Let's Talk About Rage of Ultron

[Silver Shocker]

So, this week I have read the new Avengers: Rage of Ultron graphic novel by Rick Remender and Jerome Opena. My thoughts?

Short answer: The art is top notch, story's a mixed bag, but the action's great, Ultron looks menacing and bada@@, the pace is great, and the banter pretty decent. If you're a Remender fan and looking for the next big Avengers Ultron story, this is definitely it, and I'd say it's worth buying at full price.

Long version: Hooooly cow, where to start?

Spoilers desu:

Spoiler

This book has been hyped as the new "Killing Joke". It's really not though. Minus the treatment of Barbara Gordon that book's a thematic masterpiece and the definitive Joker story. This thing's a mix between Identity Crisis, Cry for Justice, Rise of Arsenal, X-Men: Schism, Avengers Vs X-Men, the original Parralax story and Anakin Skywalker's plot from the flipping Star Wars Prequels.

The Ultron threat is that Ultron is trying to infect the entire universe with Nanomachines Son! And it's up to Remender's Avengers + Starfox (who is little more than a plot device) and noone else to stop him (seriously, we don't even get the usual one-line explanation as where the other people are). The real plot is  about the new status quo for Hank Pym. Go on and guess.

Here's a hint: It's the worst thing to happen to Hank Pym in the history of the character. Yes, worse than Bendis and Chuck Austin.

Hank Pym is written as a ranting, unheroic, bigoted a-hole in this story who randomly narrates that God doesn't exist (a fairly clumsy recurring theme in the book) and has decided it's ok to kill all villainous machines because it doesn't count as murder. He kills the Descendants from Remender's earlier books (Uncanny X-Force and Secret Avengers) who were stealing a Stark Sentinel (from Axis) and he says this right in front of Vision, who calls him on it multiple times throughout the book (and no, Vision going evil that one time never comes up. Not once. Nor does Ultron's son, the Heroic Victor Mancha from Runaways).

If you guys like the heroes being unheroic jerks and think the New 52 Justice League gets along too well, have I got a book for you!  The Avengers will stand around arguing with Ultron's death base floating right there in front of their window! On TWO separate occasions he crashes into the room, owns them, and calls them on this. These two scenes, BTW, are, not counting the forward by Kurt Busiek, the two best scenes in the book.

The book's got continuity hiccups and plot holes you can fit an Ultron Moon Base in, with Vision magically having information from scenes he wasn't present for whenever he goldarn feels like it, while Hank Pym has the magical ability to forgot the five or six (if not more) robot allies he knows and their worth as heroes, and that despite wanting Ultron dead, the last time they met in 616 (that I'm aware of) he let him run off with his bride Jocasta!  Who guess what, never appears, or is mentioned.

The big sequence at the end is the big thesis statement, Remender's definitive take on Ultron: expanding the idea of him being based on Hank's mind (from Busiek's excellent Ultron Unlimited, as I understand it) and flat out saying that Hank Pym is a barely-repressed psychopath who subconsciously wanted to kill all sentient life since he was a child because he has daddy issues. Not even kiddding.

The story ends with, you guessed it, Hank and Ultron merging into one (because Vision tackled them with his phasing powers (??)), then Star Fox "cures" him of evil with the power of love (again, not kidding). Hank Ultron flies off to maybe/maybe not be evil the next time he appears, and the Avengers have a memorial for Hank where the only characters who show up are the ones from Remender's team. Again, not kidding.

For the more religious-inclined of you, the book includes several unnecessarily anti-God spiels: one from Ultron (understandable, he's the villain), one from Hank (one of many scenes making him impossible to sympathize with in this story) and a random quip from Spidey to Thor that was completely unnecessary. It also features Sam Wilson as Cap, during fight banter, nonchalantly saying to Sabretooth (who quips that being good is hard and he should go back to being a villain) that "Helping others is never easy". I'll just let that one float in the air.

It's obvious why they did this. Hank's out, Scott Lang's in, and Ultron's in the public eye. So they do what they always do, make the comics superficially resemble the movies. I just wish they'd done a better job with Hank's character arc in this one. They went full Curt Connors Lizard "He was always an a-hole" and people hated that story when it came out too.

The one good thing I'll say about Hank's character in this is that they don't dredge up the stupid wife beater meme. His troubled relationship with Jan gets brought up a few times.

One thing's for sure, it should be interesting to see what they do with Hank next, assuming any of the canon survives Secret Wars.

[Edit] Because I want to give the best possible context, here's some extra information I just learned from reading online discussion.

Spoiler

Hank's portrayal in this book is apparently an complete 180 from his portrayal in his last team book, Avengers A.I., where he was very much in favor of A.I. being protected and being given a chance. I haven't read that book so I was not aware. No reference to that series in this OGN whatsoever as far as I can tell. While fans claim Rage of Ultron can't be canon because of Hickman's Avengers run Marvel has said it is and we'll know when it takes place soon.

[JeyNyce]

I read the book last night and it was a very good read.  I'm not going to go into detail because Shocker cover that pretty well.  I do have one question about the book:
Is this part of the Avengers/ Marvel cannon or just a what if type story.  The reason why I asked is that the that it ended would make great stories for the Avengers in the future.

[Silver Shocker]

Did you catch the part I added in at the bottom of my post? Because that mentions the canonicity. Other than that, I don't think people know.

Marvel's said they considered making it a mini series instead of OGN. I think it probably would have been better as one. The story needed more room to breathe IMO.

*Edit: Once again, in the interest of fairness, I have to have to make one minor retraction about the ending after checking a second time.

Spoiler

Steve Rogers appears for one panel during the memorial.

[SickAlice]

I liked it. It's an odd one, reads in canon but not in canon. A lot like Starlins recent Thanos series do if that makes any sense. I won't say it's an award winner or going down in history as the definitive read, but it's worthwhile. I like some Remender though I'm not doing backflips over his stuff either so I think I came in pretty ambiguous to this.

[Silver Shocker]

So I've read an early review for the Avengers: Age of Ultron film that seems to shed some light on what exactly was going on in this story.

Spoiler

Apparently in the film Ultron also randomly rants about God, making me think they shoehorned that into this comic just to, once again, try to tie superficially or thematically with the film. I'd rather they not do this. It is and always has been a self-defeating exercise. Any potential fan so dependent on the comic lore matching what's in the movies is going to be alienated the second they encounter anything in the stories that doesn't sync up with what they're used to or is obscure or confusing to them. Perfect example: Nick Fury. Even though they made sure a guy who looks like Samuel L. Jackson with a eyepatch was using the name Nick Fury, he's also running around in Cap's costume from Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and isn't in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D.