atypical lazy Bendis double page splash pages
We kick off the greatest and most important thing to happen to comics ever since Avengers vs. X-Men, with Age of Ultron #1 by Brian Michael Bendis and Bryan Hitch.
Do you remember like over a year ago when we got a teaser for Age of Ultron in one of those Marvel Point One one-shots? If you read that already, then congratulations, you've read Age of Ultron #1. Well, actually, you read Age of Ultron #1 with even less horrible characterization and use of Hawkeye. 80% of this story is Hawkeye saving Spider-Man from Hammerhead and Owl. The rest is more prelude to the event. We have no context to anything in this issue, obviously what they were going for, but it makes reading a 22 page comic - of mostly stuff we've already read - absolutely redundant.
This just isn't very good. At all. This issue is based almost entirely around Hawkeye. It's utterly useless since it again subscribes to the dumb Bendis' Hawkeye who runs around with guns and crossbows happily killing people because Bendis doesn't read any comics for research - he just looks at covers. So, yes, we have the standard awful modern day Hawkeye portrayals and then we also have the atypical lazy Bendis double page splash pages to pad out the issue to hide the fact he can't write well or appropriately.
Then we are introduced to the, presumably, main characters of Age of Ultron! Oh boy!! An Ultron story, there's loads of brilliant characters who are related to Ultron and have been underused for years now. From the Human Torch, Jocasta and Mockingbird to main Avengers characters like Vision and Hank Pym. Nah, who am I kidding? This is just Bendis' favorite characters. You know, the same sort of thing he treat us to for too long when he was dictating the entire Marvel Universe as writer to the Avengers books. We have Captain America (obviously!), Iron Man (obviously!), Hawkeye (obviously!), Spider-Man (obviously!), Wolverine (obviously!), Luke Cage (obviously!) and then the token "I'm not playing favorites" with Emma Frost and She-Hulk thrown in to try and make people think the criticism that Bendis plays favorites is not true! Also, we get She-Hulk with a new short hairdo because that was exactly what made great female characters like Ms. Marvel even greater.
Another key part of the issue is we end on the twist that the Age of Ultron is so horrible and hard on the heroes that it has caused Captain America to break down and cry. Bendis and the modern brigade of crappy writers overuse this so damn much. Back when Captain America cried in Under Siege, it was memorable and defined the event. The reason why? Because he didn't cry for the next 10 stories. Bendis, Fraction and the others don't get that if you overuse something then it loses it's worth. Captain America has broken down in almost every event since Disassembled and the fact that he does so, again, in Age of Ultron is completely unnoteworthy and just another example of a talentless writer milking the same dead cow to try and hide his inability to write anything meaningful without punctuating it with insistence that it's meaningful.
This is just pure boredom inducing comics. There's no character to this issue, there's no real plot, there's not even the Ultron promised in the title. This is just a prologue disguising itself as the first part of a story, and not even a good prologue. There's nothing entertaining here. This is literally only a book for you if you find pleasure over terribly written Hawkeye violence. Not surprising in that it's poorly written garbage.
