6. Time Travel Solves Everything! (Except When It Doesn't!)
Time travel seems to be Marvels answer to originality f*ck you, originality! All-New X-Men ironically riffs on the idea by starting off the new numbering by bringing back from the past the original X-Men cast members into the present. Captain Marvel also uses time travel as a big part of her storyline, and Bendis uses it as the central plot device to his Age of Ultron Event. Just when the story starts to get interesting around issue #5, Bendis introduces time travel and things take a nose-dive. Seriously, what was wrong with the original storyline? Sure, it felt stretched over 5 issues, but it was interesting - I wanted to see how the heroes would fight back against Ultron. Instead one group time travels in the future (Time Travel #1) while Wolverine and Sue Richards travel to the past (TT#2). After they travel back to the present (TT#3) and realise things have gone wrong, they travel back into the past (TT#4), and try to right things again before travelling back into the future one final time (TT#5). Generally, time travel completely ruins a good story. It makes the plot convoluted and confusing, the characters end up spouting the same drivel about butterflies, and its a hack ploy in order to showcase exciting alternate characters and worlds that are awful - before spiriting them away as quickly as they appeared. All of which happens in Age of Ultron. Time travel solves nothing but is repeatedly used in this storyline anyway. And it gets very annoying.