Oh… Age of Ultron, what are we doing to do with you?
Welcome back to the final part of the chapter to my review of the “Age of Ultron” comic. It’s been a long time coming but we made it. Not as originally planned but we are here. The end of an Age.
Issue 10
The cover: Various characters we have not seen for a few issue fight a weird looking Ultron. Not sure what it is about this cover but it looks weird. I thinks it’s Ultron himself. He looks weird. Not looking the look of his body. His head looks odd but then his head has always looked weird. I've looked at the cover a dozen or more times & I'm still not sure who's head that is at the bottom.
The Short Review of the Issue: WHAT THE HELL?
Longer Review of the Issue:
We start “some Months ago” which may or may not be the “months ago” as mentioned & seen in Issue 5. We are in Hank Pym’s lab. He’s doing science stuff. A message pops on his screen telling to “follow the white rabbit”. No… He’s told open his door. He thinks it’s Janet, his wife. Might be ex-wife, depending on when this happened. But really it couldn’t have been Janet since if this was really a few months before Issue 1 had come out, Janet had been dead for awhile. So… Hank thinking it’s his dead wife playing a joke on him is a bit strange.
He open the door to find no one but a package. Down the hallway a bit is Sue Richards in Invisible mode. Hank closes the door to find a tablet computer with a note that reads “play me” on it. He presses play to find a message for himself!
*DUN DUN DUN DUUUUUNNNNNNN*
1 Question: Did they have tablet computer in the 1970’s when He most likely made that message for himself? That could be explained away as Sue put the message on the tablet. Another question: Did he have a “home video camera” to make the video?
Another thing I noticed: Video Hank looks like he’s dressed in the latest fashions of the 1980’s. And yes I’m off on yet another tangent: that’s what this comic make me do. I have spent so much time reading, re-reading, looking it over that I can’t help be question it all!
The Message basically goes like this:
“Hi Hank! It’s Hank! You don’t remember making this video & that’s because that’s how it happened to be BUT if your seeing this it means that we still got a chance to stop Ultron from doing a massive no no. We have scrwed up a lot of things so let’s not screw this one up!”
We flip the page to see reused art! I didn’t notice when the book first came & hadn’t in the few times I had looked through the issue BUT today I did. It was all because I happened to look at another related book. One that I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned before. In May 2012, for Free Comic Book Day, Marvel came out with a book, Avengers: Age of Ultron! It’s the prequel that I had forgotten about until I go to this point in my first reading of the book. There was a little over a 1 year in between books (the FCBD book & Issue 1). My forgetting of the book might because it didn’t seem all that memorable of a book (it’s still not).
I guess that’s ok since everthing you need to know about the old comic is ok with it since Marvel pretty REPRINTS 8 PAGES from the original FCBD comic as is in Issue 10. Those 8 pages are the later half of the FCBD book. The only changes in Age of Ultron #10 are a few speech & text bubbles. The rest is EXACTLY THE SAME!
What happens in both books: A group of Avengers all rush into a secret base run by the Intelligencia (a group of “super smart” super villains). They had kidnapped Spider-Woman as she was checking out something in a jungle somewhere (the earlier book doesn't say where so let's just say The Savage Lands). The thing that is found was a Space Knight (from the 80’s comic ROM Space Knight). You remember them from earlier in Age of Ultron, don't you? Of course you do! They aren't reference ANYWHERE by name but there is one vaguely Space Knight looking guy on Nick Fury's wall of photos back in Issue 2!
Back to the reprinted pages: The Bad Guy want it & didn’t want the Good Guys to have it so they kidnapped her which of course means the Good Guys are going to go to rescue her. Yeah... real smart!
We have a multi-page fight scene. The Bad Guys give up but not before finding a way to turn back on the Space Knight (some are robots, most are cyborgs). But OH NO! This Space Knight is holding a secret, It transforms & is really ULTRON! Ultron had been out in space the past few years so that wasn't that much of a stretch.
Thor decides to do something stupid by hitting Ultron in the chest with his hammer, BIG EXPLOSION happens. This is the point where the 2 comics change. In the FCBD comic, lots of destruction. Bad Guys look like they are dead & the heroes try to regroup. They think about tracking Ultron down BUT Iron Man says that pointless since “He has seen the Future” & it’s crappy. That’s where the FCBD comic ends. A year long cliff hanger!
Where it changes in Issue 10, just before Thor does the stupid thing, Iron Man gets a call from Hank. Iron Man takes the call but tries to brush him off since “He’s busy” But Hank continues to talk & is “sending” Iron Man something. Maybe it’s an E-Mail? tonystark@IMsuit.org! Hank has sent Iron Man “Highly Evolved Calculations” & Iron Man isn’t sure they’ll work but Hank says they will. Iron Man “launches the code” over Wi-Fi i guess since Iron Man never touches Ultron or get near him. Is the Iron Man suit Wi-Fi enabled? If not then how did Hank send Iron Man the stuff? All while Hank is chatting with Iron Man to do the thing, Thor hits Ultron with his hammer. BIG EXPLOSION!
