I hate to say it, but now that ‘Age of Ultron’ is in it’s final issues, I’m pretty disappointed. Those of you who have been following my reviews know that I am fond of Brian Michael Bendis, but once I reassessed this crossover event after reading this issue, I came to the realization that this didn’t really turn out to be the epic battle that I was expecting. Sure, there will be life and universe changing ramifications, but as a whole so far, it’s been kind of a bust.

In the last issue, while in the new future created by the assassination of Hank Pym, Wolverine and Sue Richards discovered that magic emerged as being more powerful than science, resulting in Morgana Le Fey engaging in a massive war with Tony Stark, his arsenal of Starkguard Carriers, and the Defenders. Amidst Tony Stark, Charles Xavier, and the rest of the heroes trying to figure out why Sue and Logan were there, Morgana launched an attack that caused two carriers to crash into each other and destroy the city and it’s inhabitants below.

Now, Wolverine is the last man standing and he’s determined to make things right. However, a dying Tony Stark warns his ally against more time travel and the repercussions that could arise from the abuse of the timeline. Going against Iron Man’s last wishes, Logan travels back to a familiar scene for an issue of déjà vu.

This whole issue felt like a crazy ‘What If?’ book where Wolverine meets himself. Through the whole ordeal, Pym is just sitting there watching the back and forth between first appearance Wolverine and ‘Age of Ultron’ Wolverine both in awe and in confusion, very much like the reader. It would all be pretty funny if this weren’t actually happening in Marvel’s mainstream continuity.

There’s only one proper issue left in this series, plus an epilogue, and we only really got to see Ultron legitimately once and it was not on the battlefield against the Avengers. At first I was in favor of the shorter event with fewer tie-ins, but after seeing it executed, the story didn’t really touch on enough things to leave the reader satisfied. Now that I’m looking back, it definitely seems like one or two issues in the run, including this one, were fillers. They were just going through the motions and they weren’t giving us enough time to really become invested in the events that were unfolding. By the looks of things, we won’t even get to find out how Ultron took over the world or what happened to Nick Fury’s mission into the future or why the Defenders came to be Earth’s Mightiest Heroes instead of the Avengers. There were a lot of interesting aspects within this story that just didn’t have enough time to be explored and that’s a huge shame because this story had such potential to be something epic. Now, it’s sort of devolved into a Wolverine story featuring a few other key players here and there, rather than encompassing the whole Marvel Universe. Normally, that would be perfectly fine, but this story was built up to be game-changing for all of Marvel and it doesn’t really seem to be going in that direction anymore.

There is a chance that my mind could be changed and Bendis pulls out something completely awesome and surprising when the next issue rolls out, but as of right now, I’m not totally on board with ‘Age of Ultron’ anymore. I’m more so looking forward to ‘Infinity’ more than anything right now because I really feel like that will be the most important Marvel crossover of the year and maybe even of the last few years.

Final Score:

 

 

AGE OF ULTRON #9

Written by Brian Michael Bendis

Art by Brandon Peterson, Paul Mounts, Carlos Pacheo, Roger Bonet, & Jose Villarrubia

Cover by Carlos Pacheo & Jose Villarrubia