James Review -- Marvel: The Avengers: Everybody Wants to Rule the World

This week I decided to review Marvel: The Avengers: Everybody Wants to Rule the World by Dan Abnett. 

The story opens with the Avengers, scattered, facing several critical threats at once. In the U.S., Iron Man, eventually reinforced by Vision, faces off with Ultron who is on the verge of reaching a singularity event which will make the rogue AI all but unstoppable and, in desperation, Iron Man orders communications and power grids shut down to try and slow Ultron’s advance. When it seems that Ultron has been driven into hiding, Iron Man and Vision return to Shield’s helicarrier to find and trap their enemy once and for all and to move to assist their allies elsewhere. But they soon find themselves in a new battle as Ultron is, in fact, hiding in apparently dormant nanomachines that it uses to repair and seize control of the Iron Man suit used in the earlier battle.

In Berlin, Hydra attacks a company they had tricked into producing a aerosol dispersal device the company believed would be used for agricultural purposes. Captain America soon responds to the attack and discovers that Hydra actually intends to use the device to spread a fast-acting and highly lethal plague, planning to use the plague and its cure to force the world to surrender. Captain America is disturbed by how rushed, and unlike typical Hydra operations, the plot is but soon finds himself in a race to save Berlin from the plague.

Black Widow and Hawkeye set out to investigate strange readings in the Savage Lands. After their Quinjet is shot down, the pair manages to regroup and fight their way past a group of raptors to find an Advanced Idea Mechanics base where the renegade organization is working to unleash a nanomachine compound into the Earth’s water supply which will allow M.O.D.O.K. to control the minds of humanity.

Bruce Banner finds himself facing a plot by the High Evolutionary to use a modified version of the Gamma Ray Bomb Banner himself developed long ago--to his shame--as part of a plan that will kill most of the human race and leave the survivors as a docile race that will be easy to enslave. But when the High Evolutionary offers new insights into what caused Banner to become the Hulk, as well as a cure for the Hulk condition, Banner finds himself facing the greatest temptation of his life…

Also, a portion of Siberia has been sucked into another dimension along with Thor. Thor soon finds the Scarlet Witch, only to be attacked by his ally, then rescued by the real Scarlet Witch. The impostor is soon revealed to be Dormammu who has summoned the chunk of Earth to be the basis of a spell that will summon the entire world to his dimension, but the spell must be completed within a short time frame, so Scarlet Witch finds herself in a desperate magical contest to repel Dormammu’s attacks long enough to ruin his plot.

Eventually, it is discovered that this rash of plots to conquer the world has been unleashed because some unknown power has informed the villains and villainous organizations that if they don’t conquer the world by a certain time, the outside power will conquer the world instead. This leads to a desperate race to discover who or what is behind this threat as well as to prepare a defense against the coming assault.

I give this book 7.5 out of 10. I like most of the subplots but felt that some aren’t given as much attention as they deserved. The characters are interesting, but there are some Marvel characters that I feel either should have appeared in the book or at the very least had their absence explained, only to barely be mentioned if they are mentioned at all. Also, the climatic battle was far too short for my tastes. And, even worse, there wasn’t nearly enough tension in it in my opinion.