Comics Review- Age of Ultron: Was All This Really Necessary?

For those unfamiliar with the character, Ultron is an artificial intelligence created by Hank Pym, a founding member of the Avengers who has gone by various superhero identities, the most prominent being Ant-Man. But like most artificial intelligence programs, it went evil and became bent on eradicating humanity, and essentially became the Avengers' greatest enemy.
In 2011's Avengers #12.1, Ultron had been reactivated and escaped a confrontation with the Avengers to plan his next attack. Tony Stark feared that when Ultron came back, he would bring the end of everything. And thus, Marvel set the stage for a story called "Age of Ultron."
After a couple years of waiting due to art delays, Marvel finally announced "Age of Ultron" would happen in 2013. While I was a little peeved it was happening so soon after Marvel's last big event "Avengers vs. X-Men", the hype around it made it forgivable because I was excited to see what would happen. So, now that the story is over, did it live up to the hype? Short answer: no. Long answer: I payed almost $40 for this?

To begin, when Marvel first announced this series, they made it sound like that it would be Ultron succeeding in taking over Earth with the remaining heroes mounting a resistance, and that some of the focus would be on characters like Hawkeye, Moon Knight, Black Widow, and Spider-Man. As more info on the story started to come about, it was starting to sound like much of the events of the story, Ultron's takeover in particular, would be done away with through time travel and become a world in Marvel's multiverse, similar to the 90's "Age of Apocalypse" event. That theory was becoming very prominent from the first half of the series. For one thing, many prominent characters being featured in main Marvel books were killed or said to be dead, including 75% of the Fantastic Four, Hulk, Thor, Cyclops, and Black Panther. Along with that, there were many continuity errors for a story that was supposed to take place in the present, including Spider-Man acting like Peter Parker when Otto Octavius was currently in control of Peter's body, Emma Frost retaining her psychic powers even though she lost them after AVX, and Wolverine wearing a costume he has never worn before. In response to those first two errors, I would have forgiven them if Marvel said AoU took place before AVX, but they were adamant that Otto was Spider-Man in this storyline, even including a tie-in issue of "Superior Spider-Man." While on the subject, I think the tie-in issues for series like Spider-Man and Fantastic Four really hurt the impact of the series, because those issues were place in the middle of the regular runs of the titles. They showed Reed, Johnny, and Ben die in the AoU issue of Fantastic Four, but then they're back like nothing happened in the next regular issue.
By #6 of the series, the story shifted gears from what it originally promised and become a time travel story involving Wolverine and Invisible Woman. By the end of the series, Ultron himself appeared only in the final issue. So a storyline involving Ultron, and the damn robot is only it for one issue.

I can basically summarize the story in five sentences:

• Ultron takes over the Earth, leaving very few heroes left to fight back.
• Wolverine and Invisible Woman travel back in time to kill Hank Pym before he can create Ultron, which they succeed in doing.
• They come back to a drastically altered present where a cyborg Tony Stark pretty much controls the world.
• Wolverine travels back again to stop his past-present self from killing Pym, where they devise a new way to stop Ultron before he attacks.
• The events of Avengers #12.1 are changed to when Ultron reactivates, he is unable to escape a battle with the Avengers, thanks to Pym, who was also able to give Stark equations to download into Ultron, that would lead to the robot being deactivated and its body destroyed by Thor.

So that's basically it. The past 9 issues becoming nothing more than paperweights because of the finale. I would have said "Spoiler alert!" but that would have been as fucking pointless as this series was.
The story doesn't technically end there though. Apparently, the main point of this series was to establish that because of Wolverine's tampering with the past, the space-time continuum had been broken and the walls of the Marvel multiverse were crumbling. While that plot point is very interesting, was 10 issues really needed to explain that? Hell, the issues dealing with the altered present felt more like filler. Honestly, with as much travel through time or between universes that has happened in Marvel's history, showing that they're heading towards a "Crisis on Infinite Earths" level event could have easily been done in an issue of "All-New X-Men" or "New Avengers", which deal with time travel and alternate universes respectively.
"Age of Ultron" was just Marvel's greed gone overboard. This tops "Fear Itself" as Marvel's worst event in the last 10 years. While the major after effects of "Fear Itself", the supposed deaths of Thor and Bucky, lasted what seemed to be only a few months, the story itself at least brought some allusion of possible change. With "Age of Ultron", when a majority of a story is effectively erased by its climax, it makes it hard to not feel cheated.
Also, when the potential stories coming out of an event sound more exciting than the actual event was, you know it was bad. One of them is the upcoming miniseries "Hunger", which deals with the main Marvel universe Galactus being transported into the Ultimate Marvel universe. I will probably wait for the collected edition of the series to read that, but I am interested in seeing how the Ultimate universe deals with a major threat originating from outside their own world, which will no doubt lead closer to the "Crisis" level event Marvel seems to be planning. When that happens, I feel that the main universe and Ultimate universe will become one, but that's my own wishful thinking.
Aside from that, while it hasn't been officially stated to be an affect of "Age of Ultron", Spider-Man 2099 will be appearing in an upcoming storyline in "Superior Spider-Man", which will pit Miguel against Otto to see who is the superior Spider-Man. Considering Miguel was used as a red herring as the identity of the Superior Spider-Man before the new book started, I'm happy to be seeing him back in comics. The end of AoU makes me glad to have a theory on how their encounter will happen.

As for the whole "Angela from 'Spawn' now in the Marvel universe" thing, it might be because I know nothing about the character, but I honestly thought it was over-hyped and did not give a shit when she showed up at the end of the book.

After this series, I am setting my expectations low for Marvel's next event, "Infinity." I want it to be good, but it's been hit and miss lately for Marvel events. Maybe if they actually spaced out their events...but that's probably too much to ask for.

For my comics reviews, there will be two ratings. The story rating is how I personally felt about it as a whole. The recommendation rating is how much I'd recommend it to friends or readers who are either new or lapsed. So the scores for Age of Ultron:

STORY RATING: 2/10
RECOMMENDATION RATING: 1/10

The story has its moments, but lasts too long and ultimately becomes pointless by the last issue of the series. You'd be better off waiting to see what future stories will come about because of it. If you're into post-apocalyptic, time travel, or alternate reality stories, it might be worth a look, but don't expect a big payoff.