The X-Axis – 23 June 2013
Loads out this week, plus a couple I didn’t cover last time round. Let’s take a deep breath and get to it…
A+X #9 – Is this still going? Really? Wow.
Oh well. On paper, this is one of the book’s better line-ups. The lead story has Nathan Edmondson and Humberto Ramos doing Captain America and Wolverine, though Wolverine’s been in the Avengers for so long at this point that I’d query whether he’s a sensible character to be using in this book. Anyhow, Ramos’ art is a matter of taste, and it’s perfectly acceptable here. But the story is a bit half-baked.
The plot is essentially that Cap and Wolverine are trying to rescue of Dr Strange and have to fight giant animals which turn out to be the creations of a chimp who got hold of a magic staff. I think it’s trying to make some sort of point about attitudes to animals, but if so, it’s so vague and half-formed that it never works, and just ends up as 11 pages of randomness with giant beasties.
The back-up is a David Lapham story in which Quentin Quire, Pixie and Eye-Boy sneak into Dr Strange’s house on a bet, and naturally end up stumbling upon a Baddie. It’s a perfectly harmless little story, which suffers from the fact that nobody seems to be quite in character. I just don’t see Quire and Pixie having anything close to the relationship that this story seems to assume, which is a shame, since on its own terms, the story’s not bad at all.
Astonishing X-Men #63 – Okay, so we’re evidently going with “Iceman’s going mad because of the death seed from that crossover”. Which makes it odd that the recap page studiously avoids mentioning that bit. I can sort of see why, though, since this story is plainly trying to build mystery, and you’d blow that out of the water by putting a big sign on the recap page saying “Hey, remember the mind-corrupting thingie from a few issues back?” Still… that also begs the question of quite why it’s meant to be a mystery.
The more interesting idea is that some of the stuff we’ve seen in the last couple of issues is meant to be Iceman’s subconscious rounding up his ex-girlfriends to get them to safety before he destroys the world. And I’m increasingly impressed with Gabriel Walta’s art on this series, which now shifts effortlessly between the more grounded conversation scenes, and the big epic stuff at the end. He doesn’t have the sort of surface polish that normally lands the big crossovers, but he’s got a unique style that’s proving to be more suitable to X-Men stories than it first seems. The story itself is middling, but the book is great to look at.
Cable & X-Force #10 – Regular writer Dennis Hopeless returns, and it seems we’re now back to the advertised story. Two strands of plot here: Hope tracks down Blaquesmith, and X-Force get attacked by the Avengers. Hope’s side of the story is works better. Somewhat surprisingly, the series jumps straight to the explanation that Blaquesmith is responsible for Cable’s visions, presumably to keep him working on the desired missions. It’s a sudden lurch forward in that side of the plot, and one of those nice moments where what initially appears to be a book’s premise turns out to be part of a bigger story.
I’m less wild about the fight with the Avengers. Yes, these scenes set up the plot for the next arc (which looks to be X-Force splitting up to try and deal with loads of premonitions at once), and yes, the closing page is nicely done, with the reveal of Cable’s capture. But the actual fight isn’t anything special, and setting it in a featureless plain doesn’t exactly give Salvador Larroca much to work with where visual interest is concerned.
Uncanny Avengers #9 – The thing with time travel stories is that they can get awfully complicated, and this arc is no exception. There’s a lot to keep track of here, and a degree of both obscurity and plot detail that risks overshadowing everything. I think Remender just about keeps it on the rails here, since the general thrust of what the Apocalypse Twins are trying to achieve is reasonably apparent, even if the mechanics are a bit of a blur. But we’re also now in the territory of some blather about seven divergent timelines, and a cliffhanger which seems to involve zombie superheroes and… it’s complicated, and at times it feels over-complicated.
Still, it’s got beautiful art from Daniel Acuna, and it’s holding on nicely to the central theme that the mixed X-Men/Avengers team can’t work together. Perhaps it hits that point a little heavily, but this isn’t a subtle book and it’s not meant to be. If anything, this series harks back to the sort of thing you used to get in the sprawling cosmic stories of the 1970s; in a strange way it’s one of the most traditional team books Marvel have at the moment.
