Reading the Fantastic Four comics from the start. After issue #5 comes issue #6, right? Not so with Marvel. Our regularly scheduled ongoing story arc is interrupted by a big crossover, so here’s issue #5.AU. That stands for Age of Ultron, of course.

Do I really have to read the entire crossover to get this issue? I’m going to try to wing it. The opening text page tells us that Hank Pym created Ultron, but Ultron went out of control and hates humanity. We begin with the FF still on their year-long expedition of time and space. Their ship is currently in deep space, 634 years in the past. Franklin is woken up from sleep by Valeria, who plays a message for them left by the Reed, Sue, Ben, and Johnny. Reed says, “If you’re seeing this message, something has gone catastrophically wrong.”

We catch up to the FF on a shuttle, where Reed explains that Ultron is attacking the Earth, the entire planet at once. They make contact with Black Panther who describes the conflict as “the end of the world” and asks for anyone who is able to come to Earth’s aid. They travel back to the present, only to find New York in ruins. Medusa is lying unconscious nearby, and the FF sets out in search of their children. (But… we just saw the kids back on the ship, right? Must be a time travel thing.) Reed fears the kids didn’t get to safety in time, and then the team is attacked by a flying squad of Ultron robots.

On the ship, Johnny’s portion of the message is his will and testament, leaving everything to Franklin and Valeria. He reconciles how he just recently came back from the dead (He wasn’t actually dead, but whatever), and he promises, “Death isn’t the end of anything.” Valeria hears this and concludes, “We’re in real trouble.”

On Earth, Johnny fights the Ultrons while Ben smashes through the rubble in search of an exit. Johnny vanishes and maybe dies in a big explosion. On the ship, Ben’s portion of the message is his confession. He admits he fears that Dr. Doom was all his fault, because he treated Doom like a jerk when they were back in college. He then reveals that he messed with Doom’s experiment, the one that failed and scarred Doom’s face. “I ain’t never told no one that before,” he says. Franklin and Val are shocked, and they hug each other.

Back on Earth, the FF have been hiding for seventeen hours. Ben thinks he sees Dr. Doom and he attacks. Turns out this is another Ultron ‘bot wearing Doom’s cloak and mask. He says Dr. Doom fell, adding, “They all fell.” Ben fights the Ultrons, only for more and more of them to swarm onto him, overwhelming him.

In the ship, we get Reed’s part of the message. Reed says he doesn’t have the words for the kids, so he writes his thoughts down on paper. He writes about not knowing how to say goodbye to his children, and that, as a man of science, he does not believe in Heaven or Hell. He writes, “What we do it all that matters.” On Earth, Reed and Sue flee from the Ultrons. He wraps a bunch of them up in his stretchy body. The robots enact their self-destruct functions, and Reed goes up in another huge explosion.

Time passes, and Sue regains consciousness as She-Hulk finds her and pulls her from the rubble. She tells Sue, “We lost everything.” On the ship, there’s no message from Sue. Franklin remembers her telling him, “Everything’s going to be okay,” before he went to sleep the night before. Valeria asks if he believes her, and Franklin doesn’t answer.

To be continued… in the crossover.

All right, fine. I’ll read all ten issues of freakin’ Age of Ultron. What’s it about? The whole thing takes place in the ruins of the Earth following Ultron’s attack. It’s post-apocalypse sci-fi where various Marvel heroes are the only survivors. The heroes assemble over time, with Sue joining them in issue #3. Upon fleeing to the Savage Land for safety, the heroes learn the original Ultron isn’t on Earth, but he is leading the invasion from some point in the future. Everybody finds Nick Fury hiding in a high-tech bunker, and they debate traveling into Ultron’s future versus going back in time to stop Hank Pym from creating Ultron in the first place. Fury leads a team into the future, but Sue and Wolverine go rogue, however, going to the past to take out Pym. Sue hesitates, but she finally steps aside and allows Wolverine to kill Pym.

Sue and Wolverine return to the present to find New York is restored, except this time the world is ruled by Tony Stark and his army of Iron Men. Sue and Wolvie are attacked and abducted by an alternate universe version of the Defenders. Sue uses her invisibility to try to escape, only for the witch Morgana Le Fey to invade New York with an army of super-monsters. (She’s the main supervillain in this reality, apparently.)