And what happens? It still destroys the Intelligencia’s hideout but after the explosion, Ultron isn’t gone & he’s confused. The “kill code” as Hank calls it which “is very specific to a backdoor code portal program” that is in the “deepest recesses of his program”.
All while Ultron is confused, the Avengers attack. Ultra says that they are “adding buffering code to my infrastructure”. He wonders how they were prepared. He suspects Iron Man & his “father” Hank Pym. Thor zaps Ultron with a bolt of lightning. The fight between the Avengers & Ultron is all distraction so Hank can completely uploading the “kill code” to Ultron.
Fight! Fight! Fight!
Load! Load! Load!
Ultron starts to crackle with energy. The program loads, Ultron shuts down & once more Thor smacks Ultron with his hammer. Pieces fly everywhere!
Iron Man ask exactly what happened. Hank replies:
“We sent him what looked like an average backdoor trojan horse code, but the trick of it was — When Ultron tired to defend himself and re-code it an shut it down… It triggered a self replicating virus that was implanted in at his creation. By the time he could process what was happening… There was nothing left of him.”
Iron Man asks a very good question: Why didn’t we try this before? Hank Replied: I didn’t have it before.
Before we got into the ending. Let’s chat about the “kill code” for a bit. I'm crying all kinds of BULL SHIT on that working. That’s some “access port on the Death Star” Deus Ex Machina level of tying up a loose end that they didn't bother having in the main book. It has been clearly stated that Ultron had upgraded, updated, recreated himself dozen of times since he was created. To me it would seems rather stupid of the robot to not close up a fatal back door in his programing. WHY LEAVE IT OPEN LIKE THAT? Sure, He might of thought “no one could get into my programing that far in for that to be a problem?” If that’s so, why leave it open? WHY?
With Ultron defeated you know what? The past 9 issues & the 8 tie-in issues NEVER HAPPENED! THE AGE OF ULTRON NEVER HAPPENED! They also never told us how Ultron got from blowing up a building to taking over the whole world! Or how long it took for him to do that? Those are 2 questions I have been asking since Issue 1 & they still aren’t answered or even hinted at. Also, we never find out what happened to the Future Group! They simply drop out of the series at issue 6! But what does it matter what they did or even if they ever accomplished anything since THE AGE OF ULTRON NEVER HAPPENED! They had no need to go to the future to stop Ultron from taking over the world since he never did! Also, they say that Ultron was controlling the world from THE FUTURE! But how did he get there? He was there in the present, blew up & then waited years of time to get to the future so he could change the past? But if he did that wouldn’t that cause a time paradox?
TOO MANY QUESTIONS WITHOUT ANY ANSWERS!
Now on to the ending of the series. Wolverine & Sue fly away from somewhere (maybe Pym’s lab). They land on a roof top & say their goodbyes. Then time literally breaks.
Then we see the Earth in a black void for a panel & then it’s back out in space with the sun, moon & stars. Tony Stark, The Beast & a blonde guy (might be Captain America) are looking at a holographic monitor. They ask what happens & the answers straight from the book is “Wolverine repeatedly abused the space-time continuum” and They broke it.
The group says they’ve time traveled before this time might of been one time too many. The last 8 pages of the book are all preview bits showing some of the breaks: Galactus has crossed over to the Ultimate Universe & Angela (originally an Image Comics character) is now in the main universe.
That’s it. That’s the end.
There were 7 artist on this book. Bryan Hitch (the artist for the 1st half of the series) get credited for his reused art from the FCBD book. The Angela pages were done by Joe Quesada. The Parts with Sue, Wolverine & the breaking of time look to be by Carlos Pacheco. The other artist from the past issues (Brandon Peterson) is back.
This issue is a mismash of things. The Last 9 pages are just “ads” for other books. There is the reused 8 pages of art from a past book. That’s half of the book. There is 5 pages of the breaking of time. That's 22 pages. Most comics are that long! The amount of pages that aren't ads for other comics, reused art or breakage is 11 pages (minus all the ads). 11 pages that finish up the series but then this issue throws out the first 9 issues to tie up the plot threads from the Free Comic Book Day comics (which on sale for money under a different name).
——————
There was an epilogue book: Age of Ultron #10 A.I. which was to be a bridging point between Age of Ultron & Avengers A.I. It’s a good book. It’s written by Mark Waid & is devoted to Hank Pym. It gives you an overview of his early life & career leading up to the events of the series. I read Avengers A.I., it was an enjoyable series. Neither Avengers A.I. or this epilogue have much to do with the main series. I’d more call this issue Avengers A.I. #0 then Age of Ultron #10 A.I.
There was also a 5 issue “What If” mini series revolving around Age of Ultron vaguely. It’s also pretty good.
And that’s it. The Age is over. We can all now move on with our lives!
But what about the Movie? Or the Age of Ultron related book that’s coming out as part of this summer’s Secret Wars?
Then I guess I'm not done. *sigh* Well... you can all now move on with your lives.
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