Longbox Graveyard #53

If you’re one of those tiresome people who shoves their fingers in their ears and shrieks about SPOILERS! when the conversation turns to Luke Skywalker’s paternity or who won World War II, then skip this column, because it indirectly touches on a reveal in the biggest superhero movie of all time, The Avengers.

Like many of the geeks reading this blog I fairly came out of my seat when I saw Thanos in the Avengers end credits. Avengers purist that I am, I’d prefer the sequels circle around the Hank Pym/Yellowjacket/Ultron/Vision saga, but Thanos is a fine consolation prize. He’s one of my favorite Marvel bad guys (celebrated in a recent Panel Gallery) and the backbone of fondly-remembered Captain Marvel and Warlock runs that were among the first books I reviewed here at Longbox Graveyard.

We’re still years out from an Avengers sequel, but speculation is already flowing hot and heavy that if Thanos is involved, then the “Infinity Gauntlet” can’t be far behind. Marvel has shown off an Infinity Gauntlet prop at recent road shows, and sharp-eyed viewers spotted the Gauntlet in Odin’s treasure room during 2011’s Thor.

Put Thanos, the Avengers, and the Infinity Gauntlet together, and it’s small wonder the Infinity Gauntlet graphic novel is “flying off the shelves,” as I was informed when I bought a copy at the cosmically awesome House of Secrets comic shop in Burbank, California a couple weeks ago. It appears a least a few fans of Marvel’s new billion-dollar franchise are eager to get ahead of the curve and soak up all the Thanos and Infinity Gauntlet lore that they can.

I recommend the terrific “Thanos For Beginners” primer that Mars Will Send No More put together if you want to know everything about the next Avengers villain, but for now it’s enough to note that Thanos is a Death God from Titan, a superpowered alien obsessed with Death personified in female form, whom he courts as a lover. Unfortunately for Thanos (and everyone else), Death doesn’t much care for Thanos, driving the Titan to greater and still greater acts of murder as he tries to win her favor.

Back in those Captain Marvel and Warlock runs, Thanos threatened to destroy our solar system, leaning heavily on the Cosmic Cube (or “Tesseract,” as they call it in the movies). But for the Infinity Gauntlet limited series, Thanos took his game to the next level, using the Gauntlet to annihilate half the life in the universe with a snap of his fingers. (For starters).

How did Thanos come by such awesome power?

Following one of his many resurrections, Thanos collected the “Infinity Gems,” cosmic MacGuffins affording all sorts of nifty magic powers. Binding them together in a gauntlet, Thanos became a god with power over time, space, and dimension — kind of like Sauron, Darth Vader, and Dick Cheney all rolled into one.

With that kind of power in Thanos’ grasp, the only solution was to create a big, sprawling mini-series, authored by Jim Starlin, and illustrated (for awhile, at least), by George Perez, who has made a career out of drawing these every-superhero-in-the-universe team-up books. The six issue series uses the entire universe as the setting for the ultimate battle between good and evil.

It’s not just the Marvel heroes that get into the act — Starlin puts out a casting call for every cosmic god in the Marvel Universe, too. Odin and the Sky Fathers are stuck in Asgard, thanks to a shattered Rainbow Bridge, but more space gods than you can shake a stick at respond to the call, including Galactus, Eternity, a couple Celestials, and less well-known gods like the Living Tribunal.

It’s this very scope of the book that most undermines the drama. When half the Marvel Universe is wiped out in your first issue, it’s not a matter of “if” — but “when” and “how” — the carnage will be undone. It’s fun, in a disaster-movie sort of way, to watch California slide into the ocean and see Manhattan in ruins — but because we know it must all be set right somehow, it’s hard to take the story seriously.

Which means that what we really have here is an apocalyptic wrapper for a bigass superhero beat down, and in this Infinity Gauntlet delivers. The defense of creation is led by Adam Warlock, who rounds up the requisite Avengers and other Marvel heroes to keep Thanos distracted by beating on his head. Warlock maneuvers to checkmate his old foe by playing on Thanos’ weaknesses, such as the hubris that leads the Titan to create a pretty damn groovy outer space floating palace of death.

But even after awarding her the next cover feature of Tomb & Garden Magazine, Death still won’t give Thanos the time of day. Finally getting wise to Death’s ways, Thanos throws her under the bus for a woman of his own creation — Terraxia The Terrible — who looks like Oprah Winfry in Thanos drag.

Thanos and Oprah

Infinity Gauntlet might span all of time and space, but when the chips are down, it’s still about comic book characters throwing haymakers at each other. And that’s fine with me. It’s genre-appropriate — and even kind of comforting — to debate the nature of good and evil with a smack in the mouth.

It’s not all fist city. Even with such a vast cast of characters beating each other up, Starlin finds time for some nice spotlight scenes, such as a little Hulk/Wolverine bromance over being the toughest guys in the room.

So Infinity Gauntlet really is quite a traditional comic book event, with a universe-devouring threat, and a bunch of heroes solving things with their fists. Kind of like Secret Wars, without all the angst and cross-overs. It does get a little silly at times, but all is redeemed by a solid ending, which sees Thanos defeated in clever fashion (“spolier,” I guess), and the ol’ re-set button punched in a way that I didn’t see coming. I would have preferred that Jim Starlin both draw and write the book (or that George Perez had done the whole series, rather than yield to Ron Lim half way through), but for the most part I’m satisfied with Infinity Gauntlet, for it’s high stakes action and an overload of Thanos triumphant!

Of course there would be more “Infinity” series to follow, before the property extended into cash grabs and parodies, first as the Infinity Gems sought to bring my beloved Rune and the Ultraverse into the Marvel Universe, and then later as they became fodder for the Pet Avengers.

Sigh.

When I get an Infinity Gauntlet of my own, I’ll wish three decades worth of Marvel comic book continuity into the cornfield.

In the meantime, I’ll wish for Thanos to be handled as well in the next Avengers movie as Loki was handled in the first!

• Title: Infinity Gauntlet
  
• Published By: Marvel Comics, 1991
• Issues Reviewed By The Longbox Graveyard: #1-6, July-December 1991
• LBG Letter Grade For This Run: B
• Read The Reprint: Infinity Gauntlet

NEXT WEDNESDAY: #54 Top Ten Manliest Superheroes!