Age of Ultron -- Bendis, Pym, and continunity

[woodside]

So, in the recent Age of Ultron crossover, Ultron has taken over the Earth. Faced with no other options, Wolverine is sent back in time to kill Hank Pym just before he builds Ultron-1.

Yadda yadda yadda. I'm not reading the actual series, so I can't comment on the quality of this story.

What's impressed me, though, is this list that Bendis cooked that basically addresses everything that changes as a result of Hank Pym being dead in the past. I was wondering what some of you guys thought of this list:

www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=45304


I'm hoping to have a discussion about the list itself and I'm hoping this doesn't turn into another standard, I hate NuMarvel/Bendis discussion.

[bobc]

Sounds like Bendis is set to destroy yet more of Marvel history, which is what he does. I guess it would be pointless to ask why Wolverine doesn't just go back in the past and pull Pym aside and tell him "Ya know, Hank, this Ultron thing is a bad idea because here's what is gonna happen...

[Marvel Boy]

Well, it shows just how vital Hank has been to the overall history of the MU, not only to the Avengers, but affecting the X-Men, the Guardians, even the Defenders (didn't know he was a member of that illustrious group)

Interesting to see that his death undoes all the insanity issues of Wanda, the main bread-and-butter of Bendis' time with the Avengers. Also how his death may affect Jan's eventual role as team leader. Shame that Scott Lang would probably die in his first outing as Ant-Man.

But how exactly did Hank cause Moondragon to die?

I'm not sure if this is going to stick or not. Vision is set to lead that new AI Avengers unit, so someone has to create him. Plus, there's the usual Marvel trick of time-travel dealing with alternate timelines instead of a character travelling to the actual past. I'm not reading this event so don't know.

[humanbelly]

*Bleah*

I don't see how this is any different than the old "What If-?" series-- the premise is identical. "What if Hank Pym had died and never created Ultron?" Rather than being a thoughtful, long done-in-one story though, it's being pumped full of steroids and given the hypermegaevent treatment (although am I seeing that it's being considered a mini-series, at least?). Call me a hard-crusted old purist, but this is nothing more than an Imaginary Story trying to wrap itself in legitimacy by reversing the positions of the two relative universes. The cliche', of course, is that the "main" universe receives a visitor from the "future" universe who is on some dire mission to prevent some future catastrophe. . . and the folks in our "main" universe have to stave off the future-person's actions and/or attacks.

THIS scenario puts us in the POV of that "future" universe, and I guess that's supposed to make it carry more weight or something. . . regardless of the fact that these lessons in time travel/alternate universes/timestream immutability have been learned (and rehashed) by ALL of these characters many times over. This is just. . . it's boring. MY heroes (geeze, even Wolverine) don't go back in time to assassinate innocent people BEFORE they commit acts that have disastrous consequences. . . and good grief, this is one of the creakiest old Science Fiction tropes out there.

Now, the list itself, I suppose, is certainly serviceable-- but it's not like it's something that any knowledgeable fan couldn't come up with if they were well-versed in Hank's history and were using the Marvel Wiki. Again, it's just that kind of fun stuff of "What If-?" conversations. It could be this list. . . or it could be innumerable other ones. The deeper it goes, though, the less I buy it, as it doesn't hold up under either time-stream model:

Time-Stream Can Be Altered, w/ Many Rippling Effects: Then after Hank's death, NOTHING is predictable pretty much beyond his not creating Ultron. So many events beyond that point change that the entirety of continuity has to be tossed out. Making specific predictions about Moondragon's death and Scott Lang's are absolutely silly and purely speculative. Chaos Theory, right? And haven't there been moments when Hank was involved with saving the world? Or saving people who save the world? Does the world just. . . end, then?

Time-Stream is Self-Correcting: Then it doesn't matter if Hank dies or not, 'cause Time will find a way to come up w/ an Ultron, regardless.

Honestly, just tell stories with the Universe we know, Marvel. I personally have no interest in yet another alternate one.

Again-- *bleah*--

HB (on the rampage!)

