Age of Ultron 9
Bendis (w) and Peterson, Pacheco, and Bonet (a) and Mounts and Villarrubia (c)
One of my problems with this series, as I've said time and time again, is that it is way too long. I tend to have issues with Bendis on this front, which I'm sure I will examine again tomorrow as I write a review for the final issue of Daredevil: End of Days. However, I think we've officially reached the point where I have nothing more to say about this series. Everything I've written about this series (and recent Bendis as a whole, honestly) holds true; it expects that the readership, people
currently reading comic books, I'd remind you, don't know anything about time travel, it focuses on characters who like to talk in quick bursts of snippy dialogue, and a bunch of the tones don't match with the seriousness of the situation. I'd add to that, in this case, that there are literally three pages of this penultimate issue which feature panels of destroyed New York and Wolverine making a plethora of grunts and groans and the like. All in the same area of blown-up New York. Then Tony Stark tells Wolverine that time is an organism and traveling back and forth through it to change things tears it apart and Wolverine proceeds to travel back to talk to himself about killing Pym. As the both talk to each other in snappy repartee, with the occasional interruption from Hank Pym saying "this is fascinating" and the likes, the opposite of what the audience is thinking before all three are greeted by Sue Storm, also still back in time, who jumps in to, first and foremost, blame Wolverine for knocking her out at the car so that she didn't come in to see what was happening. This might not sound that objective, but this is all so stupid. Then they tell Pym to create Ultron but make it so he has a design flaw that he can't fix and that Pym can activate to stop Ultron but Pym can't know he's activating it because this is all so stupid. Then he makes a weird new Ultron as the Wolverines and Sue arrive at the Savage Land and watch as one Wolverine kills the other, which is all so stupid.
As I said above, I'm not convinced I can say anything else objective about this book. This is one of the problems with a series that has dragged on too long; a once-noble reviewer dedicated to try to look objectively at the book is now forced to admit that maybe he's not in the right state of mind to do just that. Instead, he wants to type "stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid" all over this review. Frankly, we should all praise him as a hero for not having done that from word one of this review.
Thanos Rising 3
Aaron (w) and Bianchi (a) and Svorcina (c)
Thanos leaves Titan after killing his mother to go on and push forth in his new life. He goes across the universe, from galaxy to galaxy, with a crew of pirates, landing many wives and spawning many children across the cosmos. None of it is satisfying for him as he keeps taking more wives and fathering more kids and killing more aliens with his pirates in order to simply feel something. He doesn't, except lingering remorse over the things that happened at Titan. Mostly, he's upset that the mysterious girl didn't reciprocate his feelings towards her. She, he is convinced, is the only woman who will ever make him feel love. In this new life, he leaves all of his wives and children behind time after time and has sworn off killing, even though it enrages the pirate captain. He keeps his job because he's adept at finding new targets and turning off all of their sensors and everything. However, his seeming inability to kill is a point of contention with the captain, who eventually attacks Thanos to provoke a response. As Thanos continues to refuse to fight, he accepts his fate, ready to be beheaded. Instead, though, he seems to black out and opens his eyes to find the pirate captain disemboweled before him. He returns to Titan later to see his mother's grave and comes across the mysterious woman again. He asks her to marry him, deciding that she needs him just as much as he needs her, and promising her that he'll give her anything she could desire. She sort of consents, saying that he'll need to be hers and hers alone and demanding that he go out and kill all of his once wives and children, which he begins to do as the issue ends.
I'm unsold on this series. I'll be honest, I don't know the full history of Thanos. I know only what I've seen reading the books that I've read in my lifetime which means I've seen him more than a few times and through several different lenses. However, this is comics and he's been around for four decades now so I certainly don't know his full character. In what I do know of him, though, he's a comic book villain in every sense of the word. He's cold, he's calculating, he's powerful, and he's evil. Sometimes that can come off as cliche or lazy or any number of other negative attributes. However, sometimes the best villains are simple brilliant sociopaths, dedicated to chaos for chaos' sake. It's the character of Iago from Shakespeare's
Othello and it sustains over time for a reason. Sometimes, then, giving these characters a background can actually weaken them. I'm not a hundred percent sure that's true of Thanos (particularly where I'm not sure of his background in general) but it kind of feels like, as the mystery is unraveled, it's going to leave people feeling a bit unfulfilled. I suppose if this woman turns out to be inside Thanos all along (a definite possibility) or something along those lines, it's going to equate to about that same thing and it will have been nice to watch his descent into madness (well, maybe "nice" is the wrong word). However, if it is a woman, I have some serious qualms about the message here and Marvel should probably be a little careful about the idea that one of its universe's biggest killers was turned this way by a woman. So let's all just hope it's his imagination.
Thor: The Dark World Prelude 1
Yost and Kyle (w) and Eaton and Hennessy (a) and Troy, Sotomayor, and Mossa (c)
This is a weird one. If you saw
The Avengers, and you're reading this blog so I have a feeling you did, you'll recognize about 50% of this issue. This book takes place before and concurrent with the movie as we learn exactly why Thor hadn't yet returned to Earth prior to Loki's attack on the Tesseract. We also see a little bit of how Thor came back to Earth with the Bifrost destroyed, something that was glossed over a bit in the movie (with a throwaway line talking about dark energy and the cost to send him through). More or less that's what we get here as Odin shows Thor some dark energy and explains it will cost them both to send him through it. So pretty much exactly the same. However, we also get some interesting stuff about how hard Jane has been working to reopen the portal and what the universe is doing in Asgard's absence from it. For someone looking to get into the spirit of
Thor: the Dark World with only knowledge from
Thor and
The Avengers, it seems that this comic is certainly accomplishing that. It's a good interweaving (not necessarily seamless, but good) of the storylines from the Cinematic Universe with some behind-the-scenes Asgard stuff tossed in. I don't have a huge idea of what's coming in the newest
Thor movie, set for release in November, but it certainly feels like this book is going above and beyond to tie some plots together.
What intrigues me most about this book is that it's co-written by Christopher Yost, writer for Scarlet Spider and Avenging Spider-Man, most episodes of the amazing TV series
Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes (available on Netflix streaming), and, most importantly, co-writer for the screenplay of
Thor: The Dark World. It's encouraging that one of the writers of the movie is entrenched in comics and has already had success translating comics for media with
EMH. It's also encouraging for this two-issue prelude (which feels like it's being released too early to coincide with a November movie release) that one of the film's writers will be helming this tie-in. Fun stuff, probably not a ton of substance for long-time fans but great to get caught up in the Cinematic Universe and probably great for fans whose only knowledge of Marvel comes from the movies. Good way to introduce a lot of concepts that could be lingering on the shelf before this movie.
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