Grimlock ♥ Ultra Magnus

This is a must have for, well, anyone as obsessed with The Vision as I've become.   Or even Ultron.  I'd call Ultron a secondary obsession, though, as I'd be in this just for Vision and I'm not sure I can say the same about Ultron.  Even the appeal of Rage of Ultron lies partially with Vision, although the story and art and depth of that keep drawing me and and most likely would without Vision.

I find Age of Ultron to be the weakest of the MCU movies, but at the very least, it has Vision and Ultron. And I do love them both in my own ways.   I have to say, I enjoyed Ultron's redesign for the MCU, particularly the facial expressions.  I have since before I read this book: he looks like effortless power, and between that and Spader's voice, well, crush.   (Which again is secondary to my crush on Vision.   That voice!  Those eyes! That adorable cape!)  The concept of effortless power and the facial expressions are both dealt with in this book: Joss wanted both.   As for how Ultron expresses himself - face-wise - he wanted the body that housed this AI to be more human.   The creepy smile is creepy, but really doesn't give for much variety.    This works for me because Ultron is, in ways, very human.   He's the child rebuffed by his father, bitter, lashing out.   Less so in the movie, but he's still quite human.   He sees the sins of his father and his ilk and Ultron disowns the legacy.   A different father and son story, but one that is, again, very human.   

The text is fairly limited, but it sticks to how the art was created, either in the mental process of making the art - how they went through variations on a theme - or in how Joss's script and direction influenced the art.   There is some on locations and costumes, and how they decided on either.   (This was pretty carefully compartmentalized: they would talk, and show, one thing, and then the other.   There was no mixing between location, character design, or costume design.)   Honestly, this would have worked without the text, but not nearly as well.   They gave us enough to understand the general process, and not more. 

I though it was a perfect balance: not enough to overshadow the art, but just enough to understand how some things got put in, or taken out of, the movie and just enough to give us an idea of how things evolved.  This is the Art of book, though, and a lot of times there were pages upon pages with no text at all.   That's fine.   It allowed me to focus on the art - the main draw of this book - rather than stories of how the art was made, or this movie was made.   That would be a fascinating book, but it's not what this is, or was supposed to be.   

I'll no doubt come back to this, and just stare and stare at my favorite sections.    I did take in a couple pages with more interest than others, spending time on those sections, but I didn't linger too long. I wanted to finish the book for starters.  I also knew that I could come back later and linger to my heart's desire.   For now, I wanted to retain the anecdotes while I was reviewing.