Hugely anticlimactic
This is, hands down, the least satisfying conclusion I've seen to any of Marvel's big crossover events of the past decade, with the possible exception of "Shadowland" (though Shadowland doesn't really count as BIG like House of M, Civil War, Secret Invasion, Siege, Fear Itself).
All over the Marvel Universe these past 7 months, there has been massive buildup in this title, its spinoffs, and the crossover tie-in issues of all the regular monthly titles. Heroes and villains are reborn as "The Chosen"! A big name character died in an earlier issue! The Marvel Universe itself was on the cusp of being destroyed! And then... there's a giant snake, Thor fights it, and back to business as [mostly] usual. Yes, the villain of this tale was called "The Serpent" but actually having the big climax battle being against something that acts really and truly just as a giant snake without obvious unbalanced godly powers... well, it feels like the lame ending of Stephen King's "IT" (the TV version at least) with the giant spider. Lots of build-up to a really boring ending with a silly monster. And the way this battle ends... well, it's really not clear what happened. If the Serpent was really so all-freaking-powerful as the buildup has stated, prophecy or no prophecy, he sure seemed to go down easy (I hope I'm not spoiling things for you by saying the heroes win... the fact that there are solicitations for new Marvel comics next month kinda already spoiled that he wouldn't win).
And not only is the Serpent dispatched with ease, but after huge buildup for each of "The Chosen", where they have been played up to be god-class powerhouses on their own (particularly well handled with Grey Gargoyle in the pages of "Invincible Iron Man"), they are all summoned to the final battle by their master, are given next to no material in which to shine, and are dispatched with relative ease by Iron Man and the heroes he built his Asgardian-style weaponry and armor for (again, see "Invincible Iron man"). Fraction's work on the tie-in issues of Iron Man has been FAR superior to his work in the actual core storyline.
This issue is giant-size, and yet, even with one "big" death, it feels inconsequential. Not only that, but one of the core concepts here, that of devoting a few pages to some average person (for more, see Fear Itself: the Home Front #7), it is REHASHING concepts from the final pages of Civil War where the everyday folk took mattes into their own hands to bring the conflict to a close. In the end, this massive crossover had very little to offer, and the fact that its tie-ins and spinoffs were often better than the core story is really sad.
One good thing I will say about this issue is that, while it's a big letdown, it's at least a good value. For $4.99, the issue is huge and contains lead-ins to a few upcoming projects as "epilogue" chapters. In the past, such as with one-shots like "Civil War: choosing Sides" you'd need to shell out an extra $3.99 for a completely separate comic in which to obtain your sampler/preview chapters of the spinoff projects. Here, for just $1 more than the previous issues of this series, you get that same thing, but for $3 less. Hooray for that, if nothing else.
