As the old saying goes, you shouldn’t judge a book by it’s cover. This completely applies to the latest issue of ‘Age of Ultron’. The cover of issue five depicts a whole lot of action going on, but once you turn the page, you actually get very little of what you see on the outside. However, that definitely doesn’t mean that there wasn’t some good stuff inside.
When we last left off in issue four, Luke Cage and She-Hulk had sacrificed themselves in order to get their teammates the information that they needed to take down Ultron. Before meeting their demises, the pair discovered that the maniacal sentient robot was operating from the future by using the Vision as a conduit. After making it to the Savage Land to rendezvous with the remaining heroes, Cage conveyed this information to Emma Frost telepathically before passing away.
Now that they’re armed with that information and a plan courtesy of Nick Fury, the group is off to set the plan into motion. They travel through the Savage Land to get to another one of the former S.H.I.E.L.D. director’s secret bunkers containing the proper apparatus to travel through the time stream in order to deal with Ultron once and for all. However, when they find the bunker, they’re met with a little thing standing in their way.
As I said in the introduction, there isn’t that much action in this issue. Though I may have made it sound that way in the previous paragraph, essentially we got an issue full of dialogue. It’s the calm before the storm. Once again, we’re in that area where we’re seeing the stage get set for the next act of the story. And because of the important information revealed in this issue, I’d go ahead and say that this might be one of the most important issues in the series so far.
One reason that I found this book to be important is that we finally get a glimpse of what happened to Hank Pym. In my last review, I was saying that the creator of Ultron has not been seen yet. Now, for the first time since the series began, we got to see the founding Avenger in action. Sure, it was in a flashback prior to Ultron’s takeover, but that’s the first step to finding out what happened to him, which is one of the biggest things that I’m curious to find out more about.
Then, as the team readies their plan of attack, I enjoyed the division among the group. This wasn’t a ‘Civil War’ level divide or anything, but there’s certainly tension amongst the group in that little bunker. Things are going to explode somewhere down the line because of this and I’ll be anxiously waiting for it to happen. In any universe, time travel is dangerous. Even the slightest change can affect human history, so considering what these guys want to do, I anticipate big changes coming.
I love a good time travel story. ‘Back to the Future’ and ‘Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure’ are some of my favorite movies. So far, the groundwork has been laid here in ‘Age of Ultron’ for us to get a pretty good time travel story by the time everything is said and done. I just hope that’s the way things work out because we’re already halfway through the event and we haven’t gotten to the meat of the story yet. What I’m really hoping is that we’ve been given enough time to really get a satisfying taste. I believe in Brian Michael Bendis and I know that he can give us that, so we just have to wait and see if he does it with this series.
Final Score:
AGE OF ULTRON #5
Written by Brian Michael Bendis
Art by Bryan Hitch, Paul Neary, & Paul Mounts