Wolverine and the X-Men #31 – The first part of “The Hellfire Saga” is bound to divide people according to their tolerance for this book’s more extreme flights of insanity. Aside from a couple of pages of subplot with the X-Men hunting for the Club, this issue is all about introducing the Hellfire Academy.
And the Hellfire Academy, being a supervillain academy run by mad children, is lunatic even by the standards of this book, certainly if you take some of this stuff at face value. Let’s assume, though, that the teachers aren’t really proposing to kill the students. After all, none of them react as if they’re taking this stuff literally, though Quentin seems to think the place is dangerous anyway… the story can’t seem to make up its mind how seriously anyone takes the threats, which is part of the problem here. Perhaps the idea is that Quentin’s the only person who does realise it ought to be taken seriously, but that’s a real stretch.
At any rate, a lot of this pretty much has to play as very broad comedy if it’s going to work. Fortunately, a lot of it’s genuinely funny. (“Your textbooks were handwritten by the Horned Monks of the Pit and bound in the flesh of fallen nuns. Do not write in your textbooks.”) But I’m not sure it functions as a story, because it’s all kind of unreal even on its own terms. It’s just too over the top to build any real drama, which is the problem I’ve always had with the Hellfire Kids. Even with a tremendous amount of goodwill and suspension of disbelief, there’s no credible psychological core to any of this. It works, more or less, as a string of gags. It doesn’t really work as anything else.
Oh, and incidentally – Mystique is now appearing simultaneously in All-New X-Men, Wolverine and the X-Men and Astonishing X-Men, in three completely unrelated stories, and, frankly, with three completely unrelated personalities. Is there some clever reason why she’s suddenly being overused in this way, or is it just wonky editing?
X-Factor #258 – In what he apparently considers an act of charity, Guido sends Wolfsbane back to Earth, in time to save Reverend Maddox from a couple of crazed gunmen. The upshot seems to be that Rahne retires as a superhero and decides to become a deacon.
“The End of X-Factor” isn’t a storyline, it appears, but simply a collection of epilogues for the various characters. Hopefully that indicates that the likes of Rahne are going to be left alone for a while. I’d be perfectly happy with that; I’ve always been more than pleased to see a character given a proper ending and written out. Sure, bring them back for cameos from time to time, but try and resist the compulsion to get them back into circulation. Create something else. It’s not like the X-books haven’t got a horde of characters to use in the third-tier books in future.
Rahne’s a character who feels like, at this point, she really ought to quit and do something normal with her life. Even if the story involves a bit of handwaving to get us there (the gunmen are a hell of a random coincidence designed to add some drama to the whole thing, and some vague muttering that maybe Guido sent them doesn’t really square that), it feels like an ending that the character and the series have both earned. Let’s hope it sticks.
X-Men Legacy #12 – The thing with Si Spurrier’s stories is that they can often be both quite clever and quite easy to pick holes in. For example: it turns out here that David has a big plan after all. He’s seen the immediate future and knows that Blindfold’s group are coming to rescue him, so that’s going to blow the Skull’s operation. Skull will then manipulate them into killing the figurehead Marcus Glove, and David will screw everything up by parachuting in Santi – the kid from a few issues ago with the mutant power to take credit for everything – so that he can publicly declare himself the martyr behind the group, and screw up all the propaganda in a cloud of paradox.
That’s all quite clever, and I like the idea of David outwitting the Red Skull by making his operation literally collapse under its internal contradictions. We did see David looking into the future a couple of issues back, so the contrivance isn’t completely out of the blue; there was just misdirection about what exactly he was looking for. And yet, and yet… if the Skull was always planning to kill Marcus publicly and blame mutants (as David claims), he’s had plenty of mutants through the door already, and he’s got mind control powers. Why didn’t he get one of them to do it? And doesn’t this whole plot hinge on there being a ton of people watching the video feed from the Institute, which seems a bit unlikely?
Still, I do like the concept. There’s a few kinks that I can’t quite bring myself to ignore entirely, but the ideas here are good.
The random personalities of Mystique have been extremely annoying/confusing… I was overjoyed when All New showed she was up to something more than stealing, which was never something she did before. But when did she become SO EVIL? Professor Mystique doesn’t seem to have any of the characteristics that one would normally associate with her. Isn’t she less about insane evil, and more about actions with a message?
