Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Laid Back Comics: Age of Ultron #3


I wouldn't call Age of Ultron an uninteresting premise to a story, the idea of something like Ultron winning out
in a war against the heroes of the Marvel Universe only to have them rally around and fight back in the end is something that should give a feeling of excitement. But, three issues in and not only has the series seemed to slowly walk from point to point. It does so while stuck on a AM talk radio station and sadly the topic of the day is shoelaces.

While the first issue had enough of a hook to get me interested, the follow ups ending with the third issue here as left me not only bored, I feel Bendis has falling back into his habit of what many did not like about some of his Avenger Stories, the talking heads.  The question that was brought up in issue one on why Ultron would want to trade for any of the heroes when he has no real care for living beings has stretched out into this one and still remained unanswered for the most part. Even with the Cliffhanger appearance at the end there is still very little light shed on the why. And more and more we are just told how bad of the world has now become since this attack and we are told of those who have lost their lives to Ultron, but just being told the world is bad and someone died off panel isn't enough to keep my attention long enough to the story. More often I would flip through to see if something was going to happen.

Luckily there is a short area featuring Red Hulk, Taskmaster, and Black Panther in another part of the country, Chicago. Here is some fine action and Hitch does fantastically well.  Sadly it ends far too quickly to save the issue as a whole. I feel bad for Hitch who is working at is best on this book and so far has just spent his time drawing board meetings of depressed heroes.  Now, it is far to point out that this even is ten issues long and hasn't even hit the middle of the story which is two issues away, but at the rate the book is coming out and how we already know the big guest star that will be coming in at the end of it, it is a wonder why it seems to be moving along so slowly.

There are also a few weird moments since this series was so late to debut, like with Doc Ock with Spider-Man’s body or several members of the Fantastic Four out in deep space. Those books got tie ends to try and explain that and for Spider-Man that helped, but for Fantastic Four made no sense as they were supposedly contacted by Black Panther, but ‘missed the call’. Despite in this Issue itself Sue Storm mentioned Ben Grim as one of the heroes who fell during the surprise attack. This has left me as a reader more confused than intrigued.

Sadly, if this is how the story is shaping up so far, I am not looking forward to the flow or the end to find out about the new guest star joining the Marvel Universe. 

OVERALL: 4.5 out of 10

Bryan "BAC" Clendening writes for The Broken Infinite, you can follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/BAClend

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