Originally Posted by
Cryptid
I've been following New Avengers and keeping loose tabs on Hickman's other two Avengers books through Marvel Unlimited, and this was still an unforgiving issue. I can appreciate that Hickman has committed to the long form, delivering a climax for long-term readers instead of reframing the story for lapsed readers and fence-sitters, but we still have about three or four different master-plans and back-up plans playing out simultaneously as the heroes shout expositional dialogue over massive detonations. But, on the bright side, the action is so hectic and the destruction is so total that Hickman was probably wise to let the spectacle overwhelm the details. It's easy to believe in the pettiness of human schemes in the face of total destruction when those plans barely come into focus before they have already unravelled. And the fact that the character deaths are so instant and final, with no pause for a melodramatic send-off, is both unsettling and refreshing given how often event books tart up their shock deaths with pushy sentiment.
Meanwhile, I don't think it would make sense to give this climax a higher page-count when the whole point is a clean break. Next issue we're starting in with a new world with new rules. It might have made more sense for this to be a final issue of New Avengers or even a standalone one-shot, because presumably the new story begins in earnest next issue. This one just wrapped up the months-long build up toward the end of the multiverse. It's not the home run I was hoping for, but at least Secret Wars is ballsy enough, so far, to compensate for its opacity.
And it was great to see Esad Ribic return to his cyber-punk version of the Ultimate Universe, with the City, the Children, an eerily calm Evil Reed, and the coolest-looking helicarriers ever to grace a comics page. Hickman's run on Ultimates was probably my favorite thing he has done at Marvel, so it was cathartic to see the end-game after the initial run was truncated. Ribic can be a little rote with facial expressions, especially given his over-reliance on widened mouths and eyes bulging with intensity, but no one else in Marvel's current stable can match him for Dutch angles of aerial maneuvering.