Now if the 90’s were anything for comic books they were all about experimenting with character deaths. Mentioned earlier was the death of Superman which by far and wide was a big deal but of course he was brought back at a later time now marvel tried the same thing by killing off their entire roster in a 6 issue series called The Infinity Gauntlet, now of course all the heroes did come back to life at the end but the whole death of all your favourite heroes factor was enough to make this cross over event a big hit with the fans.
The story begins with the villain of this entire event, Thanos who in his own comic which was aptly named Thanos Quest had collected all the ingredients he needed in order to construct the infinity gauntlet, a glove of immense power which gave its wearer omnipotent power. Thanos yearned for this glove because he needed it to be put on equal terms with the love of his life who was Death, the literal embodiment of death in the universe. His goal was to earn her respect by becoming her equal in terms of power yet when he finally takes the Soul, Power, Mind, Time, Space and Reality gems and puts them together to create the titular gauntlet he places himself on a level above death and thus cannot be her equal. Thanos then decides that the only way to gain Death for himself is to give her something that no one else can give her and with a snap of his fingers he kills half of the universe including most of the members of the X-men, the Fantastic Four, Daredevil and many other heroes. With all this happening our protagonists made up mainly of the Avengers, Spider-man, Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange try to find out what is happening under the guidance of Adam Warlock they discover Thanos’ plot and set out to stop it. This does not bode well though as each of the heroes fall one by one. Iron Man is decapitated, Captain America is crushed, Wolverine and Spider-man both end up incinerated to put it bluntly none of the heroes were able to put up much of a fight against Thanos which leads to the cosmic beings such as Infinity, Eternity, Galactus and such to step into the fray. The battle rages on and proves to be enough of a distraction for Thanos because in a last ditch effort Silver Surfer, Dr. Strange and Adam Warlock were able to wrest the gauntlet from his hands and return everything to normal...So it seemed but Thanos escaped to hatch yet another plan to impress death but never again would he wield the Infinity Gauntlet.
This comic was impressive to me because it allowed for so much to happen, it literally asked me what would these heroes do against a villain that they couldn’t challenge? It also brought about the creation of characters like Thanos who is a recurring villain in the Marvel Universe and also put into the spot light characters like the Silver Surfer, Adam Warlock and Dr. Strange who for were a time considered over powered characters that were unneeded. At the end of the day this story opened up Marvel’s possibilities for storytelling and just to give you a little taste of how much of an impact this story has made, the Infinity Gauntlet actually made an appearance in the recent Marvel movie Thor, hinting that maybe a little time down the road we may see most probably one of the greatest villains of the 90’s Thanos on the big screen.
Excelsior,
Vieo
Sources:
Thanos Quest CoverRetrieved sept 25, 2011, from Wikipedia.org http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thanos_Quest
Infinity Gauntlet Cover Retrieved sept 25, 2011,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_Gauntlet
SDCC Gauntlet Retrieved sept 25, 2011,http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinity_Gauntlet