8 Superheroes Who Saw The End Of The World

2. A Few Surviving Marvel Heroes - Age Of Ultron

Age of Ultron Invisible Woman
Marvel Comics / Mark Brooks

Prior to 2015, Age of Ultron wasn't just the name given to a mildly annoying MCU film from Joss Whedon. A couple of years before then it was actually a major comics event from writer Brian Michael Bendis and artists Bryan Hitch and Brandon Peterson.

Apart from the name and antagonist, the comic shares nothing in common with the film. It's not an origin story, and instead opens with a version of Earth ruled by Ultron, with Earth's Mightiest Heroes waging an underground resistance against the robotic despot.

Things have very much not gone according to plan in this future, with plenty of Marvel heroes dead as a result of Ultron's resurgence and things not looking rosey at all. The surviving heroes travel into the future to stop Ultron before he can travel back in time and conquer the planet (it's... slightly confusing), while Wolverine and Invisible Woman travel back to kill Hank Pym before he creates Ultron in the first place.

As one would expect the solution isn't as simple as it sounds, and things go from bad to... not quite as bad (but still bad). Whatever the case, those issues where we got to see the world ruled by Ultron were definitely up there with the freakiest Marvel dystopias.

Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.