It’s the end of the world as we know it... but this book’s fine!

(Panini Books)

The Earth has been destroyed, most of the Avengers are dead, and the surviving mutant population have carved out a new life free of persecution on a world known as Planet X under the protectorate of the Apocalypse Twins, Uriel and Eimin.

Yet not everyone is happy about this state of affairs…

Havok, aka Alex Summers, his wife, Janet Van Dyne, better known as the Wasp and now the last human alive, and fellow resistance members Thor and Beast, believe this reality should never have come to fruition, and was only the result of Uriel and Eimin meddling in history.

In order to set the timelines back on their rightful course, they are forced into a reluctant alliance with the tyrannical time traveller Kang the Conqueror, who helps them rescue colleagues Wolverine and Sunfire from a state of perpetual torture on the Apocalypse Ark, and then project their minds back to a point in time where they can change the course of history…

This volume is the conclusion to narrative threads which date back even beyond the debut of the Uncanny Avengers series, and actually have their roots in writer Rick Remender’s run on Uncanny X-Force, so there’s plenty of water under the bridge by the time we reach this stage in the proceedings, and this certainly isn’t a good jumping-on point for new readers.

However, if you’ve been onboard for the whole journey, it’s rewarding to see Remender’s intricate plotting reach its fruition in this volume, while also setting events in motion for the future.

Kang’s assembly of anachronistic Avengers is in itself a trawl through Marvel Comics’ history, and only adds to the epic nature of this storyline, drawing comparison to previous epics like The Forever War.

Obviously there’s little tension in whether the Earth will somehow be restored, and the drama here is on a much more personal level, with the Wasp and Havok left particularly affected by the events on Planet X…

A gripping finale for the Apocalypse Twins saga, and almost the end of the Uncanny Avengers, with the series expected to conclude in a few issues time ready for a re-launch as Astonishing Avengers. Let’s hope the high quality of this run continues in the new title, as Remender has really only scratched the surface so far…