[spiderwasp]

So this is a modified version of an alternate future? I haven't read any of it but I'm glad to hear that. I stopped reading Spider-man when Mary Jane's history ceased to exist and haven't picked up an issue since. I'd hate to have to do the same thing with Avengers. Especially since my first thought was "But that would just create an alternate time-line without Hank. Haven't we covered this?"
Regarding the list. It's a little tricky to comment on some things because I'm not sure exactly at what point the killing takes place. Obviously, based on the picture, it is after Hank has gone giant-sized so it doesn't prevent the creation of the Wasp and Pym particles.
I do take issue, however, with the Scarlet Witch not going mad because of thisl. Immortus used the children and Vision to set her madness up because she was a Nexus being. He spent years orchestrating it. Would't he have just found something else if they hadn't been available. Of course, I'm still confused about that whole thing anyway because, as I said before, she knew about the children for years before Janet's slip of the tongue and was settled with it. I've been rereading the WCA and there were multiple references to the children so it all didn't make sense anyway. I have no doubt Immortus wouldn't have just left Wanda alone.
I also don't think (Unless I missed it) that there was any mention of Avengers Academy. Would that have even been set up without Hank? There was also a time just before the arrival of the Vision that the only Avengers were Hank, Jan, and Clint. Would Jan and Clint have been able to keep things going on their own or would the Avengers have, at least temporarily, have gone away.
Certainly the concept of what would things have been like without someone is always an interesting one but "The Butterfly Effect" has already been done. The whole question of "Would you go back and kill Hitler as baby" has been asked a million times. Basically, I think the list is an ingteresting thing to look at but I have no desire to actually read it as a story.
PS: WS, I based this whole thing on my reaction to the storyline and the list. I honestly tried to imagine my reaction based on that alone without any regard to who wrote it.

[Shiryu]

I have been reading Age of Ultron but, even as a Bendis story, I'm not particularly impressed. Siege was a far better work, IMHO.

For those who have no idea what's been going on:
Ultron launches a surprise attack on the USA, killing or capturing most heroes and some villains. The survivors, led by a broken Cap, retreat to the Savage Land. Before being killed, Luke Cage and She Hulk discover that Ultron is attacking from the future, via time-travelling technology and a shattered Vision.

Cap decides to take a team and use Doom's old time machine to get to the future and take the fight to Ultron. Meanwhile, Logan argues that the best solution is killing Hank Pym before Ultron is ever made. He says that, as a scientist, Pym will believe himself capable of building Ultron without it becoming a killer, and will never really manage to "not" build it in the first place. Cap forbids it, but Logan goes anyway, and the Invisible Woman tags along to try to find a peaceful compromise. However, when they do find Hank, Logan reminds Sue of Reed and their children having been killed, and she reluctantly lets him go ahead and do it. In the meantime, Cap's team in the future is slaughtered.

Sue and Logan come back to the present, to find it completely different, as per WS' original post.

So, the plot itself isn't bad, very Kang-esque in a way, but it moves along at snail pace. 7 issues in, we still haven't seen the real Ultron, and now it look like we may never do, as the focus has shifted to this new, Pym-less, reality.
The best thing has probably been the tie-ins, especially Superior Spider-Man and Fantastic Four.

[humanbelly]

Very, very helpful Shiryu, thank you.
So. . . is this proceeding as a Crisis-like re-booting of the Marvel Universe-?? Good lord, I hope not. The fact that it's set in the MU "present" is very problematic to me. It either has to be "erased" by some fluke or contrivance. . . or it has to lead to wholesale negating of major, MAJOR existing continuity & canon (which may be a depressingly moot point, anyhow). Ugh-- I hate it just from your synopsis alone. And honestly, the level of wholesale mayhem & slaughter that you describe COMPLETELY negates any relevance the arc may have. Killing major characters in this fashion has happened so many times that the so-called significance has been diminished to literally nothing. Cap & his team die in battle? Yep, I'm rolling my eyes and shaking my head.

Agh-- sorry WS. I'm treading across the reasonable boundaries you wanted to set. I shall stand quietly with what I've said, eh?

HB

[bobc]

Does Marvel really need more incoherence and chaos? As HB said, This storyline might make a passable "What If?" issue, or even in an Ultimate Universe story arch, but it will wreak havoc on the mainstream books.

The whole premiss doesn't even make sense. Maybe Wolverine can travel back in time and kill Einstein because his theories led to the nuclear bomb. Then maybe he can go back and kill Ghengis Khan. Or maybe chop up the rats whose fleas spread the bubonic plague.

Hank Pym made a machine. Is Wolverine going to kill the first people who created guns?

On top of all this, why is Bendis always the ONLY writer who feels the need to make catastrophic changes across all of the Marvel universe? Nobody else does that. Why can't he write a story and then wrap it up without wreaking havoc?

