3 out of 5

If not for a rather forced ending, Kateinge’s ‘What If’ entry would be what I’d wish for most ‘alternate timeline’ explorations: something that dares to just take a thought to a conclusion without having to wedge it into some winky “with great power” wraparound that shows that the existing DC or Marvel Universe trumps all for whatever reason.  Age of Ultron doesn’t take that route, thankfully, but nor does it have the guts to just stick it out to something more open – it gives us a happy The End, which it really didn’t need.  Keatinge or editorial’s decision, who knows, but it cheapens the setup.

Interestingly, what I liked (and what was stifled by that last issue) is what led to most people’s complaints about the mini: that there didn’t seem to be a clear focus until toward the end.  I didn’t read Age of Ultron, so in a way, that might’ve helped: I had a complete lack of expectations as to what the series could be about.  But from what I pieced together, the Avengers fought Ultron, somebody probably died during this mega event, and so What If asks how things would have played out had someone else died.  Keatinge takes an interesting route to this by not wasting time trying to explain the characters’ deaths – rather, some type of multiverse awareness seems to dawn on them and then they croak.  I guess this prefigures the conclusion, which then ties all of the alternate possibilities back into one timeline, but let’s ignore that and just say I appreciated the brevity – it allowed each issue room to expand on the after-effects, and leant the death that kicked them off a baseline sense of calamity.

Each issue also had its own art team, which – again, until issue #5 – was well-selected to match the tone.  Issue 1 posits a timeline following the death of Wasp, where Hank Pym’s Ultron kills everyone but Hank and then the ultimate Ultron starts working on a long-term plan to turn Hank into the next Ultron.  Raffaele Ienco handles art chores, and his up-close, animated pencils are a good match for the gloom and doom.  Issue 2 follows Zeke Stane’s rise to crazy power in the wake of Stark’s death, and has a sea-faring Wolverine, a new Ghost Rider, a zenned Hulk, and an aged Spider-Man team-up to take him down.  If the meeting sounds slightly humorous, it is, and is given the right touch of lightness by artists Ramon Villalobos, Keatinge assisting by adding some jokes into the tale.  Both creators give these characters a friendly humanity that makes the conclusion of the issue appropriately weighty.  Issue 3 – Thor’s death.  All of Asgard’s enemies go nuts trying to pick up Mjolnir, so thankfully Black Widow, Silver Sable, Nick Fury, Shang-Chi, Falcon, and Microchip are still around to try and set things right.  Mico Suayan (and Raffaele Ienco assisting) draws some amazingly badass action to match the big and bad scope of the tale.  Issue 4 – Cap dies, Punisher replaces him – and inspires a new generation of Caps.  Piotr Kowalski and Neil Edwards split pages, but both give Pun an appropriate grizzled vet vibe that sells the story.

All of these issues are complete.  There was no reason for issue 5.  But: we must set things right, and so the Age of Ultron from issue 1 crosses into the alternate worlds of issues 2, 3 and 4, and then issue 1 Hank Pym says: your worlds are screwed, so go to mine.  So the surviving stars of issues 2-4 (and Janet Van Dyne, who survives in issue 5) do just that, and the book ends with a “What If?” question that doesn’t quite fit the speech Janet makes leading up to it.  Which echoes how this conclusion doesn’t quite fit what came before.  It also doesn’t help that this “new” reality is drawn – horribly – by (I’m supposing) Ming Doyle, who would be alright on an indie book but looks ill-suited for scenes that require foreshortening or big scale size-comparisons.  So it looks sloppy, and reads uncomfortably, whoopee.  This conclusion undermines the conclusions in the previous issues – issue 1 is no longer tragic, 2 is no longer about a memorable sacrifice, 3 is completely fucked since it has its own “flash forward” with an old Nick Fury who sorta gets erased because of issue 5, and issue 4’s generational scope is tossed aside.  So on one hand – this ending is an epic failure.  On the other hand, see it as a mark of how solid the others issues are that I still give the whole read 3 stars overall.