The cow jumps over the moon.
Evil Knievel jumps over thirty buses
And Age of Ultron has just jumped the shark.
Perhaps it’ll back flip over the shark and land well, but for right now, writer Brian Michael Bendis has chummed the waters of what was a great story. Up until now, Age of Ultron was close to flawless, but with issue #7, the story falls apart. When last we left our rag-tag group of heroes, Sue Richards and Wolverine had gone back in time to kill Hank Pym before he could build Ultron, which ultimately leads to the world’s devastation at the hand of Pym’s creation. Now we get to see the fallout. This is where the story starts to suffer.
In the world where Hank Pym dies, the Skree/Krull war happened on Earth. The Vision was never created, The Defenders now rule American airspace and Tony Stark has become a sort of dictator. A bald robotic dictator who commands not only robots but also humans in Iron Man suits named Starkguard. It seems, in a non-Pym world, something has gone quite awry and left Tony Stark mutated and running things.
Apparently, the Avengers no longer exist, now replaced by the Defenders, who boast a recognizable cast of characters, save for some minor tweaks. Hulk has Banner’s brain and half a body full of scars, The Thing is normal except for craters in his body, Captain America looks like Nick Fury, and Cyclops – well, Cyclops is just fucked. Sue and Wolverine clash with the Defenders and lose. Issue #7 ends with new and mutated Tony Stark appearing to take charge of the situation.
The shark jump comes simply because the story is now entirely too convoluted. Ultron destroyed the world, so we killed Hank Pym, and now there’s an entire new story with Tony Stark as the enemy with a smile. We have new heroes, new problems and only three or four issues to deal with them. I enjoyed the Hank Pym aspect of it, but introducing this split timeline in the middle of a story with so much going on is little more than aggravating. Less is more Bendis. Less is more.
Once again, the art is split between Brandon Peterson and Carlos Pacheco. Peterson handles the present day and does the lion’s share of the work. Pacheco’s throwback style is really only apparent on the first few pages. Peterson’s work is decent here, though his faces are sometimes laughable. At certain points, Wolverine looks like an angry Christopher Le,e and Sue Storm has a serious bug eye issues. Peterson also loves to have his characters looking up for some reason.
The shark hasn’t consumed Age of Ultron yet, but there’s blood in the water and fins abound.
(2.5 Story, 3 Art)
