Age of Ultron #7 – Review

By: Brian Michael Bendis (Writer), Brandon Peterson, Carlos Pacheco (Artist/Penciler), Paul Mounts, Jose Villarrubia (Color Artists), Roger Martinez (Inker), VC’s Cory Petit (Letterer)

Review: Regular WCBR readers will know that I’ve been a staunch supporter of Age Of Ultron. Amidst the general criticisms that it’s been sluggishly paced or too low on action and characterisation, I’ve instead found it to be a well-plotted and atmospheric success that’s offered a welcome change in tone to the more overt histrionics of other Marvel event books. It’s been bleak but beautiful, the hypothetical death rattle of the Marvel Universe. But everything that’s occurred in those first six issues has really just been a set-up; a teaser playing up the eventual reveal of what happens when the past is definitively altered in a final act of desperation by the heroes of the present. With Ultron retroactively defeated, what exciting new world has Bendis created for us? If the Rabbit never existed, what now rests in the Magician’s hat? Well, it’s just the Magician’s hand. And he’s giving you the finger.

Age of Ultron #6 Review

By: Brian Michael Bendis (Writer), Brandon Peterson, Carlos Pacheco (Artist/Penciler), Roger Martinez (Inker), Paul Mounts, Jose Villarrubia (Colorist), VC’s Cory Petit (Letterer)

The Review: If you’ve read every issue of Age of Ultron up to this point you’ve probably been in one of two camps. You may have been growing increasingly impatient with Bendis’ glacial pacing, begrudgingly putting down your $3.99 week after week hoping each time that this will be issue to get things moving. Alternatively you’ve enjoyed it every step of the way, have withstood the downbeat and malevolent mood and savoured a Marvel event book that’s employed more substance than style. Either way it’s been a bumpy, expensive ride with few signs pointing to how, if at all, its outcome will impact on the wider Marvel Universe. Age of Ultron #6 signals the beginning of the end of this journey, and it might just have managed to keep everyone happy into the bargain.

It covers quite a lot of ground. Ostensibly it’s the natural progression from last month’s cliffhanger; Nick Fury and a handful of the more powerful Avengers head into the future to confront Ultron while Wolverine goes into the past to kill Hank Pym (thereby circumventing the whole Ultron problem in the first place). Admirably, this issue really jumps into both storylines head first and there’s immediate outcomes presented on each front. And when I say outcomes…I mean deaths.

You could probably have guessed that Fury’s camp would suffer the most casualties. The dude almost drops his team straight into the meat grinder after all as they move from the Savage Land direct to New York (even time-travelling genocidal robots want a piece of the Big Apple it seems).  Now a gleaming technopolis devoid of human life, the city offers nothing but an ambush from thousands of flying Ultron heads and the Avengers are pretty much sitting ducks. They are, after all, just drifting in the wind thanks to Storm’s weather powers, and that can’t allow for much manoeuvrability. They get slapped around some and a major character literally loses his head – we may see a few Avengers captured and brought before a gloating Ultron before the series is up, but otherwise it looks like this particular plan has gone wronger than corduroy.