To Hyperion, And Beyond!
I'm really glad that Hickman is continuing The Garden plotline beyond just a simple arc, and crafting it into a much larger story, almost certainly across multiple arcs. I was disappointed the arc ended after only 3 issues, but now I'm perfectly okay with that. The Garden is a huge story, and Hickman is fantastic at big stories.
Jerome Opena is an incredibly hard act to follow. His art is magnificent, giving off a truly epic sense of scale and magnitude, and Adam Kubert delivers something very different. Opena's art is very smooth and elegant, while Kubert's is very rough and full of loose lines. The colors are pretty similar, so the look isn't a complete departure, but I can tell the artwork will be a very divisive component of this issue. Overall I still thought this issue looked pretty great, even thought it's not as good as the first three. But I can see how others won't agree.
This was a good followup to the massive scale first arc, by setting the team for this mission to a much smaller group. I really like the way the 'Avengers Machine' logo thing at the beginning of the issue is used to show who's on the roster this time. A good chunk of the small group still doesn't get a lot of spotlight, but I'm getting a better sense of some of the big group a little at a time.
Most of this issue focuses on Hyperion. Hyperion is one of the characters I knew absolutely nothing about before this issue, and now I have a much better understanding and interest in the character. He's basically Superman with a multiversal twist. There's an interesting deeper aspect to his character that I haven't quite figured out, the issue was a little too vague about this 'second Hyperion,' and I'm still not totally certain what they were getting at. Yes, there's a deeper inner persona to Hyperion, I just have no idea what makes it different from the outer Hyperion. Then discuss him as two people, but never really dig into what that entails. It leads into an odd, but somehow emotional moment in the end that also sets up something intriguing, but overall I still can't help but feel like either I'm missing something, or the full story just wasn't told.
The other thing going on in this issue, in the main time frame, is The Avengers attempting to quarantine the six sites of The Garden's mutation missiles. Captain America and the others are dealing with the main five, while a small team heads out to a secret sixth one located in the Savage Land. But they're not the only ones there, and what ensues is less a big conflict, and more foreshadowing of things to come. But answer me this. These AIM guys all looks the same, do they just always have a stuttering guy with them, or is it one specific person who always seems to be around when AIM does something we see? I'm confused about that.
In Conclusion: 4/5
After the massive in scale opener, it's good to get down into a smaller group and get to know some of the characters better. This is the kind of story I know to expect from Hickman and I like it. It feels like there's some pieces of the puzzle missing, but I can't tell if that's intentional or not. The other big thing is that the jump from Jerome Opena to Adam Kubert will be a lot more jarring for some than others.