My biggest annoyance with Wolverine and the X-Men is the new villain Mondo, who – to me – shows a complete lack of any understanding of the Mojoverse characters. If she is meant to be a female Mojo, she should be spineless, fat, and definitely without a giant rack of tits.
Wolverine and the X-Men is quickly inching off my pull list, except for the completist compulsion I have for all things X.
Frankly, I don’t know how people put up with the nonsense that Aaron is doing with WATXM.
Way too goofy, which is cool in some stories but it’s too tonally jarring with the rest of the X-Franchise to be taken seriously.
It thinks it’s being clever. But it’s not.
To each their own, of course, but I’m a huge fan of WATXM. It adds levity to a line that had been lacking it for years, and for the most part successfully balances comedy with character development. It’s the only X-book I actively look forward to reading at the moment.
A+X #9 was solicited as having an Adam Warren story (and the Marvel site still says it does: http://marvel.com/comics/issue/43508/ax_2012_9 ) so I was annoyed that there was no sign of it.
X-Factor has levity. WATXM “works, more or less, as a string of gags. It doesn’t really work as anything else”, to agree with Paul.
Exactly. The tone forces characters to act in a certain way just for a cheap gag.
It’s more groan worthy than quirky.
I thought that Uncanny Avengers was trying to hard to spin Alex’s asinine “M word” comments into something more complex. I appreciate the gesture from Remender, but we ended up with three pages of Rogue and Wanda discussing the particulars of mutant culture and mutant identity in such detail that it felt more like an academic debate than an actual conversation two people might have. At least we got some pretty Danger Room scenes as a wacky background event amidst all the talking heads,
I think you got it on the nose about Quentin – he’s the only one of all the students (other than Idie) who isn’t either an idiot, a psychotic, or a psychotic idiot, so he’s the only one who sees that this isn’t some kind of weird violent amusement park, but an actual school dedicated to churning out bad people. And by the time we get to the end of this issue we see more or less how the idea should work, by putting kids into situations where they have to become more cutthroat and ruthless, so that when they reach that point they have “earned” their trip through the Siege Perilous. The problem is that this doesn’t quite work unless this is a completely different Siege Perilous, since the SP usually spits the person out on the other side of the world, and often with amnesia or some other kind of personality disorder to go with their possible physical changes.
Mystique’s characterization has been terrible for years. Pretty much since Claremont left the franchise her motivation has gone steadily downhill, from being a crafty Machiavellian schemer with some genuine glimmers of decency (her love for Destiny and her maternal feelings for Rogue) to a cold sociopath who goes on killing rampages for the fuck of it.
The only way to explain this discrepancy would be to reveal that she had some kind of convenient brain tumor that her shape-shifting power could keep from killing her but which partially disables her frontal lobe, in charge of impulse control, empathy, and generosity. She keeps the tumor intact because it keeps her from ever dwelling on how much she misses Destiny and regrets how much she fucked up her relationship with Rogue, but it also makes her into an unpredictable sociopath with no impulse control. Can I get a No-Prize?
I dunno, I’d say Aaron still has a better handle on the characters he’s writing than, say, Bendis. And he clearly has a plan in place, a vision for the title that extends beyond just stringing gags together. But at heart, it is a comedy book, and if it works on that level (which I’d argue it does, for the most part), then it has succeeded in its intent.
But its not funny. He’s had the odd issue that I thought was very successful, like Warbird’s past, or the date night issue (which was really charming, and had a lot of good notes for the characters involved). But the majority of Wolverine and the X-Men isn’t actually funny, because the author is trying way too hard. There needs to be another side to the comedy in order for it to work, like actual tension or drama of some kind, but there’s not.
Aaron’s stories, particularly those with the hellfire club kids, are just strings of cliche random and zanny gags that exist only for the purpose of being random and zanny, and aren’t interesting enough to be funny. There’s no actual content to too many of Aaron’s issues, we just have characters artificially hammered into the shape of a comedy story that reads like it was written by a 2003 Cartoon Network script writing computer.
