It has now been all but confirmed that the fervor this morning was caused by scanners, reading a copy of the book which was missing several pages. The book, released this morning, was first mentioned on several web sites, most notably the Comic Book Resources Avengers forum, where several fans were asking if their copy was missing pages.
At least one fan stated he possessed a physical copy with the error, but claimed he was unable to produce evidence to the community. Meanwhile, the entirety of the issue has been available online for most of the day; hell, I was able to screen cap the panel below by googling for “children’s crusade missing pages” just minutes after the Comic Book Resources thread went live.
Marvel has still made no public comment, and isn’t really expected to do so.
Original article follows:
I haven’t gotten my hands on a copy yet to confirm, but buzz on the Internet right now is that this panel…
…is the last thing you’ll be seeing in this month’s installment of Avengers: The Children’s Crusade. Evidently, the issue ends rather abruptly before cutting into a “Got Milk” ad (featuring Green Lantern, no less. Burn!) A quick Google search turned up the page, as well as a number of fans who were quite irate over the whole thing. The issue ends with only 18 of it’s advertised 22 pages being published, but I’m assured the preceding 18 pages were wonderful.
We sent a tweet to Marvel. So far, mum’s the word on their end.
Update
Mixed reports are coming in. We’re starting to see a few people state that their copies have the complete story.
It is possible that the missing pages are from pirated copies. It’s also possible that we shouldn’t report Internet fervor. Ever.
Bleeding Cool has now gotten in on the action, and has photographic evidence of a complete and correct copy. Evidently, Marvel’s copies and any other copies picked up have the correct pages.