As Mighty Avengers #35 begins, the team no longer exists. In a traditional Marvel Comics misunderstanding that becomes a slugfest last issue, Thor and Quicksilver came to blows over the thunder god’s brother Loki. When Henry Pym, almost inexplicably, asks Loki to join the team – the other members desert him. They desert Pym, thinking he’s had once again a breakdown. They desert him, not knowing, as we readers do, that the Avengers’ greatest foe, Ultron, lies in wait.

Ultron’s mere visage has always been horrifying, an unmoving grin of metal and fire. George Perez created a rather scary red cover earlier this decade using just his face. Cover and interior artist Khoi Pham does his best to inspire the same terror with his Ultron cover. He does to an extent, but it’s a shame the image is hamstrung by the marketing for Siege that takes on nearly half the cover.

As if things aren’t bad enough, writer Dan Slott continues to stack the odds against poor Hank on the second page. Ace and Jacquie arrive from GRAMPA to revoke the Mighty Avengers’ legal status as an international crimefighting force. And don’t think we didn’t notice Ultron peeking at them from a wall painting.

I have talked in the past about Pym being set up, that everything that has been done for him so far to rebuild his character is just there so it can be torn down. It is a shame that the things around him must come down as well. Not only did I like this particular line-up, I liked the extras – like GRAMPA. I certainly hope this isn’t the last we’ll see of them. Especially Ban-Luck. I loved her interactions with USAgent.

The designation of the new Ultron as Ultron Pym is chilling. It is perhaps the final nail in Henry Pym’s coffin, forever placing a shadow on his name. For the newbies out there, you might be wondering what the big hubbub about Ultron is. Here’s the scoop. There are two major enemies of the Avengers – Kang the Conqueror and Ultron. Both are ultimately dangerous threats to mankind, both are very very powerful, and both have beaten the Avengers. But with Ultron, it’s personal, because he’s family.

Hank Pym built Ultron years ago and the robot has quite the Oedipal complex, viewing Pym as his father, and Janet Van Dyne the original Wasp as his mother. When Ultron revived/created (whichever version of the android Avenger’s origin is current at the moment) the Vision, he regarded him as his son. It gets even more complex when Ultron sought to create a bride for himself and called her Jocasta. Creepily in Greek mythology, Jocasta was the name of Oedipus’ mother – and Ultron programmed this bride with Janet’s thought patterns. Brrr… And y’all think Pym needs therapy, check out the big brain on Ultron…

And for those of you who want to argue about the family issue and say that Kang is Tony Stark, or a relative of Reed Richards… well, there might be some incriminating possibilities, but it’s yet to be proven. Ultron’s got it in for more Avengers family members than Kang either way.

Back to the story. While Ultron prepares his attack on his father from deep within Infinite Avengers Mansion with his army of brides, Ace and Jacquie scoff at Pym not knowing about the Asgard crisis currently going on over in Siege, nicely bringing this title up to date with the rest of the Marvel Universe. Pym gets to do the same to them however a minute later when they don’t know that the real Captain America is back. The bad news is that Pym also turns down said Steve Rogers’ plea for help in protecting Asgard. This is another let’s-ask-Loki-to-join moment, and it’s bothersome, and also largely unexplained.

Henry Pym says he’s “in the middle of something,” and that something is apparently making Jocasta look more human by giving her flesh aspect limbs. More creepy, Hank seems to be creating his own Real Doll, but more on that later. Jarvis, last of the Mighty Avengers, decides he must leave once Hank turns down Steve’s plea for help. It sort of breaks my heart, but at least he won’t be there when Ultron starts killing everyone.

When Ultron attacks, the folks from GRAMPA get to once again show their ignorance because they don’t know who Ultron is. The Wasp keeps his cool and quickly thinks his way out of fire. One would hope that these instances will readjust GRAMPA’s opinion of him once this is all over.

Then there’s an interlude with the former Mighty Avengers. There is a distress call being sent, but not from Pym – from Amadeus Cho, and we get an in-continuity idea where everyone else is at the moment. Good to see USAgent is still in this title and that Quicksilver misses his time on the team. It is however sad to know that Hercules has already left us.

Ultron has some wonderful lines in this issue, including “Ants. Always with the ants, Father,” and my favorite, “You trapped him?! In his lab?! You fools! That is the one place where he can accomplish anything! That is where he is a god!” I love that. It reminds me of my all-time favorite Henry Pym moment – where he runs from the battlefield in combat against Count Nefaria, and everyone thinks he’s a coward, but the truth is he’s gone to his lab, where he fights best. From there, he revives the wounded Vision, who along with Thor, takes down Nefaria. I loved that, and I loved this.

And now we enter dangerous territory, so if you’re so inclined, consider this your

* SPOILER ALERT *

because the road is about to get very bumpy. I started this review with the line “Ultron lives… and he might not be alone” for a reason. Here it is. The lab that Hank Pym and Codename Blackjack are trapped in has two doors. One leads to Ultron, his ten billion brides, and the reformatted Infinite Avengers Mansion redone in Ultron’s image. The other door… it leads to Underspace.

That’s not so bad, now is it? Well, not until you really know what it is. Issues ago when Pym visited with Eternity (unless of course that was one of Loki’s lies, and I seriously doubt that), it was in Overspace, which resides above the Macroverse. This is the easy stuff, folks, you don’t have to be Reed Richards – it’s just big words for weird places. This Underspace is found below the Microverse… and it’s the place, as Hank Pym himself reveals, where Thor sent Janet Van Dyne the original Wasp after the Secret Invasion.

Readers will remember that at the close of the Secret Invasion, the Skrull Henry Pym turned the Wasp into a bio-bomb that kept growing and would destroy a whole lot of everything. Depending on who you believe, Thor either killed her or placed her in stasis then sent her to another dimension where she could no longer harm anyone. If it’s the latter, this puts Hank’s behavior with Jocasta in a weird new light.

On the innocent side, it appears that Hank and Jocasta have some sort of romantic relationship. The wrongness of it is peripheral, like if Greg and Marsha Brady hooked up – there’s no blood relation, but it’s creepy, and just plain wrong. So is the idea of Hank getting together with a robot who essentially shares his dead ex-wife’s brain patterns. And when he starts giving her pseudo-flesh parts, you can kinda tell where it’s going, shiver and say “ew.”

But on the other hand, if Hank’s entire plan all along was to build a human-like body for his seemingly dead ex-wife so that she could live, because her current body has been biologically turned into a Skrull bomb… it’s not so bad, is it? At least I hope that’s what he’s up to. Does anyone else recall maybe a year ago Reed Richards withholding tech for Hank to build his Pymspace and eventually Infinite Avengers Mansion, only to be shown something that made him give in? Could this be it? I can’t wait to find out.

Dan Slott and Khoi Pham have given us a wonderful comic here, and I give Mighty Avengers #35 a solid four and a half stars out of a possible five. After last issue’s debacle, it meant a lot to see Pham back in the saddle. And to see Slott make up for Pym’s apparent missteps from last issue with his moves in this one – it brought the score up even higher. It’s been a while since I was this excited about a comic. And although the next issue image of Pym being beaten by Ultron is not what I want - I can not wait for the next and final issue of Mighty Avengers!

	Glenn Walker
	Glenn has been a fan of Marvel Comics' Avengers since the early 1970s, when their current adventures were chronicled by Steve Englehart and their early exploits by Stan Lee in classic reprints featured in Marvel Triple Action. He has persevered through many incarnations of the team and he still loves the Avengers to this day.