EDITOR’s UPDATE: It looks like time hasn’t run out on our heroes just yet! Although listed as a release today on their website, Marvel is actually releasing Avengers #44 on Wednesday, April 29. Our multiverse and your local comic book shop have a few days of life left to them- enjoy all they offer today!
Wow! Are we here already?
Issue number forty-four of Marvel Comics’ flagship title, Avengers, and it’s the last issue of the series!
For just over three years, writer Jonathan Hickman has been regaling readers with his Marvel Universe-spanning, epically heroic, science fiction tale – and it’s all coming to an end right before this year’s sure-fire-blockbuster, Avengers: Age of Ultron, comes out in theatres!
What gives? Well, in comic book land, every ending is but a new beginning, isn’t it?
Let’s first take a closer look at the must-read end, shall we? Follow me after the jump for more on Avengers #44!
Avengers #44
Written by: Jonathan Hickman
Illustrated by: Mike Deodato
Published by: Marvel Comics
Look, I’ve been a DC Comic book reader all my life. But I hit upon Avengers #1 a few years back because I had read good stuff from Jonathan Hickman in his Fantastic Four run. That, and I got caught up in all the global Avengers hoopla because of the series of films – like a lot of other people. Mainly though, Avengers #1 was a chance for me to read up on Marvel’s greatest heroes from the ground floor via their Marvel NOW! initiative.
It was a starting point for a series that promised to be epic in scale. And Jonathan Hickman and his cohort of artists have not disappointed.
Avengers, under Hickman, has been a science fiction yarn that’s had heroic moment after heroic moment, shock after shock, and thrill after thrill. Best of all (for this newly-minted voracious Marvel reader), it was often published more than once a month – along with its companion series, New Avengers, a series which delved into the universe-spanning locales (and the main protagonists and antagonists) more thoroughly than one title alone ever could.
Just when you thought the main story was over (collected in the Infinity hardcover after two years of single issues), readers learned about the threat of the Mapmakers, the Beyonders, the Black Priests and Rabum Alal, the mysterious figure who would bring about the destruction of the entire Marvel multiverse.
The first two mind-blowing years of Hickman’s story, you see, was just prologue.
And that’s what brings us to Avengers #44, the final issue of the series. Marvel Comics has been counting down the last few months to a place where “time runs out” – and this final story serves that specific moment up: Secret Wars.
Secret Wars is Marvel’s contribution to the 2015 summer comic book crossover blockbuster, and is set to premiere with a first issue next month. But to get there, you should first go through Avengers #44.
And of course, with the film Avengers: Age of Ultron set to break box office records, and Secret Wars due to conclude Hickman’s once-in-a-generation run, Avengers as a comic book, you know, will soon begin again. But it’ll be much different than this special series.
Make the run to your local comic book shop today and pick up Avengers #44. Get in on the end and the beginning!
