Bendis (w) and Hitch and Neary (a) and Mounts (c)
As expected, the heroes enter Nick Fury's secret base to find Fury home and learn that he's built the base on some of Doom's time travel panels. The plan is to go into the future and destroy Ultron there. Presumably they're planning to end-of-Back-to-the-Future-Marty-McFly him and set the time circuits to ten minutes before Time travel is a tricky crutch for some books to fall on. With no real-life occurrences of time travel to fall back on for research, the rules are somewhat in the air. The butterfly effect and various divergent timelines come into play along with plenty of other issues. On top of that, in a situation like this and which this book itself brings up, where do you stop? If you're willing to rewrite time so Pym is killed before he creates Ultron, why not go back and kill Hitler or make Doctor Doom a hero? Sure there's always the risk of altering the present into something worse, but there's also the possible reward of altering the present into something better. How could killing Hitler result in a worse future? Tough questions all. Tough and inexpertly handled. Here's the thing: Ultron improves himself constantly. His first appearance had him attack the Avengers, who come out relatively unscathed and his second attack consists of him creating the Vision and sending him after them (which is brought up in a flashback to the Vision recovering from being ripped in half by She-Hulk in Avengers Disassembled and is noted as the only positive to come out of Ultron) only to be destroyed again by the Avengers and Vision. THERE. If you're trying to figure out ways to kill Ultron, why not just go THERE? Pym has seen what Ultron is capable of and has now even seen that he's likely to keep improving himself until the world is gone. Vision has been created and has become a good guy. No one has died at the hands of Ultron. And he wouldn't know you were coming. That's where you should aim. Not at the future where he might be controlling things from and where he may be expecting your arrival. Not in the past with the death of Hank Pym. When Ultron's key accomplishment is scaring the Avengers a bit and creating Vision. BOOM. Time machine.
Ultron 1AU
Immonen (w) and Pinna (a and c)
The book focuses on, as I've let on, Victor Mancha and his relationship to Ultron. Victor is the cyborg son of Ultron who has rejected his father and his own presumed fate. Instead, Ultron has told him in the past that he's becoming more and more human and that soon he'll be indistinguishable from humans. Though that's something he probably took pride in when it didn't affect his chances of being found by his father, currently it's becoming something of a hindrance. He's used his android-like body to avoid detection by Ultron's many sentries and to guide the few humans he could find to safety. By the end of the book, though, some of the people he's led to safety have discovered he's a robot like Ultron and some other people with him have died in a new attack on their hiding place, a former hideout for the Runaways. Most of the issue revolves around Victor thinking about his past as someone who has rejected his identity and reminiscing on the times he had with the Runaways, who had accepted him despite his parentage. The issue ends with him leaping into battle with the Ultron sentries and deciding that he's certainly not going to give up fighting even if it ends in his death.
Again, I'm not sure this was a bad book as much as it was kind of uninteresting to someone who's not familiar with the Runaways. It also made me wonder why it was particularly important. I would have to again say that it's probably important to Runaway fans, but to people that don't know as much it's hard to feel particularly driven by Victor and it's hard to care to a huge extent. Instead, I found myself often wondering where this fit in and if the Runaways or Victor would make any other appearances in this event or if this was simply here to be here. If it is, I think it's still an alright book and probably a better one if you care about the Runaways, but otherwise it's tough to fully recommend.
Avengers Assemble 14AU
Ewing (w) and Guice and Palmer (a) and D'Armata (c)
Anyway, Natasha is in San Francisco for a day off and meeting with a couple of old friends who I'm not entirely familiar with. They seem to both be from her Champions days and no one ever should be forced to read the Champions so I haven't. The book portrays them well as good friends and as truly caring for one another before it kills both of them (and everyone else Natasha tries to save) off and leaves Natasha alone. Nat switches from friend to authority figure with ease while her narrative explains how she's adept at becoming what people around her need. She shows it off as she takes charge of every situation, though, as I said, it's all for naught as Ultron is just too powerful. She survives and makes her way to one of Fury's secret bases, wherein she finds Moon Knight with a dead SHIELD agent. He had been on assignment with the agent and it was that agent who had pointed him to the base before dying. Nat recognizes that Moon Knight is on edge, so she lies about how horrible and random the Ultron attack had been to her, instead telling him that she had been on a black ops mission as well so this is all just part of the day. It refocuses him enough for her to work with him without losing him to his insanity. It's a really great moment for Natasha as she puts on the cold face that so many not close to Black Widow see from her. It's a smart way to show her ability and her understanding and, weirdly, compassion off while tying a narrative together. A really well-done book, though, in fairness, I'll add the caveat of "it might be better if you know/care about the character." Still, good book.
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