Avengers #12.5/The Ultron War

Wow, Bendis sure packed a whole lot of Avengers into this thing, didn’t he? For an introductory issue, I was pretty surprised at how many Avengers actually show their faces in this book. I spotted Spider-Woman, Red Ghost, Wizard, Mad Thinker, Awesome Android, Klaw, MODOK, Thing, Valkirie, Protector, Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Mockingbird, Hawkeye, Ant-Man, Wolverine, Beast, War Machine, Iron Man, Agent Hand, Ms. Marvel, Luke Cage, Agent Brand, Maria Hill, Jessica Jones, Bucky Cap, Steve Rogers, Moon Knight, Thor, and Iron Fist. Eventually, the cast gets narrowed down a bit, but even so, this is one overwhelming comic.


It just seems to me that having this many Avengers sitting around waiting for missions makes the Intelligencia threat seem a bit less… threatening. How dire a group can they be when Steve Rogers just dispatches five or six of his pool of heroes to take care of the problem?

Bendis does his thing, I don’t think he can help it. The Mad Thinker and the Wizard banter back and forth, finishing each other’s sentences, and basically act like Bendis characters. Spider-Woman gets in a nice showing under pressure, she never seems too concerned. Iron Man seems pretty terrified when Ultron shows up in the armor of a Space Knight, but I’m not sure this holds up as a complete enough first chapter for that storyline. As a tease, I think it works, but the FCBD issue makes it seem like the story kicks off here.

I don’t suppose I can hope for some sort of ROM return, since the Space Knights are around again, huh?

Bryan Hitch is good, there’s no doubt about that. Again, the issue is so crowded that it seems like he doesn’t have the room to do his “widescreen” specialty for the whole issue. The Intelligencia always look fantastic, and at a guess, I’d say Hitch enjoys drawing Wolverine and Moon Knight. The two of them consistently look the most detailed. I also found it odd that Thor ditched his cape for this adventure. A story-based choice, or artistic one, I wonder?

I guess this originally came out as Avengers 12.1, but I didn’t buy it, so I appreciate a free comic.

Fair