Title: Avengers: Age of Ultron Prelude
Publisher: Marvel Comics
Date: 2015
Writer: Zak Penn, Joss Whedon, Will Corona Pilgrim, Roy Thomas, Kurt Busiek, George Perez, Brian Michael Bendis
Artist: Joe Bennett, Agustin Padilla, Marcio Loerzer Bennett, Wellinton Alves, Manny Clark, John Buscema, George Klein, George Perez, Al Vey, Bryan Hitch, Paul Neary
Colorist: Jay David Ramos, Tom Smith, Paul Mounts
Letterer: VC's Clayton Cowles, Sam Rosen, RS & Comicraft, VC's Cory Petit
Editor: Jennifer Grunwald, Sarah Brunstad, Stan Lee, Tom Brevoort, Lauren Sankovitch
This is essentially a promotional book, released to hype the second Avengers film. It contains a comic adaptation containing most of the plot of the first Avengers movie, plus adaptations end-credit scenes and DVD extras to bridge the gap leading up to Age of Ultron. The film adaptations take up about the first fourth of this graphic novel.
The remainder is reprints of classic Avengers stories involving Ultron, starting with the original appearance of Ultron and the Vision in 1963, 1998's ultron storyline from Avengers #21-22, and Avengers 12.1 from 2010.
The movie adaptations are a nice summary, but lack the emotional impact of the films, and from the point of view of a reader, they feel more like a recap than a particularly immersive experience. The pacing also feels rushed.
The reprints were fun. I hadn't read any of these stories previously, and there was a lot of good material here. The original Vision story from 1963 is a particularly strong piece of writing by Roy Thomas, and it holds up quite well after over 50 years.
The story from 1998 has Ultron wiping out (and robot-zombifying) the entire population of the fictional nation of Slorenia (not to be confused with Serkovia... or Latveria for that matter), which is one of those excessive bits of extreme violence that get casually thrown into recent comics way too often. The idea is to add emotional impact, but really, it has the opposite effect.
That being said, it improves as the story progresses, and the final scenes, focusing on the often-overlooked Hank Pym, are excellent. George Perez does a great job with the art, including a breathtaking two-page spread involving hundreds of Ultrons.
The last story is a prelude to a new Ultron storyline by Brian Michael Bendis. It focuses on Spider-Woman, who has been captured by a crew of (mostly B-grade) villains, and her rescue by her Avengers teammates. A lot of the story is played for laughs, which clashes somewhat with the doom-and-gloom proclamation that it ends on. In general it felt a bit inconsistent, although it had some amusing individual moments and one-liners.
This book feels like it's unsure of who its target audience is. It's trying to be an introduction to Ultron to movie fans who aren't regular comics readers, but it's also trying to function as a "Ultron's greatest hits" collection for diehard fans. It makes a decent attempt at performing both functions, but it is not exceptionally good at either.
Rating: 6/10
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