Then the story abruptly goes back to the scene where Wolverine killed Pym, only for another Wolverine to show up and stop him. This one says he’s also from Fury’s bunker in the Ultron future. This new Wolverine has a plan where Pym creates Ultron like he always did, restoring history as it was, except for one failsafe to stop Ultron in this specific instance and none of the other times he attacked. Sue joins them and adds that Hank must also wipe his memory of this failsafe.

Then another flashback to Pym creating Ultron, except this time he finds a message from himself in the future. It describes the Avengers battling the Intelligencia, resulting in signal being sent to restore Ultron. Then the kill switch from the two Wolverines timeline is activated, and Ultron freaks out, realizing that something in his code has changed. Ultron fights the Avengers while also trying to resist the change. But Pym’s failsafe works, and Ultron breaks apart. Wolverine and Sue return to New York where it seems to be back to normal. But then there’s several pages of what looks like various timelines converging and/or falling apart. Pym, Tony Stark, and Beast have a meeting where they say “multiversal chaos” now threatens the Earth. We end with two big (well, big-ish) changes to the Marvel Universe. First, Miles Morales transports permanently from the Ultimate Universe to the MU proper. Second, Angela from Spawn comics arrives in the MU.

Unstable molecule: Reed’s goodbye to the kids is probably the best scene in all these comics. But how can Reed say he doesn’t believe in Heaven or Hell when he’s personally visited both? (Hell during the John Byrne years, and Heaven during the Waid/Weiringo years.) He probably sees those as alternate universes and not the afterlife.

Fade out: Nick Fury has copies of all the heroes’ weapons and armor in his bunker, just in case. But because Sue has no specific weapons, all she gets is a big gun.

Clobberin’ time: Ben’s revelation about sabotaging Doom’s machine back in college should be a bigger deal than it is. It’s definitely something to look out for in future issues.

Flame on: Johnny makes a big deal about how he recently came back from the dead. But, from his perspective, he wasn’t dead. He was off in the Negative Zone having all kinds of adventures. I suppose he’s talking about death from his family’s perspective.

Four and a half/Our gal Val: Age of Ultron issue #10 has one line where Wolverine tells Sue it’s time for her to go back home to her kids. Other than that, Franklin and Valeria’s storyline has no conclusion. But then, the Marvel Wiki has to go and insist that all of Age of Ultron is an alternate timeline/timelines, and the only the last few scenes take place in the actual Marvel Universe. Geez.

Fantastic fifth wheel: She-Hulk has a buzzcut in the Ultron timeline, suggesting her hair was burned off in battle somehow. She and Luke Cage were instrumental in the mission where the heroes learned Ultron was coordinating the invasion from the future. Medusa is confirmed dead in the Ultron timeline.

Black Panther is seen only at the start of the crossover, sending the distress signal. Storm randomly appears alongside the heroes late in the story. You probably have to read their tie-in issues to get those full stories.

Foundational: There’s reference to Pym studying Dragon Man prior to creating Ultron. Beyond that, the Future Foundation and backup FF get no mention in Age of Ultron.

Trivia time: Angela was originally a character from Todd McFarlane’s Spawn, an angel sent to Earth to hunt Al Simmons, a.k.a. Spawn. She went to have all kinds of adventures of her own. A writer who will not be named sued McFarlane for ownership of the character, only to immediately then sell the character to Marvel just to rub McFarlane’s face in the dirt. (Looking back at stuff like this, we can see that unnamed writer was never a good person, was he?) Since then, Angela has been a semi-regular in Thor and Guardians of the Galaxy.

Fantastic or frightful? We’re all interested in multiverse stories, because it’s fun to explore the “what if” of it all. But when everything is all alternate timelines, it loses any sense of drama. Someone dies? Just get another one of them from another universe. What’s more, Age of Ultron doesn’t have a main character. It starts with Hawkeye, then goes back and forth between Captain America and Nicky Fury, then focuses on Sue and Wolverine, and ends with Hank Pym. Just imagine if Hawkeye had filled Wolverine’s role throughout. It’d be more consistent, and we’d get a big crossover event with ol’ Clint as the focus. Anyway, it’s ten issues and tons of tie-ins for something that didn’t matter a whole lot.

Next: Day in the life.

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