All-New Ultimates 1, What If? Age of Ultron 2

All-New Ultimates 1
Fiffe (w) and Pinna (a) and Woodard (c)

Spider-Woman, now going by Black Widow, Spider-Man, Cloak, Dagger, and Bombshell meet up at the secret Hell's Kitchen hideout of the All-New Ultimates (which is pretty much all of them with an open invite for Kitty Pryde). From there, Black Widow gives them all special communicators (formerly used by the now-defunct SHIELD) and they decide their next target will be a drug lab manufacturing drugs from Roxxon. While Black Widow tries to talk Kitty into joining up with them, Bombshell stumbles on to a drug deal gone wrong. She calls in the Ultimates and they team up to try to take down the enhanced drug dealers. Cops show up as the fight is happening and prepare to take everyone into custody before reinforcements for the drug dealers come, led by the mysterious Diamondback.

Spider-Man's team back from ULTIMATE SPIDER-MAN regroup here as a brand new full-on superhero team, set to battle Roxxon particularly, as they had been just before CATACLYSM shook the Ultimate Universe. Also making a seemingly obligatory appearance is Ganke Lee, Miles' best pal. The first issue is something of a long read, explaining a lot and checking in on every character. There's a feeling of wanting it all here, hoping to infuse humor and lightheartedness with a dark story and some dark situations. Hopefully it's something that settles in but at current it doesn't totally work for me. Also, Spider-Woman changing her identity and her look makes sense to me but I don't think her new look or name necessarily work right now. We'll see as things go on. As with any number one, it's hard to judge now. Let's let the team settle in a bit and then see how we're feeling.

What If? Age of Ultron 2
Keatinge (w) and Villalobos (a) and Redmond (c)

Because of the ripples caused because of dealing with the Ultron problem, we take a look into another universe where we see an alternate future based on a different outcome to the famous Armor Wars Iron Man storyline. In this world, Stark succumbs to his alcohol addiction at the hands of Obadiah Stane and Stane wins the Armor Wars, powering up incredibly and even trying to get his hands on real Stark armor. Wolverine wants to take Stane down and destroy the Master Mold in the Savage Land that's spitting out new armors regularly. He joins up with a new Ghost Rider and tracks down the retired Peter Parker before both go to enlist a meditational Hulk. They go to the Savage Land together and, while Hulk tries to beat up the Master Mold, they see that a Stark armor is powering everything as well as a descendant of Bolivar Trask (a Trask descendant is needed to power the Master Mold), a young girl used against her will to power things. Spider-Man wastes no time sacrificing himself to shut down the Master Mold and Wolverine, Hulk, and Ghost Rider leave with the girl, the mission complete.

I just do not get this story. On the one hand, I don't understand why this is under the AGE OF ULTRON umbrella. I understand it in the sense of "oh, timelines all shifted because the timestream was all sorts of messed up during AGE OF ULTRON so now we can tell a story from ANY time" but I don't understand it in that I'd be MUCH more interested in reading a book that was called WHAT IF? ARMOR WARS (pretty sure that already exists but WHATEVER) than WHAT IF? AGE OF ULTRON that then goes on to have nothing to do with Ultron or his age. On top of it, I have a lot of trouble following the story (and why does Captain America end up dead in like, every single possible future ever? The guy lived through WWII, doesn't that give him any sort of respect?) and it really feels like this one had a solid premise and then needed to be finished on a deadline. I don't know. This one's not for me. I like Villalobos' art, though. Very different than normal comic art these days but definitely something interesting to look at. Why is AGE OF ULTRON still haunting me?