Age of Ultron #1 Review

By: Brian Michael Bendis (Writer), Bryan Hitch (Penciler), Paul Neary (Inker), Paul Mounts (Colorist), VC’s Cory Petit (Letterer)

The Review: Bleak: that is my one-word review of Age of Ultron’s opening salvo. Not in terms of quality, but certainly in terms of tone. Sure, from the hype and the previews I knew it wasn’t going to be a Short Circuit-style Rom-Com but I didn’t know it would get so dark so fast. By the end of the issue some or all of your favourite Marvel heroes are either beaten, broken or dead, and if not they’ve apparently been compromised to the core. Not even Squirrel Girl could magic them outta this mess.

Let me first make the case that I doubt the horror and dread of the story could have been captured with anywhere near the same levels of precision by anyone other than Bryan Hitch. It’s career-defining work. There are moments of shocking violence among landscapes wrought with devastation and ruin which are portrayed with such unflinching clarity that it’s almost too big an ask to reconcile this book with the Marvel Universe proper;  if you squint, you could easily mistake this for a long-lost first draft of Ultimates 3.