"Age of Ultron" proves Bendis is not letting go of Avengers

The latest crossover Marvel's got in store shows that Brian Bendis is not going to leave the Earth's Mightiest Heroes alone, and what's planned in its pages is just more nihilism:

“Age of Ultron is about Ultron finally fulfilling his destiny, accelerating his intelligence and taking the Earth,” Bendis says. “The Marvel Universe has been taken by Ultron. There has been a shocking amount of devastation and casualty.”

Bendis clarifies that though the story started in Avengers, the story involved the entire Marvel Universe. “It stars the Avengers, the X-Men, the Fantastic Four, Moon Knight, Black Widow, it goes all over the place,” the writer says.

It sounds like he's taking Kurt Busiek's older story from 1998, Ultron Unlimited, which saw the demonic android annihilating an entire section of what must've been a fictionalized district of the former USSR and setting up a robo-monarchy there, and inflating it into something even more full of destruction than Busiek's last story that saw Kang the Conqueror doing much of the same to Earth. And this time, the difference is that they're grinding just about every single ongoing series they're publishing to a screeching halt for the sake of the crossover. Exactly why so few people care to read their books today - because there's no freedom for telling stand-alone stories and the writers working for them now go along in lockstep with all they do anyway.

And Bendis, unsurprisingly, is still set on maintaining his terrible grip on the Avengers.