My history professor is fond of saying that you need to ask not only why something happened in history but also why it happened when it did. In this issue, the first is a lot easier to explain than the second.
Every mini-series like this one has the issue where the author has to hit fast forward and get to the place where s/he needs to be to move into the next phase. This issue is that one for "Age of Ultron." Bendis brings the three groups together, but it's a somewhat bumpy ride. The most believable sequence is the primary story, involving the main group of superheroes. Jennifer and Luke learn from Vision that Ultron is attacking from the future, resulting in She-Hulk sacrificing herself to get that information to the heroes in the Savage Land. Bendis has some good moments here, from making it clear that Luke's rage over Jessica and Danielle's deaths drives him to succeed to showing how weary the superheroes are when they barely comment on the nuclear explosion that the Ultrons unleash to try to stop Luke.
The secondary story, with Black Widow and Moon Knight, stretches your credulity a bit. We not only learn that Nick Fury conveniently has a secret base in the Savage Land, but that he also has a secret plan for taking down Ultron in just this scenario. I'm going to reserve judgment on the plan until we get more details, but the fact that Nick has a secret base in the Savage Land is the "why it happened when it did" moment that I mentioned earlier. Although it's totally believable that he would have such a secret base, Bendis doesn't really make any attempt to address how remarkably convenient it was for Marc and Natasha to stumble across this information just in time to meet the other superheroes there.
It's the tertiary story, with Red Hulk and Taskmaster, that Bendis totally phones-in. Red Hulk not only survived the attack from a few issues ago, but he happens to recover just as Taskmaster is strolling by him. Moreover, despite having a distinct lack of allies, he decides to kill Taskmaster (who's doing exactly what he said that he'd do, escape Chicago with Ultron tech) and then somehow knows to go to the Savage Land.
But, I'm not going to spend too much time crying over spilled milk. Bendis could've gotten everyone together in a lot more eloquent way, but what's done is done. It's a transition issue and I'm willing to leave it at that. Looking ahead, the clear question to me at this point is if Bendis is going to bring us the battle that we saw in "Avengers" #6, where Kang and Earth's heroes attack Ultron in the future. In that arc, we learned that Kang and the heroes lose the battle and that Kang's repeated attempts to win it wind up fracturing the time stream, setting up the events of that arc. Looking at future issues, Kang does appear on the cover of "Uncanny Avengers" #8 AU, so it seems possible that we're going here. If so, most importantly, at the end of "Avengers" #6, old Iron Man hands young Iron Man a device to use to defeat Ultron. Given that he now knows where Ultron is, it seems like a good time for Tony to use that device...
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