WatXM works for me. In fact, it’s the only x-title I’m buying these days. I’m thinking about giving cable and x-force a go, though. I brushed it aside based on the title alone (cable can be a very crap character in the wrong hands) but the reviews give an impression of a book with a tight cast and direction. Something I always appreciate. (That’s what I think lets Hickmans Avengers down. There are just too many characters)
Yeah, the wacky bits of WatXM don’t work for me (though I did like li’l Broo’s development at the start of the run). There’s just too much in the way of “That’s funny…if you don’t mind that it ignores all previous characterization/makes no sense/is really damn cruel/is actually sexual assault/makes the heroes look completely incompetent.”
I enjoy seeing the absurdities of Ye Olde Superhero Tropes undermined now and again, but I don’t like having to turn off my brain to enjoy the humor (see also: Alpha Flight v. 3).
AXM #63: The business with Bobby’s ex-girlfriends made me scratch my head a little. Your subconscious knows that you’re about to destroy the world, so it decides the most important thing to do is to save your ex girlfriends? Not the current one? Not your best friends? Not try to actually warn anyone? Huh.
But it kind of works if the reader assigns dark motives to the collection instead of benign ones: it’s not a rescue mission, it’s harem building for after the rest of the world is in the deep freeze. I think that lines up a lot better with Bobby’s therapy dialogue anyway.
I’m not entirely convinced that the root of Bobby’s behavior is supposed to be a mystery for the reader so much as it is the rest of the cast, but the whole thing is muddled enough that I think a case can be made either way. As per usual, Liu’s doing good character bits (except for her handling of Kitty last issue, which I flat-out hated), but I’m not blown away by the actual storytelling.
I’m not crazy with the way Rogue’s being portrayed in Uncanny Avengers in general. There’s no real reason for her to be on the team if she’s so unhappy being there, regardless of whether she’s keeping a “watchful eye” on them or what have you. And it seems like a regression after the the leadership roles she’s taken on over the past few years.
To speak more specifically to Nitz the Bloody’s complaint, I agree, that conversation felt forced. For me, it was mostly because it seemed too much like a direct response to the reader, as if all of Wanda’s dialogue in particular had a subtext of “and that’s why all you readers should agree with me, the writer.” I’ll give him points for addressing the elephant in the room and providing multiple sides to the argument, but it was still too fourth wall-breaking for my tastes–even if that was just something I read into it.
“I’ve always been more than pleased to see a character given a proper ending and written out. Sure, bring them back for cameos from time to time, but try and resist the compulsion to get them back into circulation. Create something else. It’s not like the X-books haven’t got a horde of characters to use in the third-tier books in future.”
Yes. 100%. I’ve felt that way since UXM #201 and X-Factor v.1 #1. Perhaps even earlier. That’s a big part of why CC’s first run on UXM was so perfect.
Person of Consequence wrote:
I’m not crazy with the way Rogue’s being portrayed in Uncanny Avengers in general. There’s no real reason for her to be on the team if she’s so unhappy being there, regardless of whether she’s keeping a “watchful eye” on them or what have you. And it seems like a regression after the the leadership roles she’s taken on over the past few years.
It certainly feels like a step back given the last few years, but at the same time, those never really felt like “Rogue” to me, whereas this personality seem closer. Totally agree with you though that I have no idea why they’d keep her on the team, though. It’s not like she has a core reason to be there.
Also, regarding WAXTM, while the Mystique thing is annoying, I’m surprised no one’s commented on the blatant character assassination of Husk. I know Aaron’s going for the “she’s having a psychotic breakdown” but it’s so over-the-top as to be unbelievable. I can’t see her going so far as to start teaching for the Hellfire Academy.
Oh, and yeah, Wanda’s dialogue was totally Remender just writing his response to the criticism online into the comic. Kinda funny in a meta sort of way.
Not something that Paul reviewed, but something I’m curious to see some discussion from familiar folk on:
Age of Ultron – how bad was that comic? What a waste of pages!
Matt C: “I can’t see her going so far as to start teaching for the Hellfire Academy.”
Yeah, but you could say the same thing about anyone else teaching at the Hellfire Academy anyway. Or any of the people going there as students. The whole concept is so ridiculous/stupid that I find it transcends issues of characterization. Why complain about the heater in the bedroom being jammed when the building is on fire?
I don’t know if its just me, but I just assumed that Husk was possessed by demons or something, and that’s why her face looks so crazy in recent issues. Or that she’s an unstable clone whose body is breaking down, and the real Husk is off in Kentucky with her siblings.
