Avengers #7

(w) Jonathan Hickman     (a) Dustin Weaver

The White Event is here. The machine is broken.

Jonathan Hickman's universe-altering storyline in Avengers is elegantly chaotic. While the world is literally changing around them, Earth's Mightiest Heroes attempt to keep pace with their heroic responsibilities while trying understand and analyze the transformation affecting their world. In both cases, Hickman's tale of a universal reckoning is graceful, smooth, and damn near poetic in it's exploration of new ideas. If you know your obscure Marvel history, you'd know the White Event is an element of the New Universe -- a comic book world concept in the late 1980s -- that Hickman is reviving for the first time since Warren Ellis' short-lived newuniversal series in 2006. Fortunately, Hickman keeps things interesting even if you're not boned up on Marvel minutiae.

Hickman's a master of long-form storytelling, as evidenced by his epic runs on both Fantastic Four and FF. Guiding Marvel's First Family would prove to not be enough, as it seems. Early on, Hickman promised his volume of Avengers would be bigger and greater than any iteration before it. Little did we know he meant each issue would get progressively bigger and more expansive. Seriously. Every single issue of Avengers has expanded the franchise in unique and exciting ways. The first arc, "Avengers World" showed us that there were universal machinations in play that pointed to even bigger ideas. We've seen the origins of Hyperion and the all-new Smasher, while Hickman's Captain Universe has become a surprisingly awesome deus ex machina that's more than what she seems.

Avengers #7 is the true beginning of something new. Hickman is pushing the concept of the Avengers into brand new territory and it's utterly fascinating.

GRADE
9/10