After several miniseries and a “prologue,” we’re at the main event. It starts 205 days after “Annihilation Day,” where Annihilus’ Annihilation Wave army destroyed Nova’s home planet.

In the minis that preceded this series, Richard Rider pulled together a band of heroes to stop Annihilus.

They’ve bonded well.

In the early days of the war, the heroes capture an Annihilation Wave leader and learn that Thanos allied with the Proemial Gods to take the power cosmic from Galactus.

Together, Thanos and Annihilus weaponize the imprisoned Galactus and Silver Surfer

To keep Drax and his band at bay, Thanos kidnaps Moondragon and holds her hostage.

Thanos doesn’t have a lot of the power he’s had in the past, and relies on his cunning. This is a different Thanos from what we’ve seen before, and it’s great.

In a bit of a twist, Thanos realizes that Annihilus wants to destroy all life and decides that’s too much–so he intends to free Galactus and betray Annihilus…But Drax gets to Thanos first…

…And seemingly kills him. But Thanos has died before. Nobody’s fooled.

Meanwhile, Ronan and Super-Skrull (who was revived from deathg by energies that emerged during the war) go to Kree homeworld.

To save the planet, the royal family there had allied with Ravenous of the Annihilation Wave and so Ronan kills them and becomes the new emperor of Hala, the Kree world. Where he starts rockin’. Get it? He’s Rocking in the Kree World!

No? Okay. Whatever.

Back to the event, where Galactus, now free, creates a power cosmic blast–which is referred to as the Galactus Event–that wipes out nearly all of Annihilus’ army (and also destroys three galaxies and a watcher).

The heroes then head for Annihilus himself. In the final showdown, Phyla Vell gets the Nega Bands back, disarming Annihilus.

And Nova kills him.

We also see Thanos, arm-in-arm with Death. It’s not clear to me what that means.

In the aftermath, Ravenous’ remaining troops form a treaty with Ronan’s new Kree empire in exchange for an end to any further battles. Nova is considering re-booting the Nova Corps. Silver Surfer becomes Galactus’ herald again. Most of the heroes have separated and gone off to parts unknown. Firelord is out for revenge against Annihilus’ Centurions who killed several heralds. And in the uneasy “cold war” that follows, we see that a new child is born under Ravenous’ care…

PIC

Along the way, we get the return of the Spaceknights (but no ROM himself, since Marvel let the rights to the toy-based hero lapse).

I want to close with this: Annihilation is the blueprint for events. Take a bunch of characters we don’t know well or haven’t seen in while and give them some detailed miniseries that significantly improve the experience of the main event. At the same time as this event, Marvel was doing Civil War. It had a main series and then a bunch of spin-offs that you didn’t really need and then a few that you did. It was hard to tell what was/was not essential, and there was way too much of all of it. I’m a fan of Civil War, but it was overkill and the quality of the main series got watered down.