Jerry Ray: “Not something that Paul reviewed, but something I’m curious to see some discussion from familiar folk on:
Age of Ultron – how bad was that comic? What a waste of pages!”
I saw the page of Galactus looming ominously over Miles Morales and thought “wow, there it is. The worst idea ever.” And didn’t we just do this story with X-Treme X-Men/Age of Apocalypse? Couldn’t those books have just waited three months? They could have shipped them late deliberately, and no one would have noticed.
I would love to see Marvel explain away Mystique’s inconsistencies in a similar way to how they handled Lady Mastermind’s: just say that there’s several people using the same identity.
In a world where there are multiple amoral shapeshifters who specialize in impersonating other people, of course some of them are going to start claiming to be whichever one has the best reputation.
Mystique could even franchise her identity: pay a licensing fee and you get I-won’t-hunt-you-down-and-make-you-pay insurance and a phone number for tech support (“Hello, Mystique Prime? This is Mystique #4 – this Sabretooth guy keeps flirting with me … do we like him?”)
@ Matt C. – I totally agree about recent depictions of Rogue not “feeling” like Rogue. To me, one of the things that was enearing about Rogue and Colossus during Claremont’s first run was that they were often the only members of the team who didn’t seem like tactical genius, polyglot, ninja, natural-born-leaders with a dozen black belts and Ph.D.s in “Anything that might come up.” The X-Men Legacy “By Your Powers Combined, I AM MARY SUE!” Rogue never seemed interesting compared to old school team player Rogue with actual flaws and insecurities and stuff (although I don’t miss the angsting about not being able to have sex all the time – Teenage Me Reading Comics On a Saturday Night: “Gee Rogue, what’s THAT like?”).
Am I the only one bothered by Salvador Larroca’s Boom Boom? I’ve never been a huge fan of the character, but he seems to be under the impression that Tabitha Smith is either a tired Asian woman or an exhausted meth addict. Sal is usually pretty on-the-ball with his portrayals, which makes this just…odd.
Like most artists, all of his women look the same, so I’m not anymore bothered by his Boom Boom than say, his Hope Summers.
I didn’t mind Mike Carey’s Rogue at all, since he actually worked out a lot of the problems she’s had as a character (years of angsting over not being able to have sex with Gambit, etc). But I really hated Gage’s perfect sweetheart Rogue, and I’d been longing for more of the brassy, impulsive, sexy, morally flexible Rogue that Claremont used to write. Remender’s Rogue is nothing like recent depictions and it’s totally out of nowhere, but I generally do appreciate it anyway.
As far as the conversation between Rogue and Wanda in this issue, I disagree with the notion that Remender is using Wanda as a mouthpiece. As a queer person, I’ve seen basically the same conversation play out several times, and I tend to agree with Rogue. Although people should be judged on their personal merits, the price for that can’t be suppressing mutant culture (which is, of course, based in oppression), and I think she’s spot-on in telling Wanda her feelings on the subject are based in shame.
But I may be seeing this differently just because I tend to agree with Rogue.
Also, I really dig Thor as the most progressive nonmutant in the book. That’s nice work.
It makes sense for Thor, since he’s not really human himself, that he wouldn’t see much sense in arbitrary distinctions between different shades of homo sapiens.
Age of Ultron was awful. Riddled with plot-holes, inconsistencies, awful pacing and head-banging stupidity.
It wasn’t really an Ultron story – he was barely featured and defeated in a completely anticlimactic way. It wasn’t even a Hank Pym story. It’s the second Bendis alternate-universe crossover event that is essentially a Wolverine solo story and it was even worse than the first one.
What’s that? Oh yeah, Bendis.
Oh, and yeah, Wanda’s dialogue was totally Remender just writing his response to the criticism online into the comic. Kinda funny in a meta sort of way.
Bendis did this quite a lot in his Avengers run. It was annoying as heck.
Husk is crazy now? It seems female characters go crazy far more often than male ones. I’m sure the Brontes would approve of the realistic depiction of the weakness of the sex.
Putting aside the many issues with the bulk of Age of Ultron, it was the epilogue, with “time breaking” or whatever that was supposed to be, that really got me. Decades of crazy time travel stuff, but THIS ONE was DIFFERENT (for no readily apparent reason) and screwed up the universe. Guh. Can’t Bendis go work for DC? Please?
