NB of the Week

THERE WAS A FARMER WHO HAD A DOG AND SPOILS WAS HIS NAME-O

Avengers #7 - The Last White Event
Written by Jonathan Hickman
Drawn by Dustin Weaver

What Marvel has done is really unfair to most every other book out there. Hickman gets two Avengers books with three issues a month. That's likely three weeks (or at least two if New ships the same week as regular) out of a month that he gets to steal from everybody and this week was no different.
As the story title suggests and fans speculated for a while, Hickman is bringing in the New Universe to our 616. Last issue ended with the new Captain Universe unlocking the language of New Adam to revel that his name is Nightmask. The Superflows are collapsing, the Universe is broken and our Earth is experiencing a White Event. "What's that?" you may ask:
"A white event occurs when a world is on the verge is ascending on a universal scale. A white event creates/alters heralds to shepherd the ascension, and a Nightmask always acts as forerunner of the change."
So it falls on the Avengers, with the creepy and ominous help of Nightmask and Captain Universe (who just keep saying "This is not a normal event" and "The machine is broken") to find these heralds. First up is the Starbrand, "some kind of planetary defense mechanism" and their fears may be realized when all that power is given to just some kid who's been ignored all his life.
This issue alone is a perfect example of how Hickman writes but on a larger scale. Throughout this book, we are shown four scenes from a college of different students that we presume are hints at who the heralds will be, when really each part shows us the future Starbrand as he just makes it through life: a nobody in the background. Hickman writes his stories this way. You may not see what parts are truly meant for until a while later when you see the full circle that was set up from the beginning. He is blowing the other books away and is quickly making Brian Michael Bendis' nine-year run a distant memory.