Avengers: Ultron Forever #1

by Kalem Lalonde on April 05, 2015

Writer: Al Ewing
Artist: Alan Davis 

I found it very strange that Marvel were ending their main Avengers titles without relaunching them in May. Usually the comic side of the company tries to use the MCU’s success to their advantage and put out comics that loosely tie into the movies. When I saw that Ultron Forever was happening, it made complete sense to me and looking at the creative team, I was highly excited. Al Ewing is one of Marvel’s secret guns and I loved his work on Loki: Agent of Asgard. And though this book isn’t bad, it didn’t have the quality I was expecting from such a strong creative team.

This story was billed as a Doctor Doom story and given Ewing’s portrayal of Doom in his Loki arc, I was eager to see Ewing write the character once again. Though, unfortunately we don’t get many Doom moments. This isn’t a character driven-issue and while Ewing still writes decent dialogue for Doom, it’s mostly exposition. He’s the mastermind of this plot and hence he handles the exposition.

Which leads to me to my main problem with this comic. When I read the solicitation text, I thought this would be an epic battle between Ultron and Doom, given them both incredible moments and characterization (given Ewing’s name as writer). But neither of them barely get any solid material. Ultron only appears on the final page of this comic and though, it’s an interesting twist and story idea, I wish we could’ve seen more of him. If this is Marvel’s Ultron coverage for Age of Ultron, they should have given this character more room to shine.

Though that isn’t to say that all the character-work in this issue is bad. Ewing’s ensemble cast are many Avengers from different eras. The standout of the cast, is Luke Cage and Jessica Jones’ daughter as Captain America. Ewing writes her cheesy one-liners to perfection and she steal every single scene that she is featured in. Ewing has it in him to give all these character fantastic moments and I’m hoping his work with Captain America will spread towards other characters further down the line.

In terms of plot, Ewing has always been very akin to writing with continuity in mind. For this series, he builds on the Jonathan Hickman-created world where Ultron has completely taken over. I’m very glad to see this world return because Hickman made it so interesting in the sole issue that he had. I always thought this world was worthy of a re-visit Marvel made the right choice setting this comic there. Though, Ewing has made it his own, weaving aspects of Asgard into this comic in very interesting fashion.

Alan Davis is the artist pencilling this issue and this is my first exposure to his great art. Ewing writes with an older tone and classic cheesy dialogue that Davis complements perfectly. His art is clean and great to look at. He handles the dialogue based scenes as well as he handles the awesome action.

Ultron forever has started has started off well with this debut issue. Alan Davis handles the pencils perfectly and proves to be the standout of the entire issue. The main issue is that Ewing doesn’t capitalize on the fantastic cast that he has put together. Most of this comic is exposition and that’s why I think this series will pay off in the two issues it has remaining. The comic ends on a very strong note hinting at better things to come, I’m sure Ewing will make this story worthwhile. 
 

Our Score:

7/10

A Look Inside