You thought I was done with the Age of Ultron? No. If Marvel keeps putting this stuff, I'll continue to talk about it. What are we talking about today? The recently concluded 4 issue Secret Wars tie-in mini-series Age of Ultron VS. Marvel Zombies.
First things first: I am not going to try & explain what is going in the current Secret Wars to you all. If you wanna know: look elsewhere. For our purposes: There is a planet called Battleworld on this planet there are various "countries" that are pretty much all based off of previous comics. If this sounds like what DC did during Convergence? It is but Marvel has done a whole lot better.
In Battleworld's southern hemisphere there are two countries that border each other: The Deadlands, where the Marvel Zombies reside & Perfection, the land of Ultron. What does Perfection have to do with Age of Ultron? ALMOST NOTHING AT ALL!
The "Age of Ultron" in the title is only there to help sell the book. I guess Battleworld: Robots VS. Zombies doesn't work as a title. But then the two groups don't really face off against each other. In fact they team up together in the book to fight a third group that broke off from the Ultron group which is lead by Wonder Man, The Vision & Jim Hammond, the original Human Torch from the 1940's. I am not going to give an issue by issue break down of the series because: A. I don't feel like it & B. It's not that great of a story.
It's an ok mini-series with an kind of cool premise. I'd say it's mid range of the tie-in books I have read as part of the current Secret Wars. If you are looking for a book involving the Marvel Zombies, I would check out their self titled series. It's pretty good. I wasn't planning on reading it but I picked up issue 1 & liked it enough to read the rest of the series.
If the series is not that great, why am I talking about? They do one thing that the original series did not do & it's a major thing. At least for me. It's something I kept on bringing up in my original review of Age of Ultron. Age of Ultron VS. Marvel Zombies explains how & why the land of Perfection exists. In Issue 1, on Pages 8-14.
7 Pages of a 21 page (minus ads) book! That's a third of the book!
Now, 4 of those pages are splash pages but that is a lot more pages then the original series ever got to explaining why their "age" exists. I am all for not having every little detail explained to me in a comic BUT there are somethings that need to be explained so I buy into your story. Age of Ultron had an inconsistent timeline, at least to my reading of the book. I was never really sure when the Age started, or how long it had been going on. The altered timeline that Wolverine created when he went mucking around by ignoring the butterfly effect has a more consistent timeline then the "original" timeline we were presented. They can easily do this. They relate it to the reader in a text box, a few line of dialogue between characters. Something. BUT NO! I got nothing. A big old steaming pile of nothing!
Here in Age of Ultron VS. Marvel Zombies I get a 7 page flashback to how Ultron set up his land known as Perfection. How did he do that? Shortly after, Ultron is created & what does he do? Kill Hank Pym! This is another thing this mini-series does that the original didn't: It tells us if Hank Pym is dead or not.
Further on in the flashback, after updating himself a bit Ultron's lead Master of Evil straight up murder most of the The Avengers which then leads to an Ultron which was a combined version of updates 5 & 6 to go about killing all the rest of those pesky Super heroes with the help of his Ultron Drones. Then in a text box, it says that 14 months later he created "Perfection". You are to read that as "All none robotic live has been killed". In 7 pages, one of my biggest problems with the original series has been explained & is further elaborated in a short 13 word text box. Also in those 7 pages another problem I had with the series was explained away in 1 panel.
Now would the original series be saved by explaining away these two problems? NO! There are tons of other things wrong with it. But they would have two less things that were wrong with it!
Is Age of Ultron VS. Marvel Zombie on the whole better then Age of Ultron? Yes. Neither are all that great, they both have good points & have a number of problems with them. This mini-series continues the theme of "anything called Age of Ultron will be better the series that originally bared that name."
And with that said we bid adieu to the Age of Ultron for now because I know we'll be back sometime. Until then: Stay Jazzy everybody!
- Brian
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