ALIENS VS. AVENGERS #2: What Separates the Monsters…

The strength of this issue and in fact series continues to be Hickman’s focus on the everything but the Xenomorph’s themselves. They are there an implacable force of destruction that can be stalled but not stopped. Rather than pages and pages of Xenomorphs fighting heroes or simply destroying humanity, Hickman and his creative team turn their eyes first to the xenomorph’s creators… David 8. Hickman takes us back to a moment that parallels the scene in Alien Covenant where David 8 and co drop the killer pathogen on the engineers destroying them, then leap frogs centuries and even millennia to set up and fill the blanks about what happened and how the Xenomorph’s found their way to our universe. It’s a clever bit of sci-fi nonsense that Hickman sells flawlessly. David 8’s god complex is on full display and Hickman takes that god complex to epically destructive proportions mirroring the whole wipe the slate clean ethos of the engineers David 8 adopted but twisted into the complete hatred of all organic life and which ultimately leads us back to Earth and the no win situation our last few remaining humans and heroes find themselves in. Enter Tony Stark.

Hickman’s ability to dig into characters narratively through their interaction is on full display as he shifts from David 8 to Tony Stark and fills in a few more blanks about the fall of humanity. Hickman shows off the genius of Anthony Stark who manages to outwit the David who has come to the 616 and get information that does not stop the wave of destruction but does buy Tony and humanity an escape route as Tony tells the remaining heroes in the present that it’s time to abandon Earth and seek a new world to colonize for what’s left of humanity. That’s when the proverbial hits the fan.

Ribic and Svorcina are then called on to shift gears in an issue that up to this point is very much about close quarters interpersonal interaction and narrative story drive. Ribic really draws old people with an amazing amount of character and the cinematic back and forth close up lens is zoomed back because its time for a crescendo and we get our battle scene as Steve Rogers does what he does best to make sure “No one is left behind” and Bruce Banner the man that becomes a monster shows off how he is really the best of who humanity is in a wonderful doomed hero moment brought to life by Ribic and Svorcina as two of earths mightiest make their last stand to buy the rest of humanity time to escape on Tony’s ship. It’s epic and heartfelt, brought to life by a creative team working together in perfect unison, Hickman’s words, placed perfectly by letterer VC’s Cory Petit on gorgeously rendered splashes of Hulk and Captain America in their final moments. The creative team don’t cheapen the moment by showing them fall but rather leave you a last glance of two of our best at their most defiant in the face of impossible odds. It’s a bittersweet hell yeah moment that Ribic and Svorcina cap with a page of silence as the last ship of humanity breaks orbit, and what’s left of our heroes can have a moment to grieve.

It wouldn’t be a Hickman book without a little something to wet your appetite for the next issue and the last page will certainly do that for anyone reading this series. The wait was certainly worth it!