[humanbelly]

May 5, 2013 11:39:08 GMT -5 bobc said:

Does Marvel really need more incoherence and chaos? On top of all this, why is Bendis always the ONLY writer who feels the need to make catastrophic changes across all of the Marvel universe? Nobody else does that. Why can't he write a story and then wrap it up without wreaking havoc?

Well, to be very fair-- I'd have to lay the precedent for that kind of event squarely on Busiek's shoulders with the "Kang Dynasty" arc. Much as I love his writing and work in general, that was the first arc where I said to myself, "these events have gone too far and wreaked too much havoc for any return to status-quo to ever be believable." So even in the hands of one of my favorite writers, this kind of device was a complete turn-off. And it certainly blazed an unfortunate trail for others to follow.

HB

[Shiryu]

I don't mind havoc in terms of massive damage caused by this or that supervillain. In fact, I loved the Kang Dinasty and Ultron Unlimited because they did just that: showing that supervillains can actually be responsible for widespread killing and destruction from time to time, or it would be difficult to take them seriously after 60 years of failed attempts.

I am, however, more concerned about wreaking havoc to continuity and characters. To me, John Byrne is the father of this kind of thing, ever since he undid the Vision's marriage and turned Scarlet Witch and Sue Richards into cruel caricatures of themselves. Some 30 years later, Vision and Wanda *still* haven't gotten back together.

But the great thing about time travelling is that it can undo as quickly as it does, so I half expect Sue and Logan to correct their own mistake, or at least change it somehow.

[Marvel Boy]

Sue lets Logan carry out his plan after he reminds her of her family's death? I don't agree with that. Family is important to her but after all her adventures with Reed through time and space, does she honestly think killing Hank will solve the entire problem? There's no guarantee it will for it'd be nigh impossible to predict every single new consequence that results from this change. That's some haphazard thinking on her part.

Instead of killing Hank, why not find a way to alter his creating Ultron? Affect the evolution of Ultron instead of hoping that killing Hank somehow eliminates Ultron from history.

Speaking of which, where is Immortus? If you take Bendis' list of Pym's effect on MU continuity at face value, that's a huge change to the timline, surely enough to gain Immortus' notice. So why hasn't he acted then on this assault on history?

This isn't the only spot where Bendis is playing fast and loose with Marvel's timeline. Over in All-New X-Men, the original 5 X-Men have been transported to the present and are here to stay. Then, in an upcoming X-event, mutants from the future will come back to the present to convince the X-Men that the O5 must be sent back to their own time.

[Doctor Bong Crosby]

IMO, if by the AOU´s conclusion all these suggested changes stand, becoming a new, altered timeline/reality, it´ll suck to high Heaven. Just think about it: perhaps for the first time, Marvel´s gonna mess up its continuity so bad that in the end they´ll leave themselves no choice but to do their own all-encompassing reboot... .
But I honestly hope I´m wrong or, at least, I hope Marvel has the common sense to undo all or most of those sweeping changes to the main timeline by the end of AOU or shortly afterwards, for I can tell you I DO NOT need one more (and it would be, in my eyes, by far the worst yet) reason to utterly dislike Bendis´take on superheroes and the MU as a whole.
Once again, let me qualify that I did like him in his own Powers series and in Alias (never read Ultimate Spider-Man) and I share with other people the belief that he´s a good noir and for solo-vigilante-types kind of writer, but an abysmal mainstream superhero one. Especially when trying to write big universe-encompassing sagas.

[Doctor Bong Crosby]

May 5, 2013 21:59:30 GMT -5 Marvel Boy said:

Sue lets Logan carry out his plan after he reminds her of her family's death? I don't agree with that. Family is important to her but after all her adventures with Reed through time and space, does she honestly think killing Hank will solve the entire problem? There's no guarantee it will for it'd be nigh impossible to predict every single new consequence that results from this change. That's some haphazard thinking on her part.

Instead of killing Hank, why not find a way to alter his creating Ultron? Affect the evolution of Ultron instead of hoping that killing Hank somehow eliminates Ultron from history.

Speaking of which, where is Immortus? If you take Bendis' list of Pym's effect on MU continuity at face value, that's a huge change to the timline, surely enough to gain Immortus' notice. So why hasn't he acted then on this assault on history?

