Comic Books

Is It Good? Age of Ultron #6 Review

April 17, 2013

Too little too late. Better late than never. Or as George Eliot put it,

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

As I read Age of Ultron #6 these thoughts flooded my mind. Could a huge event comic completely fail for nearly five issues and somehow pull itself out of the bag? Could a new artist who replaced the inconsistent work of Bryan Hitch fix things? Above all else, is it good?

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Age of Ultron #6 (of 10) (Marvel Comics)

To recap the first five issues is pretty damn easy because not a lot happened. Spider-Man woke up to a world being taken over by Ultron, Hawkeye saved him by using extreme violence, and the heroes are off to the Savage Land to meet up with Nick Fury. The plan is to go into the future and stop Ultron. A few heroes go and a few stay back to defend the secret base. Once gone Wolverine decides to go back in time to kill Hank Pym before he ever creates Ultron. This issue opens in the future and in the past.

How to NOT get girls 101.

Brian Bendis is doing something clever here, but it’s hard to see at face value. What if we could go back in time and into the future to accomplish the same goal. What if only one works? Time travel is nothing new, but from my understanding this is a slightly new spin on the concept.

As Wolverine sets out to kill Pym Invisible Woman rears her head, but not to stop him, which is odd. No, she’s just unsure. Kind of a weird choice considering you’re no longer helping the ones going into the future. As they leave the Fury cave Fury himself shows up to locate the base he has yet to create. They steal his flying car. I only tell you this because I have a suspicion stealing the car may have resounding effects. Or not, but it’d be a funny time change thing. What if stranding him there ends up getting him killed by dinosaurs!?

So Tony influences you… therefore it’s Tony who created Ultron! We need to go back again to kill Tony Stark!

Before Wolverine can kill Pym we get a nice scene with Pym himself going over the architecture of Dragon Man. This is actually the strongest aspect of the story. Pym doesn’t get much focus these days and it’s cool to overhear his thoughts. Bendis does a good job capturing the innocence of a scientist who only wants to do good.

If he added “Muahhaha” I’m pretty sure this would be a villainous line.

The strength of the issue resides in the cross cutting between past and future that takes place in the last third of the issue. This is a good time to point out there are two artists at work here. Carlos Pacheco is in charge of the past and Brandon Peterson is in charge of, well it’s listed as present, but that has to be a typo so I’m going to assume he’s doing future.

Their styles blend nicely and they aren’t too different from each other. This helps seamlessly intertwine the cross cutting. Essentially Bendis does this to show us how both plans work out at the same time. You can get into the whole “who was right” debate as it takes place, but it also adds some gravitas to the successful plan since one of these plans fails miserably.

Is Cap horribly frightened or was this just a mistake by the artist. Guy is shitting bricks here.

7.5

Strong art from both dudes
A good convo from Pym but even better pacing

6 issues into this series and I still don’t know what it is

The quote from Eliot at the beginning is a perfect explanation for how this series has turned out. I’m about as surprised as you are. The art is much more solid and the actual purpose of this series is starting to take root. It’s just too bad it took 6 issues out of 10 to get this far. The identity of the series is still not clear, but things are starting to make sense. I’m hoping the final four issues continue the upward rise that this issue seems to promise.