worst offense (I'm not a Hank Pym fan per se, so I know the Pym fans were mad about that nonsense) was the "We're going to change artists in the middle of the story because it's part of the plot." This is a lie. Hitch is wonderful, but slow. The fact that, after 36 years of funny book reading, I bought this explanation at first should force me to have my geek credentials revoked.
Infinity looks much better, and in Jonathan Hickman I trust. I want to write more text about how the "good" comics in my pull list are making the "bad" comics even worse, but I'm too angry now....
B.
B, I agree that "Age" was disappointing - yet another time-travel reboot series - and it is a shame that Hitch didn't draw the whole series. Like you, I'm dubious about the claim that they "planned it that way," but at least they did have good artists covering the non-Hitch parts.
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