This isn't the only spot where Bendis is playing fast and loose with Marvel's timeline. Over in All-New X-Men, the original 5 X-Men have been transported to the present and are here to stay. Then, in an upcoming X-event, mutants from the future will come back to the present to convince the X-Men that the O5 must be sent back to their own time.

For example, and to reference the other thread which is getting most of the attention here lately (Avengers West Coast), why not go back in time to when there were 2 Ultrons, one of them a good one, who loved its "father", and make sure this was the one which would end up surviving...?
But in the end it´s an exercise in futility to try to make sense of something like this AOU premise. It was long established in Marvel canon that traveling into the past created a divergent timeline and that therefore you could never alter YOUR OWN reality´s past in doing so. Then Busiek came up with a way around it by creating the Forever Crystal in Avengers Forever, which was so powerful that it could actually do just that.
So, as many people have already stated here, it doesn´t make any sense in a number of levels for Logan and Sue to act in the way they do. It´s terrible, sloppy writing. No, I take that back. If that was the case, it would be due to ignorance and incompetence. And by now I´m pretty sure that´s not the case with Mr. Bendis. I´m convinced it´s a mixture of lazy writing and hubris. He just feels like he has the right to completely disregard whatever came before he took charge. Continuity, coherence, should never get in the way of the story he feels like telling, the way he feels like telling. And all else be damned!
Now don´t get me wrong, I don´t think writers should be slaves to continuity, or that they shouldn´t experiment with types of stories that haven´t been tried before, but at the same time I feel that if most of those writers play fast and lose with all the backstory, all the previous characterization, all which came before they came aboard, if they have no regard or respect for it, and especially, if they don´t come up with clear, SOLID, well-researched "hey, this makes sense" explanations for HOW and WHY things take place, why this or that character acts this way well, then, at least for me, the MU loses a lot of it´s beauty and depth. For it´s coherent continuity, the mantainance of its internal logic, it´s sense of being one big corpus of modern-day mythology were perhaps the main ingredients which engaged my imagination and endeared it to me.
Without these elements, you may still be able to tell many good stories, I´m sure but, from a personal point of view, the magic´s gone and there´s not enough left to make me care. That´s something that writers like Bendis don´t get, when they run after their latest story they have to tell. Of course he´s not the only one, God knows they are a lot of writers who belong to this school, both at Marvel and DC, but I think he´s been the trailblazer and the worst offender so far.
And, as I stated before, all these reality bending by Bender, I mean Bendis and Co. will, if unchecked, make sooner or later a complete reboot of the MU necessary. It happened to the DCU more than once, and it may well be on its way to the friendly neighborhood MU near you... .

[tomspasic]

1. Pym creates Ultron after studying Dragon Man's AI.
2. Ultron evolves into an eventual world killer.

Solutions:
1. Kill the guy who developed Dragon Man, before he makes Dragon man. Or remove Dragon Man from earth before Pym can study it. Pym has no AI on which to base his research= no Ultron and we still get Pym alive as a hero.
2. Destroy Ultron 1 after it excapes Pyms lab. Ultron's AI is not in the internet, it's not made of Adamantium, it's a big dustbin with an AI in it. Pym never tried to create an AI again post Ultron (except Rover, who was benign), so again we get a world without Ultron, but with Pym.

Of course this whole "what-if?" ignores the canon "go-back-in-time-and-make-an-alternate-reality" rules, so we already know Bendis is an idiot.
There are lots and lots of ways to stop Ultron at various points in time that do not involve killing Hank Pym. But Bendis dislikes Hank Pym, so he makes the End of the World Hank's fault and kills him off.

Meh, my money is on this mess being ignored as it should be once its over, as the sub-par "what if?" story it actually is.

[wundagoreborn]

It is an interesting list. There could be many variations of it, depending on the assumptions you make.

But no matter how the list comes out, it should have one use. It should be printed out and taped to the wall above your writing desk with a note in red marker that reads:

"Reasons to never go back in time and kill Hank Pym"

[humanbelly]

I wish I knew more about the inside story of this, but. . . was the Ultimate Universe conceived as- or considered to be- an attempt to do a true Crisis-like reboot of the MU? Or was it a, uh, "supplemental" reboot from the get-go?

HB

[Marvel Boy]

To my knowledge, AU is a story that Bendis has been working on for a number of years. Marvel NOW finally allowed him the opportunity to have it published. So we're not even talking about an event that would fit naturally into what's going within the MU right now, just an event that is shoe-horned into it.

