Well, it’s finally over. One of the most hyped events in Marvel’s recent history, ‘Age of Ultron’ has come to an end. And even though the issue was super-sized, we got a whole lot of nothing. Actually, that’s not true. We got something. What we got was a 10-issue long transition.

In the last issue, after realizing that he took the wrong course of action in killing Hank Pym, Wolverine (in his first appearance gear) traveled back in time to stop himself from killing the founding Avenger and Ultron creator. Instead of taking out Pym, he relays a suggestion from the alternate Tony Stark that a kill switch should be installed in Ultron so that when the sentient robot rises up to take over the world, the heroes have a way to swiftly quell the uprising.

Now, in the finale, we see the effects of this virus on Ultron as the hero known as Ant-Man (among other things) unleashes it on one of his greatest and most dangerous creations before it can take out humankind all together.

Now, the thing about this issue is that a lot of stuff actually does happen. In fact, the Marvel Universe is about to get some serious changes unlike ever before because of this crossover event. However, in looking at ‘Age of Ultron’ as a stand-alone story, there are just so many plot holes and unanswered questions on top of all the things happening not affecting the actual storyline. Going back and rereading from the beginning doesn’t even really help.

We’ve been waiting for 10 issues to get a confrontation between Ultron and the Avengers, and it finally appears in this issue (although technically it was already in ‘Avengers’ #12.1 last year), but we still have no idea how the Age of Ultron came to be. We also don’t know how Hank Pym, Susan Richards, and Logan knew the right time to remind Pym when to set off the virus. And the biggest thing that wasn’t explained (to me at least) is Wolverine’s time traveling antics and how he’s able to kill another version of himself. Last time I checked, Logan’s survived explosions and just about every sort of mutilation imaginable. How then is it possible for him to die, and at his own hands no less?!

The best analogy that comes to mind is that Bendis yadda yadda yaddaed over the best parts of this story and skipped way ahead to what’s happening after, which is really what the bulk of this book is about. So for those of you who are getting mad at me for revealing spoilers in that last paragraph, I didn’t really spoil anything.

To put it bluntly, ‘Age of Ultron’ was not what we were expecting at all. Sure, that can be a good thing at times because you have to constantly stay a step ahead of your readers, but in this case, I don’t think that it worked out. I feel like the readers were expecting an all-out war against Ultron and we kinda got that in the first few issues. But then it didn’t really pan out in the issues after that and the event turned into something completely different and really disappointing. Whatever comes next has the potential to be really interesting, but the events leading up to the interesting stuff was pretty much a let down. It was pretty bad, but there were a few redeeming qualities.

All that being said, Hank Pym severely needed a win and he finally got one. Good for him. On the flipside, things might be getting a little tougher for Wolverine. Guess we’ll just have to keep reading to find out.

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AGE OF ULTRON #10

Written by Brian Michael Bendis

Art by Alex Maleev, Bryan Hitch, Paul Neary, Butch Guice, Brandon Peterson, Carlos Pacheco, Roger Bonet, Tom Palmer, David Marquez, Joe Quesada, Paul Mounts, Richard Isanove

Cover by Brandon Peterson