I agree that is very nice for characters to have a full arch and leave/die. Illyana and Maddie Pryor should have stayed dead, for example.
Isn’t the current Illyana actually meant to be a completely different Illyana, created by Belasco? Warlock refers to her as Illyana 2.0/”a pirate copy” in New Mutants vol. 3.
Also she’s a totally new character in every way and has literally nothing in common with the original Illyana (she used to at least have the Soulsword and the same costume, but Bachelo seems to have…changed that), so its not hard to just pretend she stayed gone at the end of Inferno, and that this is effectively equivilent to Nightcrawler dying and then AoA Nightcrawler joining the cast in a spinoff so we’ll still have a teleporter around.
I’ve been enjoying Uncanny Avengers for a while but it’s beginning to lose my interest for the same reason that Uncanny X-Force lost my interest at the end. I appreciate that Remender is crafting stories whose consequences for the concentrated cast flow into the next story. That’s exactly what I want from a Marvel team book. I appreciate that Uncanny X-Force is one long story with several chapters but some of those wind up longer than they should be.
The first ten issues of UXF had two multi-consecutive issue story arcs (1-4 Apocalypse Solution + the intro story in Wolverine Road to Hell , 5-7 Deathlok Nation) and three single issue stories (5.1, 8, 9). The issues 10-19 were the Dark Angel Saga which felt appropriately epic though it did include a diversion into the Age of Apocalypse. It was followed by 19.1 a back-door pilot for Age of Apocalypse, a four-issue story arc (20-23 Otherworld) and a single issue story (24). But then the final eleven issues were devoted to “Final Execution” which also featured a diversion into an alternate future for a few issues.
Uncanny Avengers started with a four issue story but now we’re already into an epic. The Kang/Apocalypse Twins story will run at least nine issues (including 8AU) into #12 which is the latest issue we have solicitation information on. So far we’ve seen a lot of the villains plotting and setting things up and attacking things that aren’t the protagonists (at least not directly) and the protagonists fighting amongst themselves but we’re pretty far off from seeing a confrontation or something approaching resolution. That worries me.
Totally no-prize worthy, Tim!
@adam
With the Remender books, he has something of significance happen in each issue which is building on the main plot with a tight cast who interact with each other. I’ll take that over crap like house of M any day of the week.
“Mystique could even franchise her identity:”
If Mystique turns out to be Roderick Kingsley with a coupla melons stuffed down his top, I will buy you a Coke.
(disclaimer: no)
//\Oo/\\
I’d read about how bad Age of Ultron is, so I decided to read it all in one sitting. It is much worse than anyone is giving it credit for.
SPOILERS AHOY
1. OMG Vision is giving the Ultrons orders!!!!!
. . . and? And then? How did this change anything? What is the significance? How did this provide anyone with useful information?
2. Ultron is giving Vision orders from the future!!!!!!!
. . . what does this even mean? If he’s doing things in the future to change his own past, then isn’t he screwing himself?
3. Go to the Savage Land!!!!!
. . . again? Seriously? Is there some kind of Marvel mandate to use Kazar in all their major events now?
4. Time travel is the only solution!!!!!!
. . . well, I don’t disagree that it makes some sense to consider it, but kind of a waste to create a dystopia and then say nothing significant about it.
5. Kill Hank Pym!!!!!
. . . of all the points they could’ve gone back to, that seemed like the best? Really?
6. Don’t consider the consequences of messing with time!!!!!
. . . seriously.
7. Oops we changed the present!!!!!
. . . sigh.
8. Let’s talk about it!!!!!
. . . seriously, besides the first issue, there was really no action in this entire story, not any of any consequence anyway. The characters talked more about their situations more than they actually reacted to them.
9. Two Wolverines are better than one!!!!!!
. . . because it worked out so well the first time.
10. Get Hank Pym to do something different in the past and ask him nicely to forget about that one specific thing!!!!!!
. . . fucking hell, is that the best they could do?
11. Wolverine broke the timestream!!!!!!
. . . yes, and Kang, Immortus, and Doom were all treating it gently up to this point. Wasn’t Brevoort the editor on Avengers Forever?
12. Ultron is defeated!!!!!!
. . . this series wasn’t even about Ultron at all!
