Tony Stark and Captain America decide they need to reorganise the Avengers to face threats and dangers that seem to be geeing bigger and badder. Sure enough along come a big bad threat, three aliens on Mars who want to either remake the earth or destroy it based on some ancient fascist eugenics alien programming, the sort of sci fi Big Idea Hickman is bringing to bear in his run but which seems divorced from anything, I dunno, relatable? Can you get away with an alien race sending out automated drones to wipe out life on every planet until they finds one that can be perfected? I mean, as a project it sounds inhuman, which is presumably the point, but I dunno, aliens are people too, surely?

Anyway untold billions of deaths across the Galaxy and then they reach Earth and because Earth is a setting in a Marvel comic they get stopped, but not before killing millions of people in a few panels. I'm saying the casual incessantly huge body count bothers me in an otherwise crisply executed comic that manages a large cast and lots of ideas and epic sweep really well. Dunno why, I grew up reading 2000AD, they'd cheerfully off millions every few pages. maybe if I reread them now they'd bother me, too. Anyway, I expect there'll be a lot more of this in volumes to come, let's see how long I can stick it.