Saturday, June 22, 2013

Age of Ultron #10 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

I...have no idea what we're supposed to think here.

If you look at the "Flashpoint"-esque ending of this issue, it appears that the whole point of the "Age of Ultron" was to send Galactus to the "Ultimate" universe and to introduce Angela to the Marvel Universe.  It also hints at the possibility that it will be easier for the various universes to blend into one another given the tears in the space-time continuum created by Wolverine, though it's unclear where Marvel really intends to go with that possibility.  For the time being, Galactus and Angela appear to be the only concrete outcomes.

I know nothing about Angela, other than the fact that Neil Gaiman apparently won her in some sort of legal settlement with Todd McFarlane.  Her inclusion here is suitably bizarre, since it forces the reader to be aware of (and excited about) a secondary character from another company to understand the impact of one of the two outcomes of this story.  (It wasn't like an alternate Jean Grey suddenly sauntered into our universe.)  Moreover, I'm pretty sure the settlement occurred well after Bendis envisioned the event.  The obvious question, then, is whether Marvel originally intended the Galactus switch to be the only real consequence of this event but decided to shoehorn Angela into it or if her inclusion displaced some other outcome (such as the transfer of Spider-Man 2099 to our universe).

Either way, it feels remarkably anticlimactic.  Sure, it was sort of cool to see how important "Avengers" #12.1 wound up being.  But, if I'm not going to get Miguel O'Hara, why do I care?  It reminds me of every Avengers story that Bendis ever told, ones that had all the trappings of an epic but never really delivered a story with any sort of lasting impact.  Parker Robbins escaped from jail, obtained the Infinity Gauntlet, lost the Infinity Gauntlet, and returned to jail.  In order words, everything ends where it started.  The world was fine, Ultron invaded, the world was destroyed, the Invisible Woman and Wolverine traveled into the past to fix it, they traveled to the future to see the results, the world was destroyed, Wolverine traveled into the past to fix it, they traveled to the future to see the results, the world was fine.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Taking another tack here, the failure of this event to shake up the status quo shows how differently the Avengers line has fared when compared to the X-Men line.  Events like "House of M," "Second Coming, "Messiah Complex," "Schism," and "Avengers vs. X-Men" provoked real change in the X-Men.  Scott assumed leadership of the X-Men, moved them to Utopia, fought about the direction of the team with Wolverine, led the more militant group, tried to save mutantkind with the Phoenix but lost himself, and currently finds himself an outlaw trying to save the dream (as he sees it).  We're talking change here.  Other characters, such as Havok and Rogue, have had their own heroes' trials that organically moved them from one place to a significantly different place.  In the "Avengers," Cap still throws a shield, Tony still makes wise-ass remarks, and Thor still speaks in a different font.  That's about it.  I'm hard pressed to find any concrete change that the Avengers have experienced over the last few years other than the constantly changing roster.  Whereas the X-Men are the "Dragon Age" of the Marvel Universe, the Avengers are the "Street Fighter."

In other words, I think this event is my last "Avengers" event for a while.  I know I'm supposed to be all excited about "Infinity," but, really, I'm hard pressed to find the energy (or money) to devote to another event that seems unlikely to change anything.

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