@The original Matt:
I agree with your points but the point I intended to make was that I think Remender’s stories are better when the arcs are smaller.
And yes, I’ll take this over something like House of M as well. I’m actually buying Remender’s stuff but my enthusiasm is waning.
Ah, we’ll that’s a fair point. Frankly it works for me, and I find myself hanging for each new issue because I know it’s going to advance the plot. It actually reminds me of older comics where it’s not about “arcs” so much as each issue leads into the next like a true serial. The “arc” structure makes it feel to me like its plotting for movies and sequels.
@Michael Aronson
I would have preferred to pay the same price for your summary as I did to read AoU. Honestly, I hate reading Bendis stuff. But every few years, based on him always getting some of my favourite characters, I momently forget how awful his plotting/dialogue is. But within a few pages it all comes flooding back to me!
@michael aronson
Wow. That sounds extremely fucking bad. So… It sounds like a Bendis event.
@michael aronson
I enjoyed your recap but there is even more idiocy in the series which you don’t even touch upon. Take issue one, which has a huge set piece in which Hawkeye rescues Spider-Man from some low-rent supervillains. Aside from giving Hawkeye an action sequence, this has zero relevance to anything that happens in the rest of the series as neither of those two characters play any significant part. Also, why was Ultron making deals with low-rent supervillains when his raison d’etre is the extermination of all life? And if not, then what was his actual objective? And if he killed She-Hulk that easily, how are any of the heroes still alive? And what was the point of any of those subplots featuring Black Widow, Moon Knight, Red Hulk, Taskmaster etc?
Rich Johnston made the valid point that Wolverine and the Invisible Woman return to the present in issue 12… which they already exist in. So there are now two Logans and two Sue Storms.
I can’t help but think Marvel delayed this series because it was so awful that the ending needed to be rewritten to include some random shock elements – hence Angela/Ultimate Galactus etc. It didn’t work.
Why is the only use anyone can come up with for Wolverine in crossovers in the last few years is “let’s just kill the person responsible”. I mean, it’s probably something that should come up but HoM, Civil War, AvX, AoU, that’s all he does. I get he did the X-force thing, but black ops squad doesn’t equal “lets just stab our problems away”.
Wait. So that was it? That was the end of AOU? Did I miss something? What happens to Fury’s team who went to the future?
I just want to add, I’m currently reading Daredevil: End of Days, also written by Bendis (and cowritten by David Mack). I swear, there are two Bendises.
I’m not claiming End of Days is good (I’m not done yet), but it is paced well, the guest stars actually don’t come off as gratuitous, there isn’t copious amounts of reverence for Bendis’s past stories over others . . . so far, it’s just incredibly solid, and I can’t believe it’s by the same writer as Age of Ultron.
Oh, the funniest thing is that it’s stressed, word for word in End of Days, that “heroes don’t kill.”
Bendis actually wrote those words in a book that recently came out.
I am not shitting you.
@Niall – If you look at it from the point of view that the Age of Ultron still exists as an alternate timeline, then they all got massacred by Ultron after travelling to the future (or at least, there’s a timeline where that happened). If you look at it from the point of view that Sue and Logan prevented the Age of Ultron from ever happening (which is the status quo of Earth-616 going forward, though whether that will be treated as a multiversal constant or just the local version of events only time will tell) then they never went into the future to fight Ultron in the first place.
It’s roughly consistent with the old Marvel Universe caveat that time travel can only create alternate timelines, thereby preventing paradoxes, but I kind of get the feeling Bendis wanted to write a story where that wasn’t the case.
Characters that should have stayed gone as their stories were resolved: Apocalypse.
His ‘ultimate’ plan was foiled at the end of The Twelve. Cable killed his SPIRIT in Search for Cyclops. But now we get multiple clones around, and he can regenerate completely from his blood (where previously an extreme beating would keep him out of action for months/years).
Also, he’s now on his…fourth(?) set of horsemen in the last 3-ish years, comic-time, which makes it appear that he really shouldn’t bother, and just seems silly for an ancient being.
Thanks ZZZ. I guess I didn’t understand that all of the heroes died when they went to the future.
It was a bit of a pointless storyline.
Great concerns once and for all, you just accumulated a different readers. Exactly what is it possible you advise regarding write-up you produced some days before? Just about any confident?