Age of Ultron 10, Captain Marvel 13

Age of Ultron 10
Bendis (w) and Maleev, Hitch, Neary, Guice, Peterson, Pacheco, and Bonet w/ Palmer, Marquez, and Quesada (a) and Mounts and Isanove (c)

Age of Ultron reaches its conclusion as past Pym sends a message to near-current day Pym (a day back in Bendis' run on Avengers) that explains to him how to defeat Ultron. It involves a special team of Avengers breaking up a meeting of the Intelligencia (I want to say it happened in a point one back in Bendis' run, but I could be wrong. It definitely happened in Bendis' run) that spawns Ultron. In the original issue Ultron runs off, deciding he's not prepared for the fight just yet. He tries to do that here but Pym, knowing the outcome, stops him. Pym has prepared a code to try to shut Ultron down but it will take a bit of time to upload and kick in so the team of Avengers that are present with Ultron (Beast, Ms. Marvel, Wolverine, Iron Man, and Moon Knight) have to keep him occupied while Pym does his work from his lab. Ultron is outraged that Pym would try to use such a code against him and begins to break down the code as it's uploaded. Fortunately, this is all part of Pym's plan as it triggers a self-replicating virus that breaks Ultron apart, ending the threat. Not all is perfect, though, as, with Wolverine's return to the present, timelines start to make themselves clear in several characters' heads. Suddenly our Tony Stark gets images of all his different universe's armors and Wolverine sees all sorts of Wolverine iterations and even Miles Morales catches glimpses of different universe from his spot in the Ultimate Universe. Tony, Beast, and Pym reconvene to discuss what's happened and they speculate that Wolverine has broken the timeline and pushed it one step too far, throwing the entire 616, as well as possibly all other universe, into a bit of chaos. This chaos is illustrated for the audience as Miles Morales runs afoul of Galactus in his own universe. Finally, Angela, a character I don't know a ton about (besides knowing she was created by Neil Gaiman and Todd MacFarlane back in the '90s for Spawn) appears and claims revenge on whoever has woken her.

It's still a little hard to talk about this comic. There are reasons to believe it's a story worth telling, especially with the results it's borne, such as Galactus in the Ultimate Universe and Angela's appearance and the destruction of Ultron. However, I do still heartily believe that it's a story that was far too long in the telling and it's hard for that to feel like anything except a bit of a slap in the face. Buying the whole series would have cost people about forty dollars and I very much cannot say this is worth forty dollars as a story. I'm not saying that about the creative team, who obviously deserves to be paid what they got (mostly) but this seems like it could have fit into five books instead of ten. It's part of a series of events that last for far too many books and seem to pad out their existence in the middle before winding down. It is a business, sure, and Marvel has to make money, something I'll hopefully never begrudge them, but it does hurt a bit when it feels so blatantly like we've been sold something just for the sake of the money. As for this issue by itself, I still think there's a weird amount of talking down to the audience about why time shouldn't be broken and I think that there's a whole ton of dialogue for things that don't require as much dialogue. Again, the universe is certainly changed a bit as a result of this series but, in truth, until we see more, it's hard to say how much.

Captain Marvel 13
DeConnick (w) and Hepburn w/ Sandoval (a) and Bellaire and Troy (c)

Kree Sentries are waking up the world over and still no one knows who is behind all of this. Carol has assembled her own little team, consisting of Spider-Woman, Tracy, Dakota North, and Frank Gianelli to try to piece together what exactly is happening and what it has to do with her and the theft of her piece of the Psyche-Magnetron. Her assistant Wendy brings Bruce Banner over to try to help more and he explains that SWORD has discovered that someone placed a call to Kreespace while the Avengers were dealing with the Brood and SWORD was trying to figure out how they missed a Brood appearance in their space before they hit New York. Carol still fears it could be anyone but Bruce points out that there's a camera pointed at her apartment door, one that was clearly installed by Carol's angry neighbor. Carol goes to him and insists that she see the footage, promising that she'll move out if he lets her see it. He does but she has to join up with the other Avengers to stop this sudden rash of Sentries that are attacking anything that comes near and seem to be attempting to converge with one another. Her team, minus her, Spider-Woman, and Banner, start to comb through the footage to see who broke into her apartment that day. Meanwhile, she manages to use a jet and her skycycle (that's what it's called now, at least in my head) to defeat the Sentry she's gone after, though it takes more than she expected (including crashing the jet into it). Yon-Rogg seems to have little problem with this, as he needs twelve Sentries for his plan to work and there are scores hidden on the planet; defeating one, he claims, will not stop him. Wendy and company get a glimpse on the camera of the thief and send it to Carol, who immediately identifies him and knows where he's planning to go.

Unlike certain other events, events that happen more on the down-low, that aren't billed as universe-shaking events, tend to have a little more wiggle room. The world can be in jeopardy, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. There can be a team of Avengers working on it, but there doesn't have to be. The villain can be a huge Marvel Universe foe of the likes of Ultron or Thanos, but...well, nevermind, it kind of can't be that these days without it being a full-blown event. It also is rarely pumped up to ten issues or more. In this case, as was the case in the most recent event like this one (X-Termination), we're now officially halfway through the crossover and it's hard to imagine how they're going to wrap all of this up in just two more books. It gives a sense of tension and excitement that a long series just can't sustain. Instead of a drawn out series with too much dialogue and too much explanation and probably too many fight scenes, we get a pretty tight story that gives us what we need to know and jumps quickly from plot point to plot point. In this case, it's also giving us a good insight into Captain Marvel, as she's the center of this whole event. A fantastic issue and this event is shaping up into a good one. Like I said, it's a little hard to see how it could be over in just two more issues but I'm sure the team will find a way.