‎Comic Spot

Joe & Anthony Russo’s Foreword for the Marvel Premier Collection release of Jonathan Hickman's 'AVENGERS: TIME RUNS OUT': “We grew up in Cleveland, in an old, ethnic neighborhood that felt like something out of a fairy tale. Our world was pretty small, but the comics we found didn't feel that way. We'd pick them up from drugstores and corner shops - sometimes out of order, sometimes years apart - and we read them until they were barely holding together. They were surprising and rich with ideas that gained more meaning as we got older, and they opened up worlds that felt bigger, stranger and more honest than anything around us. Secret Wars spoke to us in that same way. Jonathan Hickman created a story that felt enormous but also incredibly personal. It followed a universe pushed to the edge and asked a simple question that carried real weight: What remains when everything else falls apart? When we joined Marvel Studios for The Winter Soldier, we had no idea where the journey would take us, only that we wanted to tell the best story we could. Our focus was to tell a story rooted in feeling and grounded in truth, and as our work expanded through Civil War, Infinity War and Endgame, the canvas grew, but the emotional center stayed close. Hickman's work reminded us that the heart of any epic story lives in the people trying to survive it. And then there is Doom. Doom is not just an adversary. He is ambition and fear woven together. In Secret Wars, he tries to hold reality in place through sheer will. He believes he can save everything if he controls enough of it. Hickman reveals the strain behind that effort and the human fragility beneath the armor. Even someone who can reshape existence cannot escape the emotions that define him. We have always been drawn to characters who walk that line. People who reach for something noble and lose themselves along the way. Sometimes, destruction does not arrive as a single blow. It arrives through decisions made in uncertainty and through fractures between people who want the same thing but cannot find their way to each other. That is its own kind of ending. It is quiet, painful and incredibly human. In Time Runs Out, one of the most striking elements is how the world begins to slip. It is not a dramatic explosion. It is fear. It is compromise. It is the slow erosion of trust among people who care deeply and still cannot prevent the fall. Stories like that linger. They ask us to look at who we become when pressure shapes every choice. Over the past decade, we have worked on stories that pulled us into extraordinary spaces. We have followed soldiers, spies, cosmic beings and everyday people who shoulder impossible burdens. Through all of it, one truth has stayed with us. Scale only matters when it is anchored in sincerity. Secret Wars carries that sincerity through every page. It turns the end of everything into a story about identity, hope and the cost of wanting to save something larger than yourself. We are still those kids from Cleveland who opened comic books and felt the world expand. The medium changed for us, but the sense of wonder never left. And, yes, we enjoy blowing up a building or two on screen, but books like this remind us why we fell in love with storytelling in the first place.” Joe & Anthony Russo 2026