Do you guys remember Age of Ultron last year? Hank Pym's evil robot Ultron attacked the Avengers in the present from the future, taking over the world with his Ultron drones. The Avengers response was to go to the future and die instantly leaving the fate of humanity in the highly dubious hands of Wolverine and Sue Storm who first travelled to the future where a cyborg Tony Stark was overlord of Earth and then travelled to the past where they executed Hank Pym. Needless to say, the story was a mess and the event a total shambles - but hey, it sold well! So it seems Marvel aren't done bleeding their cash cow dry and have gone back once again to do a five issue What If? series that asks, duh, What If Ultron had won (which was the original premise but whatever). However, this isn't a five issue story arc but is five done-in-one stories with a Twilight Zone flavour to them, especially with the twist ending. The first issue is told from Hank Pym's perspective where Ultron has killed all the heroes and wiped out humanity. Hank is hunting down Ultron Prime to destroy him once and for all and has to dodge millions of different kinds of Ultron in the post-apocalyptic Russian landscape (or maybe that's what the Russian landscape generally looks like). Joe Keatinge's story plods along at a tediously slow pace as we read about Ultron defeating everyone to rule the world once more. The difference is we get to hear about Hank whine about what a terrible experience it's been for him. And if you didn't get your fill of seeing Ultron drones blowing up buildings from the original Age of Ultron, Raffaele Ienco obliges with multiple scenes of bland, pointless destruction. The only semi-interesting aspect of the comic is the final couple pages where it's revealed what's going on here with Hank and Ultron - why he's been kept alive while everyone else was killed. Other than that, this issue is one long yawn. Don't support this kind of cynical, lazy crap, guys. Marvel are publishing lots of exciting, original comics, more so than anyone else in the field, and books like Moon Knight, She-Hulk, Ms Marvel, Hawkeye, and Superior Spider-Man are all worth checking out. The downside to putting out so much material is that some of it is far less than brilliant which is the case with What If? Age of Ultron, a title which is best left untouched and forgotten. It shouldn't be What If? so much as Why Bother?
Published by Marvel, What If? Age of Ultron #1 by Joe Keatinge and Raffaele Ienco is out now