The war against death
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I should point out that while you don't need to have read Earth X to get Universe X, it's probably as well if you do, because that volume is not only a grand story in itself, but it explains a lot of the concepts you're going to run across in this chapter of the "Earth X trilogy".
In the near future, Earth has been overrun by superbeings to the point where there are no normal humans left, and there are no children. (There are two exceptions to this rule, but neither are really children.) I think that this is in part a commentary on where comics were going when Alex Ross came up with this idea, and to many it felt like him doing his classic story "Kingdom Come" in the Marvel Universe. However, there is a lot more going on in the story as well. What Ross and co-plotter Jim Kreuger have done is to take disparate story elements like the Celestials, like Galactus and the Kree and the Skrull and the Asgardians, and bound them together to create a compelling overview of the Marvel Universe. They gaze into the origins of the universe and use these story ideas, that were generated randomly from Stan and Jack down, and make it look as if there was always a big picture if you knew how to join the dots. And it is breathtaking.
Better yet, they manage to tie this to the idea of what makes a hero, to fears of mortality, to the way people change as time wears them down. There are wonderful personal moments in this book for Peter Parker, the one-time Spider-man, and his daughter, Venom; for Reed Richards and his dead wife Sue; for Captain America, reaching the end of the hero's journey, protecting the newly returned Captain Marvel as he seeks to repair the universe.
But what are these strange visions that Kyle Richmond is having of another dystopian future where all the heroes have been killed by Sentinels and humans rule the roost?
This is a wonderful philosophical book that actually looks at the tropes of good and evil and responsibility and heroism, that most comic books nowadays either take for granted or just pay lip service to because "all morality is grey" nowadays. It is compelling and it features art by some of the best: Dougie Braithwaite, John Totleben and John Romita Senior amongst others.
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