May 6, 2013 19:27:40 GMT -5 humanbelly said:

I wish I knew more about the inside story of this, but. . . was the Ultimate Universe conceived as- or considered to be- an attempt to do a true Crisis-like reboot of the MU? Or was it a, uh, "supplemental" reboot from the get-go?

HB

The way I understand it, the Ultimate universe was Marvel's attempt to make their books more relevant to today's modern audience without the weight of 40+ years of continuity. I don't remember ever hearing the term reboot bandied about when they first launched this.

But that's what it has become, the first true successful reboot of a major company's line. Free of canon ties, they were able to explore whole new avenues for stories. Ultimate Spider-Man is my favorite Bendis work, one he excelled within since he basically had complete freedom to do as he wished. Ultimate X-Men had some great ideas, ULt. FF was intriguing and the Ultimates......well, I'd say without the Ultimates, we would have no Avengers movie.

I also loved the idea of publishing it as a separate line, something I wish DC would have done with the Nu52.

[freedomfighter]

I haven't read Avengers in years, literally and as such I stopped coming here. Yet after seeing the death of Hank Pym in AOU, I just had to stop by for a second.
Look, I hate bendis, no one will be surprised by that. Yet this is bad storytelling by any yardstick. First the actual death scene, evidently Hank is an idiot. He first off, doesn't even try to shrink and evade getting killed or call up a million ants to fly into Logan's nose and ears. Nope, Hank just sits there and gets himself gutted like a fish.
And then someone at Marvel will say something like "Hank Pym isn't cool which is why kids don't buy comics with him."
And yet his big appearance in your giant crossover consists of him whining to Sue Richards to help "get him off me!" like some kid whose big brother is giving him a wedgie... i mean I would hope he'd put up more of a fight before he gets a Colombian necktie. Imagine what a really good fight scene could've done in terms of amping up the emotion and tension in the sequence before Hank gets killed. Or hell, have Hank somehow realize what he's done and want to die because of it. Just something other than badass wolverine kills because "that's he does and he's the best at it..."
Next the timeline chronology...again, suddenly the Hank Pym who couldn't fight Wolverine more than five panels is so instrumental in the marvel universe that everything is thrown into time warped chaos. Either Hank's an ineffectual mort who only messes things up or he's an integral cog in the MU.
If I were reading this book without a long history of the characters I would be asking "why does anybody even miss this guy Pym?"
If Bendis had portrayed Hank better, made him a more dynamic character then his disappearance would mean something.
Bendis didn't so Hank's disappearance doesn't really feel it matters.
This isn't just Bendis bashing, this is simple storytelling critique...

[sharkar]

May 6, 2013 8:03:43 GMT -5 tomspasic said:

1. Pym creates Ultron after studying Dragon Man's AI.
2. Ultron evolves into an eventual world killer.

Solutions:
1. Kill the guy who developed Dragon Man, before he makes Dragon man. Or remove Dragon Man from earth before Pym can study it. Pym has no AI on which to base his research= no Ultron and we still get Pym alive as a hero.
...

Yeah, there are plenty of ways to handle this without killing off poor Hank. Say, why don't Sue and Wolverine take care of the guy who "recommended" Dragon Man be turned over to Hank in the first place (according to Avg. v. 1.#41)? That would be Reed Richards. ;D

[humanbelly]

May 7, 2013 10:29:34 GMT -5 sharkar said:

May 6, 2013 8:03:43 GMT -5 tomspasic said:

1. Pym creates Ultron after studying Dragon Man's AI.
2. Ultron evolves into an eventual world killer.

Solutions:
1. Kill the guy who developed Dragon Man, before he makes Dragon man. Or remove Dragon Man from earth before Pym can study it. Pym has no AI on which to base his research= no Ultron and we still get Pym alive as a hero.
...

Yeah, there are plenty of ways to handle this without killing off poor Hank. Say, why don't Sue and Wolverine take care of the guy who "recommended" Dragon Man be turned over to Hank in the first place (according to Avg. v. 1.#41)? That would be Reed Richards. ;D

Wasn't Dragon Man created by some kindly old scientist? Who was then killed by the Mad Thinker-- who then stole the big ol' android? Or am I thinking of some other 'droid-napping? Heck, if anyone in the equation could go, you'd think it would be the Mad Thinker-! Or why not simply go back and destroy Dragon Man outright? Surely Sue would be capable of that?
The premise just doesn't hold up at all, naturally. Heck, Wolverine's really too smart to latch onto pre-emptive murder as no-viable-alternatives solution here. And Sue would never, NEVER agree to this, no matter what. If Hank were there actively threatening the kids, maybe-- but not with a threat this abstract with such a tenuous cause/effect structure.

