2024 was a fantastic year for comic books, especially in the realm of limited series. Throughout the year, comic book readers were able to read a twisted, cartoon-ish take on serial killers, Cassie Hack hitting the books, a story of parents fighting against magical forces to bring back their daughter, one of the biggest Universal Monsters making a comeback, and Marvel’s top superhero team fighting the Xenomorphs. Despite the sheer glut of choices, we hammered won a winner for this year’s Golden Issue Awards and if you have read this series, you might know why we deemed it worthy of receiving our extremely prestigious award.
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And the winner for the 2024 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Limited Series is…
Aliens Vs. Avengers!
As comic book readers, there’s a storyline that we might have prepared for in seeing Captain America and his team taking on the Xenomorphs. A stranded space station hurdles toward Earth, the Avengers are sent in to investigate, chaos erupts as one or two members of the team are infected by a face hugger, the two factions go about their merry ways once the fighting concludes, and a final stinger is presented to tease at a future reunion. Writer Jonathan Hickman and Artist Esad Ribic had a very different idea in mind and in doing so, created the best limited series in the comic book world in 2024, even without the series being completed.
Another “easy route” for a crossover like this would be to simply open up a multiverse portal for all parties involved to meet or imagine that the Xenomorphs always existed in the Marvel Universe just out of view. For Hickman’s new series, the writer decides to integrate the two universes in such a way that it fundamentally changes the future for both. While this crossover doesn’t take place in the official 616 or the Alien movie timeline, the creative team imagines that the two universes are one in the same, making for some serious problems for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes that can’t simply be punched away like your average super villain.
The Avengers are down bad in this limited series, as not only are the Aliens spreading like a virus across the Planet Earth, but the company known as Weyland-Yutani is causing serious problems in the boardroom, and around the world, for Tony Stark. While some familiar faces are acting as a last defense against the Xenomorph scourge, these are very much not the Avengers that we’ve come to know and love over the years. Taking place far into the future, Marvel’s finest might be far older than what we’re used to but their spirit and powers remain in tact.
The perfect example of how we;; Hickman and Ribic are able to blend these worlds ii Miles Morales. The Spider-Man of Brooklyn is all-grown up and even has a symbiote to call his own, but this symbiote changes in a way that is diabolically hilarious in that it merges with a facehugger, upgraded Miles himself with a wild new costume. The creative team is going “whole hog” with this meeting of worlds and seeing the interesting routes that this union brings to light is half the fun. While some readers might think that the fact that these aren’t “our” Avengers means the outside-of-continuity story doesn’t “count,” this fact doesn’t stop the story from easily being the frontrunner for Best Limited Series of 2024.
The nominees for the 2024 ComicBook.com Golden Issue Award for Best Limited Series are…
- Alien vs. Avengers – WINNER
- Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees
- Hack/Slash: Back to School
- The Moon Is Following Us
- Universal Monsters: Frankenstein
