I know this series is running on borrowed time. I know it is slowly marching to its last issue, and it is taking me kicking and screaming with it.
I am fighting the urge to start blubbering like a high school girl after getting her heart broken by her first crush. I am only slightly winning that fight. Hickman and Vitti are so wonderful on this book and Hickamn has crafted what in time will be looked back upon as a classic or a must read. It is not that this book is that monumental or has that much real impact on the rest of the Marvel Universe. It is just that if you want to see how to take one big name and surround it by a bunch of C and D list characters and make you care about them then this is the blue print. The mold has been cast and Hickman is a master artisan.
As the series draws to a close he is slowly marching readers towards an end that I can only hope is as satisfying as seeing Fury letting J.T. fall to his death after letting him know that he knows J.T. was the one to sell them out to Hydra. He lets him fall to his death after telling him that Daisy is like a daughter to him and that he (Fury) knows that she truly loves him (J.T.) and then drops J.T. to his doom. You can call him a bastard if you want (most will) but Fury knows that while it will break her heart that J.T. died, it will do far more damage if she ever found out the man she loved had betrayed her and caused Alexanders death.
Hickman never fails to just hit that right chord with his scripts and as issue 22 draws to a close he just plucks those strings one more time showing how masterfully he is at crafting this story.
I both want to just blurt it out but I also want to not spoil the ending. All I will say is that it is touching and fitting and fans who screamed no when Alexander died in issue 21 will find closure with the last page of issue 22. Closure and happiness.