Age of Ultron #10
The somewhat predicted, yet still shocking conclusion to the end of Age of Ultron. Bendis has shown to be able to handle time travel stories as seen with All New X-Men, but this whole event seems out of his zone. Being Age of Ultron and with Ultron being missing till the last issue, his defeat fell flat. There was just no feeling of excitement when they finally put an end to him. What the long-term intentions were was apparent, yet the overall execution was sad to say poor.
When you get through the whole event, you do feel cheated to an extent. It seemed as though this whole story progression relied on shock value instead of believable storytelling. What disappointed me most about his issue was that they hyped the arrival of Angela incredibly, yet she didn’t appear till the very end in which it was just dialogue from her. The event overall didn’t deliver on anything promised except for what is to be expected as a result of it all. Yes the foundation of the Marvel Universe has been shaken, but that was really about it. This event could have taken place and you could miss it while feeling no need to go back and figure out why. There was a reason for this event, and a clear goal, but it certainly didn’t show as it all progressed. If they wanted to get many to pick up this book, it surely only lasted through the beginning of the story.
In the end the book started off great. But as it was called Age of Ultron, there just wasn’t much Ultron. Those first four issues really gave us something to look forward to as they took him on, but when all the complications of time came into play, the story fell apart. Sadly that was basically it for the event until the very end which most readers saw coming long ago. The one redeemable aspect about this event is what is to come out of it as a fallout. We have “Hunger”, a good number of refreshing books with unique teams to be released, and some new characters who were long forgotten taking spotlight. Aside from this, the story didn’t feel like it was something worth jumping into at all.