Avengers by Hickman: Time Runs Out vol. 4

Don’t let what’s said on the back cover fool you, this is not the end of Jonathan Hickman’s run.  As I’ve said many times before on this blog, “Secret Wars” is the true finale and we’ll have to wait until November *crosses fingers* to see how that turns out.  So if you’re thinking that this volume ends in some kind of cliffhanger that leads directly to the main event… you’d be right.  That particular resolution is offset by the fact that I had a pretty good idea that it’d be coming and the explosive moments of high drama and payoff that have characterized this stage of the writer’s run. Still, there are parts where you wish the writer would’ve used the twenty issues that make up “Time Runs Out” a bit more constructively.

There are a lot of things going on in this volume.  For one, Doctor Strange finds out the identity of Rabum Alal and we get “The Great Destroyer’s” origin as well.  A mystery since the start of “New Avengers,” the identity of this character is likely to surprise you — provided you haven’t had it spoiled by all the talk around “Secret Wars.”  It’s actually a role that fits the character quite well as he’s accustomed to both ruling and destroying in equal measure.  Readers of Hickman’s “Fantastic Four” run will also be amused to see that his characterization of this individual is still in effect here.  Though this person is immensely powerful and capable of setting up a great plan and seeing it through, there’s always that one oversight that ruins things in the end.  In this case, the oversight results in the instant destruction of over two hundred thousand universes.

“The Last Stand of the Multiversal Avengers,” or as Hickman calls it “The Fall of Gods,” has that team finally making it to the origin point of the Ivory Kings and the multiversal collapse.  Only two of the Ivory Kings come out to meet their challengers, but they’re enough to decimate most of the team.  There are also many more where they came from too.

There’s a lot of sacrifice going around in this part as our heroes struggle against impossible odds.  Mike Deodato’s slick art does its best to accommodate them, and succeeds in spite of some occasional stiffness.  Still, some of the deaths don’t resonate as well as they should.  Not helping matters is that the Ivory Kings (or Beyonders if you’re partial to that name) haven’t really been fleshed out into proper antagonists.  “Impossibly Powerful” is a good starting point, but we know nothing about them beyond the fact that they’ve decided to end all life in the multiverse as a grand experiment.  So far, no explanation for this has been provided simply “for shits and giggles.”

The most resonant part in this section are the final moments shared between Thor and Hyperion as they reflect on their fate and Thor gets to find out that he has become worthy of wielding Mjolnir again.  Which only makes them doubly screwed in the end.  Maybe the Ivory Kings will be properly developed in “Secret Wars.”  As it stands right now, they’re easily one of the weakest elements in Hickman’s run so far.

Finally, we’ve got all of the Avengers who are left on Earth.  The last time we saw them, they were staring down the barrel of a Shi’Ar-led coalition to destroy their planet.  Fortunately they’ve got a few tricks up their sleeve to stave off the assault, with Tony Stark showing up to clinch their victory in the final moments.  For an epic space battle that’s limited to one issue’s worth of space, it plays out about as well as you could hope for.  Artist Mike Mayhew does give things an impressive sense of scope and there are some nice surprises thrown in from both sides of this battle.  Still, it’s an epic battle reduced to an interesting plot point.  Make of that what you will.

With the battle over and done with, things come back around to where they began in Hickman’s run:  Tony Stark and Steve Rogers creating the biggest Avengers team ever and the lies at the heart of it.  There have been plenty Iron Man/Captain America fights in the course of Marvel history and this is easily one of the most brutal.  With the world about to end, Cap suits up to settle scores with Stark and extract a confession of his sins through the heartfelt language of violence.

Seeing the two heroes duke it out as the world burns around them is an incredibly bleak moment and the emotional nadir of Hickman’s run so far.  Here are the best of Marvel’s heroes and not only were they unable to save us all, but they couldn’t avoid giving in to their worst impulses during the time the world needed them the most.  I’d like to say it took my breath away, but there’s one big thing I have yet to reconcile here.

You see, while I have yet to read it (soon, after the “Axis Prelude” of volume of “Uncanny Avengers” arrives) one of the developments to come out of the “Axis” event was that Tony Stark’s personality remained inverted at the end.  This is how he became the “Superior Iron Man,” unleashing his unchecked ego and arrogance across the Marvel Universe.  As for how this happened and why his friends didn’t do anything about it, well… that’s a mystery to me right now.

Right now my thinking is that Stark’s friends and comrades should’ve been able to see that something was wrong with him and tried to do something about it.  The fact that they don’t seem to be aware of it or do anything about his personality change here doesn’t really reflect well on them.  It could be that Stark concealed this change and has led everyone around him to believe that he has just adopted a new outlook on life.  That is… marginally more believable than the disbelief we were asked to suspend when Otto Octavius took over Peter Parker’s body in the course of “Superior Spider-Man.”  If only because the change in Stark’s personality isn’t as pronounced.  It’s still something I need to get all the facts on, so this particular development may sort itself out in the end.

(But don’t bother with the “Superior Iron Man” series.  I’ll probably write a little more about it later, but the first volume I picked up at Comic-Con represents a huge missed opportunity more than anything else.  After this, the fact that Bendis is going back to basics with his approach to the character does not surprise me at all.)

There’s more to this volume, like the parts setting up the Ultimate Universe’s role in the Final Incursion, the final appearance of Captain Universe, and the role of the Molecule Man, which should further drive home the scale of the story that Hickman is telling here.  I do wish that he had found the space to elaborate more on certain things — like the Ivory Kings — but the fact is that this is epic-level storytelling that you don’t see attempted in superhero comics, let alone pulled off as well as it is here.  Yes, the ride to the end of this volume was decidedly bumpy at times.  It matters little because I’m still fully invested in the story being told.  We’re told at the end that “There Is Only Secret Wars” and that reads more like a promise than a threat.