First off, I've decided not to include all of the various tie-in issues when writing about this post, and instead I'm just going to talk about the core 10-part Age of Ultron series. Spoilers-in-a-nutshell incoming...
BEGINNING OF SPOILERS!!! In the present day, Ultron, the malevolent Artificial Intelligence created by Hank Pym, has pretty much taken over the world, and numerous superheroes are dead. The ones who are left discover that Ultron is controlling things from the future, using The Vision as a conduit, so a group of them decide to time travel forward in time to stop him. Wolverine has other ideas, and once they've gone, he travels back in time with Sue Storm in tow to kill Hank Pym. Unfortunately, when they return to the now-altered present day, things have still managed to turn to shit in Pym's absence, but in a whole different way. The Defenders (basically our altered-timeline Avengers) are attacked by Morgan LeFey, and just about everyone gets killed in a huge helicarrier explosion. With his dying breaths, Tony Stark tells Wolverine that if he alters the timelines too much, then time itself could be broken. Wolverine travels back in time again to stop his other self from killing Hank Pym, explaining that things still get screwed up anyway, and that everything needs to take place as it would have, but that Pym needs to create a virus that will shut Ultron down before his domination begins. He then sacrifices his own life because he doesn't want to live with the memories of the altered present day that he witnessed. Skip forward to the now unaltered present day, or just a few months before Ultron's attack anyway, and Hank Pym receives a package containing a recording from his past-self, detailing codes that will shut Ultron down when he next attacks. It goes well, and the codes work, destroying Ultron, and restoring normality to the universe. Unfortunately, it seems Wolverine's time travelling has indeed 'broken time', and alternate universes begin to cross over as Galactus turns up in the Marvel Ultimate Universe, and Angela, the bounty-hunting angel who previously appeared in Spawn over at Image Comics, has appeared in the Marvel Universe! END OF SPOILERS!!!
Phew. Honestly, it makes sense when you read the comics.
It's a funny one this. The series started really strong, but then, as release dates got a little erratic, and the story started to focus on just a few characters, it felt like it was beginning to tail off a bit, but actually having gone back and re-read the books, it really is just one of those arcs that will read better in a collected edition. Stories involving time travel can get a little confusing, and can feel a bit disjointed if you don't read the whole thing in one go, so I would recommend reading this in trade when it arrives, rather than hunting down single issues.
I also heard criticism that it had 'just turned into another Wolverine book'. It's true that he's a bit over-exposed at the moment, but personally, I don't read many books starring Wolverine, so that wasn't an issue for me. It was great to see characters included here who's books I don't normally read, though, especially Sue Storm and Luke Cage. Plus, Angela in the Marvel Universe!
All in all, I enjoyed Age of Ultron. It's not an amazing story, and Ultron himself is barely in it, but the overall idea is pretty bold, and Brian Michael Bendis is one of the few writers at Marvel you would trust with something like this. I'm also interested to see what the fallout from all of this will be, and I especially can't wait to see more of Angela in Guardians of The Galaxy.
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