Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *
When Henry Pym built the entity known as Ultron, nobody really could have foresaw what was going to happen down the line in the often convoluted but truly entertaining world of Marvel Comics.
Age Of Ultron is one of the graphic novels in which was always begging to be written, it would sit majestically alongside other crossovers that have thrilled Marvel fans across the ages and would be thought of in the same high esteem as perhaps Days Of Future Past and The Secret Wars…it is just a pity that high expectations doesn’t always play the same game that the reader’s minds wishes beyond hope that they would.
Graphically Age Of Ultron is not the most striking of all the stories put together from the powerhouse that is Marvel. There are only a handful of scenes in which the artists have captured the enormity of the story laid out by Brian Michael Bendis and Mark Waid. The utter desolation that greets the reader that should leave them reeling as if witnessing in the flesh a battle that has laid waste to everything they ever knew, is somewhat tempered by the lack of total empathy that comes across. Where the writing brings the atrociousness of what has been done to humanity to sharp and clear focus, the artwork that accompanies it is sadly lacking in parts in depth and at times originality.
When the artwork does capture the moments of darkness, it is in short blasts, the barrage of repeated body blows to the readers psyche is missing and is only really framed in passages in which the Fantastic Four’s Susan Richards, A.K.A. The Invisible Woman struggles with the atrocity of the death of Henry Pym in which she is complicit with Wolverine and the paradox that ensues. In other characters, the outrage and despair seem to be misplaced. Only the honesty of Spiderman and surprisingly the bravery of Hawkeye and She-Hulk seemed to capture the integrity of what has befallen Marvel’s mightiest heroes and the rest of the Human race.
With second in the Avengers franchise due out in 2015, for the first time the reader of the graphic novel might actually get more out of the big screen adaptation than in having read what should have been one of the finest stories bought out of Marvel.
Age of Ultron is available to purchase from Worlds Apart on Lime Street, Liverpool.
Ian D. Hall