Murder as a solution of first-resort. Nice. Just what I'd like to use to introduce comics to any kid.

HB

[starfoxxx]

Interesting thread---- especially since I consider anything "he-who-I-promised-never-to-mention" writes as "not really part of the MU", or perhaps "imaginary" stories. I consider whatever "you-know-who" writes to be as relevant to MY Marvel Universe as "Super Hero Squad". (Except Super Hero Squad actually gets the characterization correct).

Maybe it was really the Skrull Hank Pym from Secret Invasion. Anyone remember that nonsense from a couple years ago?

No?

Then rest assured that this nonsense will all be forgotten before you know it.




------------I implore anyone who is STILL buying "you-know-who's" garbage to STOP immediately.

[Shiryu]

So, today issue #10 of AoU came out, ending the series. As I'm suuure you are all dying to know what happened in the latter part of the saga, here is a quick recap.

We had left things with Wolverine and Sue Storm travelling to the past and killing Hank Pym. On their return to the present, they find a vastly different world, one where "science had lost the war against magic". Apparently there had been a war between Asgard and the armies of Morgana le Fey. Thor had died and Odin had withdrawn his armies, leaving Earth badly outgunned. The Avengers had disbanded shortly after Hank's mysterious death, with the main superhero group being the Defenders, led by Steve Rogers and Doctor Strange. The real head of everything seems to be Tony Stark, mostly in a cyborg body.
Stark has Logan and Sue captured and interrogated, believing them spies of Morgana. When Xavier and Emma Frost confirm their story, Tony accuses Logan of a monumental blunder, since he could have obtained the same result (preventing the creation of Ultron) without alterine the timeline, by programming a "time virus" in the robot and leaving a backdoor open in its programming. The conversation is cut short by a sudden, massive attack by Morgana forces, destroying New York and killing nearly everyone, including Sue. Having seen the distruction, Logan decides to travel back again and undo his own actions, despite a dying Tony warning him that the time continuum can not take any more strain and risks shattering.

Logan goes back and stops himself from killing Hank Pym, explaining the situation to him and suggesting the time virus thing. Hank agrees, records a message for himself and erases his memories of the encounter, to make sure history proceeds as it was meant to. The Logan who had seen the Morgana future asks his other self to kill him, since they can't both exist. Then the surviving Logan and Sue travel back to the present.

In the present, pre-Ultron-conquest timeline, the Avengers stop a plot by the Ingelligencia (Wizard, Modok etc.) and run into a revived Ultron. They fight, but Hank Pym, who has recently seen his old recorded message, uploads this special virus through the backdoor and makes Ultron shut down. Thor then destroys it.

It all seems well and good, but everyone suddenly experiences a "timequake", having visions of past/future/alternative versions of themselves. The time continuum has indeed shattered and now the entire multiverse in unstable. We get to see two main consequences: Galactus appearing in the Ultimate universe, and former Image character Angela appearing in the main Marvel Universe, angry at whoever dragged her there.

So, that's it. I found it a disappointing finale to a story struggling to decide its own direction, with the only silver lining being that continuity has been preserved. A lot has been said about Angela en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_(comics) becoming a Marvel character for the time being. Personally, I had never read or heard of her, so I don't quite get what the hype is all about... some websites make it sound like Batman or Superman is coming, and AoU ends up being little more than an editorial gimmick to justify the appearance of the character in the main MU.

[humanbelly]

Excellent condensed re-cap, Shir. Man, it doesn't actually sound like that much story really takes place, does it?

I know this is going to seem like the ultimate, obvious cheap shot, but the following came IMMEDIATELY to my mind:


Sometime in 1606, 2:23 a.m., Bill Shakespeare wrote:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I mean, from the outside (as one who hasn't read the "event" at all), this would seem to be an almost absurdly apt summation of Age of Ultron. And boy, it wrapped up exactly. . . EXACTLY. . . as predicted, didn't it? With even LESS than the usual minimal lasting consequences that these "events" incur, since the assumption would be that NO ONE in what's left of the MU these days will be aware of any of this, since it was time-wiped away, yes? It becomes. . . oh, what's the phrase?. . . ah yes, an Imaginary Story!!!.

