Review: Avengers #17 (Hickman)

This issue of Avengers is the cosmic opus Jonathan Hickman fans have been waiting for!

 

“Expect the unexpected” is a great subtitle for this culmination of the Infinity prelude because the unexpected happens, and how!

 

Not only does the collective body of Captain America’s Avengers meet at Stark Tower, but the request from Captain Universe to get even bigger does not fall on deaf ears but is followed through, thanks to some cheerleading from Manifold.

 

So get bigger they do, and the characters they go after are both surprising, unexpected and really ready to take on those that are already slaughtering Galador.

 

Jonathan Hickman and Nick Spencer hit their writing stride here, bringing back phrases from the very first issue of Hickman’s Avengers to make this complex space opera even more daring. For those who love the written word as well as the drawn page, this is a tour de force of cosmic conquest.

 

The art by Stefano Casselli, Marco Rudy and Marco Checchetto is like all the art in this book has been since its NOW relaunch, beautiful, exotic and wonderfully, wonderfully alien. The trip to Mars and talk with Ex Nihilo is especially exotic.

 

If you want a great cosmic story before the beginning of this fall’s Infinity, come get it here. Great read, especially for starving cosmic fans.