Review: Avengers- Ultron Forever
Quick Summary
Pros: There are a few cool moments in the main narrative.
Cons: The book’s central premise is unoriginal. Rapid pacing leads to a disappointing fight against the main villain. There are obvious mistakes in the dialogue and some characters’ actions just come across as ridiculous. The artwork is lackluster.
Overall: This comic is plagued with problems and offers little to make up for these problems. The story is unoriginal, the narrative is too rushed, there are mistakes in the dialogue, and some elements of the plot just feel out of place. The book has a few solid moments but these are hard to appreciate under its many flaws. Readers looking for good Avengers stories should look elsewhere.
Story
Avengers: Ultron Forever, by Al Ewing, is disappointing all the way through. The comic revolves around a premise that feels unoriginal. Then, it tries to push a high-stakes battle into a hurriedly paced narrative, which leads to a lackluster finale. Plus, alongside all of this, there are places where the dialogue is clunky or illogical and places where people make extremely out-of-character actions. This volume does contain a few fun and surprising moments but not enough to make up for the high number of mistakes. Overall, this is not a worthwhile comic to dive into.
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There are a few positive highlights in the main story from Ultron Forever. The book has a few cool moments, as seeing Ultron as the All-Father and Hulk’s original power fluctuations are unique experiences. In addition, the Vision’s approach to defeating the Doombot was great.
However, outside of this, the rest of Ultron Forever is pretty bad. The entire concept of the main narrative is neat but was done so recently in the Marvel universe that it feels unnecessary to return to it once again. Age of Ultron (Review) (Reading Order) came out a few years before this book and is essentially a better version of this story.
The entire narrative also stumbles in its attempt to blend high-stakes with quick pacing. The volume centers around the menace of a seemingly unstoppable villain but needs to have this villain toppled in under three chapters. This leads to the nearly unstoppable villain being quickly defeated in the heroes’ first attack on his fortress. It is a disappointing end to a battle that was set up to be something more.
There are also points throughout Ultron Forever where the writing just feels sloppy. One page establishes the fact that the Iron Man from the past has armor that predates the invention of the internet yet, almost immediately after establishing this, he makes a reference to “Wi-Fi”, a concept he should be completely unaware of. Another page has the heroes realize the Doombot’s secret plan because the Doombot put them in the same room as a device that obviously reveals his secret, a mistake that seems absolutely ridiculous for a being of Doombot’s intellect. Even more examples of this occur through Hulk’s dialogue, which gives clunky and inorganic explanations to time travel inconsistencies. These are obvious examples that show this is a collection with mistakes that simply should not be present in a book of this caliber.
Ultron Forever closes by collecting a few classic Marvel stories, each of which has a connection to what took place in Ultron Forever. On their own, most of these stories are great but, separated from their surrounding chapters and without any context, they feel like a weird addition to this collection. They don’t hurt the book, but they also don’t help it.
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Art
The visuals in Ultron Forever range a bit but tend to look pretty lackluster. There are points where penciler Alan Davis and inker Mark Farmer create some wonderfully imaginative scenes, most of which focus on impressive landscapes. However, the characters rarely look good. They are often positioned in strange ways and are usually too heavily inked. The entire volume also rarely shows characters with their eyes open, making for a strange story where it seems like the characters are constantly deep in reflection or in a state of intense consternation. The poor character depictions make it hard to enjoy this collection’s visuals and are what prevents the artwork from having a chance at saving this book.
Continuity
Avengers: Ultron Forever is an almost entirely independent comic. The majority of this comic takes place in an alternate future that was established back in Avengers Vol. 5 #30-31, collected in Avengers Vol. 6: Infinite Avengers (Review).
The story here does not continue in any specific comic. However, the beginning of this story makes a reference to events from the near future. This reference becomes more clear through the All-New, All-Different Avengers series, starting with All-New, All-Different Avengers Vol. 1: The Magnificent Seven.
This volume also makes references to other comic books, detailed below:
- Hulk mentions defeating the Metal Master. This happened in Incredible Hulk Vol. 1 #6, collected in Marvel Masterworks: The Incredible Hulk Vol. 1.
- Thor mentions Hela’s curse from Thor Vol. 1 #373, collected in Thor by Walt Simonson Vol. 4.
- This comic’s Iron Man mentions a pain he started experiencing in Iron Man Vol. 1 #188, collected in Iron Man Epic Collection: Duel Of Iron.
- This volume’s last chapter references the existence of the Avengers A.I. team. This team’s adventures are told across Avengers A.I. Vol. 1: Human After All (Review) and Avengers A.I. Vol. 2: 12,000 A.D. (Review).