Heroes make one big final showdown with a cosmic force of mad darkness...in a house in Long Island. A ten-issue story makes its final bow as Avengers: No Road Home draws to a close. The story by Mark Waid, Jim Zub and Al Ewing wraps-up on a sentimental note with art by Sean Izaakse and color by Marcio Menyz with Erick Arciniega. Sentimentality proves to be kind of a tricky thing as always in a story that teeters along the narrow margin between emotional warmth and extreme cheesiness. It’s difficult to tell exactly where the final story lands in an issue that is largely satisfying.

Avengers tried to leap through a door in a large house on Long Island the last issue. They were going into the house to confront Nyx--Mother of Night from Greek mythology who is looking to recreate the whole of the universe to fit her own kind of darkness. As the issue opens, she is set for her final showdown with a hero. He’s a simple android made by mortals and he’s up against a powerful force of nature. Clearly, he’s in over his head, but he might just have exactly what it takes to defeat a goddess.

The writing team is really reaching in this final issue. A ten-part story reaches its climax halfway into a 30-page story as Vision has a conversation with Nyx. The rest is an epilogue. The climax doesn’t exactly lack action, but it’s kind of an overwhelming love letter to Marvel, which comes across as being kind of weak coming...from Marvel. It’s a company which has so loved looking in the mirror so many times over the decades, but this might be one of the most longingly rapturous love songs Marvel has ever sung to itself. Oddly enough, it’s not that bad. It never quite manages to topple over the edge of cloyingly childish narcissism. The vision clearly understands what makes heroes heroic. The writing team brings it across in a way that’s just poetic enough to keep the story grounded.

Izaakse brings across the story in strikingly surreal clarity. The conflict between Vision and Nyx is given more than enough gravitas to be visually appealing. The contrasting colors of night and the green and red android are cast against the blinding white void in the background make quite a visual impression.  Menyz and Arciniega bring some impressive effects to the page from mists to stars, zipatones and slightly exaggerated Benday Dots. The script allows the art team to go as crazy as they want to go with the fantasy, which makes for a really appealing visual package in a story that probably really doesn’t deserve it. There are some clever moments in the climactic conflict including a particularly beautiful homage to Frank Paul’s iconic cover for Marvel Comics #1 from 1939.

The ten-issue No Road Home mini-series had been a relentlessly sketchy patchwork of a narrative, so it’s fitting that the end would be as scattered as it is with Vision confronting Nyx in Long Island and an extended epilogue. While it’s far from a perfect story, clever art and earnestness in the story make the series very difficult to dismiss as a purely commercial exercise. There’s real love that’s been poured into this thing. And like any love that’s worth anything, it’s flawed and inconsistent.

Grade: B-