How nice.
How clever.
How ground-breaking, envelope-pushing, and original.
Y'know, they should expand on this type of story-telling format, and make an on-going title devoted to alternate-event stories, and call it "What If-?", or something similar. That'd be genius.

Ah. . . wait. . .

HB the Embittered

PS-- Well, and I do have to be fair and admit that being supremely snarky about a book that I've never picked up is not exactly the height of critical integrity-- so any admonitions directed my way along those lines will be completely justified and accepted w/ a stiff upper lip. . .

[Marvel Boy]

So which part of that is supposed to be the 'unguessable ending' that Bendis kept screaming about when this mini first began? We've known about the appearance of Angela for months now so that leaves Galactus? If I read any of the Ultimate books, that might concern me.

As for Angela, the only item that interests me is Gaiman's role in writing her. Always love Gaiman's work, be it comics or prose.

Of course, now, the implication seems to be how does this all affect Hickman's magnum opus of broken systems and colliding universes? Is this timequake what started all of that?

[Shiryu]

There is a long interview to Bendis about it over here: www.newsarama.com/18143-bendis-details-age-of-ultron-finale-implications-spoilers.html

he surely seems enthusiastic about it all, and how big it was... but it still feels to me like not much really happened. I suppose I'd have to wait and see for this timequake effects.

Of course, now, the implication seems to be how does this all affect Hickman's magnum opus of broken systems and colliding universes? Is this timequake what started all of that?

I think that has to do with Infinity, the upcoming mini teased a while ago at the last FCBD.

[tomspasic]

It seems to me like this may be a way to "deal with" continuity, in the same way that DC's Crises are.
If the structure of Time or Reality are fractured or re-ordered, well, all those pesky problems about how long stuff has been happening for, or the relative order of events becomes less pesky.
It no longer has to make sense because now continuity and consistency are removed from the fundamental nature of this fictional multiverse.

And of course it would be a writer like Bendis who comes up with, or executes the delivery of this coup de grace for continuity.

I could be wrong, and it could just be the set up for the next set of Big Dumb Crossover Events. Or I could be right AND it's the set up of the next set of BDCE.

Whatever the meta reasons, AOU remains a bloated, empty, pointless, ugly "event", topped off by the laziest writer in comics putting in much of the already published "free" comic Avengers 12.1 in the "double sized" finale, albeit with a few extra lines of dialogue on top. Rashomon, this isn't.

[Marvel Boy]

Jun 22, 2013 3:27:07 GMT -5 tomspasic said:

Whatever the meta reasons, AOU remains a bloated, empty, pointless, ugly "event", topped off by the laziest writer in comics putting in much of the already published "free" comic Avengers 12.1 in the "double sized" finale, albeit with a few extra lines of dialogue on top. Rashomon, this isn't.

All of this tied into an issue I don't even want to read.

From what I gather reading other reviews and posts and such, this whole event could have been condensed down into one giant-sized one-shot and still have the same effect. It's ridiculous.

It's a far cry from Marvel's original maxi-series Secret Wars, which had a better plot, better art, and actual meaningful repercussions.

[spiderwasp]

Jun 23, 2013 12:07:37 GMT -5 Marvel Boy said:

Jun 22, 2013 3:27:07 GMT -5 tomspasic said:

Whatever the meta reasons, AOU remains a bloated, empty, pointless, ugly "event", topped off by the laziest writer in comics putting in much of the already published "free" comic Avengers 12.1 in the "double sized" finale, albeit with a few extra lines of dialogue on top. Rashomon, this isn't.

It's a far cry from Marvel's original maxi-series Secret Wars, which had a better plot, better art, and actual meaningful repercussions.

On the other hand - I'm more pleased with this than anything else Bendis has done over the past 10 years. The usual problem is that he does a single pointless storyline but, in the process, ruins one or more beloved characters in a way that takes years for other writers to fix. I am overjoyed that this event had no repercussions and can just slip away quietly into oblivion. After all, I didn't waste my money on it.

EXCEPT I am still pissed that they subtly used the other existing series with alternate numbers to tie in. I did waste my money on more than one of those which I would not have done if I had realized prior to purchase that the issues had nothing to with current continuity and only served as part of the Bendis story.

Still, in the end, any Bendis story that we can walk away from without having destroyed anything and just forget all about is a good Bendis story.