When we last left Luke Cage and She-Hulk in ‘Age of Ultron’ #3, they were in the process of infiltrating Ultron’s stronghold by claiming that the former Power Man was there to sell his teammate. They had the intention of getting some informationl for the remaining heroes so that they would have a better idea of what they were up against. After they discovered that it was their old friend Vision in the fortress instead of Ultron, they got the information that they were looking for, but at a price.
In this new issue, while Cage and She-Hulk were dealing with Vision and the Ultron drones while the remaining heroes all made their way to the Savage Land in search of refuge from the ever-watchful eye of Ultron. Prior to departing on their mission, the two Avengers were meant to rendezvous with the rest of the team in Antarctica in the land ruled by Ka-zar, the lord of the Savage Land, with the hopes that they could regroup and formulate a concrete battle plan in peace. Luckily for the crew from New York, they weren’t the only members of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes to think of this course of action.
First of all, wow. Just wow. I’m still not over the Vision being tied into Ultron’s schemes. This hits super close to home for the Avengers since he was one of they’re good friends and now he’s being used as a tool for world domination by Ultron. And just to be clear here, this is the original Vision that recently left the team to find himself after a hard-fought battle and not the one who perished in ‘Avengers: Children’s Crusade’. If it were Jonas/the second Vision, things might be a bit more complicated than they already are.
Next, I’ve noticed that Brian Michael Bendis really isn’t pulling any punches with this series. There’s so much death and destruction and it’s all right before our eyes thanks to Bryan Hitch’s gruesome, but awesome, artwork. But it’s all so great! For instance, in this issue, we find out just how “unbreakable” unbreakable is. Bendis is pushing these heroes to limits that I’ve never even imagined before. There’s still a lot that he could play with before the end of the story, so I’m curious to see how much further he pushes these characters.
Finally, one thing that keeps the readers wondering throughout this issue was the fact that we still don’t know what happened to Hank Pym, the creator of Ultron. Hawkeye isn’t shy about expressing his feelings about his teammate and his bad decision of creating one of their greatest foes, but not one of them has even mentioned what became of him. They took a moment to remember their fallen numbers, but Hank’s wasn’t a name that they brought up. Sure, there were a lot of names that they didn’t mention, but could this mean that Pym is still out there somewhere? Clint Barton wouldn’t speak unkind words about the dearly departed would he? I’m hoping to get the answers to these questions at some point since the man with a million code names is a fairly important part of all this.
Now that all the remaining Avengers are back together again and they have a plan, it will be very excited to see how this plan plays out. What they’ve got is a tall order on their plate, but they’re the Earth’s last hope, so they must succeed.
Final Score:
AGE OF ULTRON #4
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Bryan Hitch, Paul Neary, & Paul Mounts
