The wait for the final issue of "Secret Wars" got a little bit longer. CBR News has confirmed with Marvel that "Secret Wars" #9, the final issue of the event series by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic, has been further delayed from Jan. 6 to Jan. 13. This comes a week after the news that the issue had moved from its earlier release date of Dec. 23.

"The story got bigger, the revelations more shocking, the scale of the action grander than any of us anticipated," Marvel Editor-in-Chief Axel Alonso said of the original delay in last week's edition of CBR's AXEL-IN-CHARGE column. "Once you've read the event's truly cataclysmic conclusion -- and Esad's artwork is beyond anything you've seen so far -- you'll see for yourself, and you'll understand why Jonathan [Hickman] and Esad needed the extra time and space, and why we gave it to them. It has all been building to this."

"Secret Wars" started in May of this year, and was originally planned as an eight-issue series, before expanding to nine issues in August. Though Marvel has now launched dozens of series set in the months following the event, much of the details of exactly how the newly reconfigured Marvel Universe came to be remain to be revealed -- along with the status of characters such as the Fantastic Four's Mr. Fantastic and Invisible Woman.