The Infinity Gauntlet

AUTHOR: Starlin, Jim

ARTIST: Ron Lim (illustrator); George Pérez (illustrator); Tom Christopher (inker); Josef Rubinstein (inker); Bruce N. Solotoff (inker); Mike Witherby (inker); Ian Laughlin (colorist); Max Scheele (colorist); Jack Morelli (letterer)

PUBLISHER: Marvel Comics

FIRST SERIAL PUBLICATION: 1991

FIRST BOOK PUBLICATION: 1992

Publication History

The Infinity Gauntlet was first published by Marvel Comics in 1991 as a six-issue comic book miniseries. It was later published by Marvel Comics in a single-volume graphic novel format in 1992. The Infinity Gauntlet expanded ongoing story lines first introduced in the Silver Surfer comic book series and the 1990 The Thanos Quest miniseries. The story line of The Infinity Gauntlet would be continued in Marvel Comics’ 1992 Infinity War and 1993 Infinity Crusade miniseries.

At the time The Infinity Gauntlet was published, writer Jim Starlin was a well-established and respected illustrator and writer with almost twenty years of industry experience. Best known at the time for his 1970’s Captain Marvel story line, which introduced the central characters and conflicts that would eventually become the heart of The Infinity Gauntlet miniseries, Starlin had transitioned from being primarily an illustrator to a writer by the time of The Infinity Gauntlet. Indeed, prior to The Infinity Gauntlet, Starlin had scripted two similarly cosmic-scaled miniseries, DC Comics’ 1988 Cosmic Odyssey and Marvel Comics’ 1990 The Thanos Quest.

George Pérez was one of the most prominent illustrators in the comic book industry at the time of the publication of The Infinity Gauntlet. Having previously cocreated the New Teen Titans in 1980 and the late 1980’s relaunch of Wonder Woman, Pérez was perhaps best known as the artist of the epic and highly influential Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries for DC Comics in 1985. His obligations to complete simultaneously both Marvel Comics’ The Infinity Gauntlet miniseries and DC Comics’ War of the Gods miniseries led him to being overcommitted, and he left The Infinity Gauntlet midway through the fourth issue. As a result, Ron Lim completed the series. Lim had extensive experience with the main characters of The Infinity Gauntlet, being best known at the time for his work with Starlin on the Silver Surfer series and The Thanos Quest miniseries.

Plot

The Infinity Gauntlet tells the story of Thanos’s attempt to use the power of the Infinity Gauntlet to gain the love of Death. The Infinity Gauntlet is embedded with six gemstones that give the wielder godlike power to control the soul, the mind, time, power, reality, and space. The story begins with Thanos having already gained possession of the gauntlet. Nihilistic and malevolent, Thanos intends to use the power of the gauntlet to gain the affection of Death, who has raised Thanos from the dead on the promise that Thanos will fulfill Death’s wish to kill half the sentient population of the universe in order to bring the realms of life and death into balance. To prove his love to Death, Thanos brings himself, his adviser Mephisto, and Death to a monument to Death he has wished into existence in deep space. Once there, however, Mephisto informs Thanos that, while he controls the godlike power of the Infinity Gauntlet, Death will always feel subjugated to him and hence will not have affection for him.

Mephisto manipulates Thanos into summoning Nebula to his monument to Death. Thanos holds Nebula in a state of limbo between life and death in order to impress Death with his power. When this does not work, Mephisto further manipulates Thanos into fulfilling his promise to Death by wishing half the sentient population of the universe out of existence.

Meanwhile, Doctor Stephen Strange and the Silver Surfer—who has learned about Thanos’s plans from Mephisto, under the guidance of Adam Warlock, a powerful being that had been living inside the soul gem of the Infinity Gauntlet—gather a team of superheroes and a collection of “astral deities of the universe” to attack Thanos.

Thanos kills the superheroes and imprisons the astral deities. Thanos then defeats Eternity, the cosmic embodiment of the universe itself, thereby taking on this disembodied role for himself. As Thanos does this, the forgotten Nebula snatches the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos’s physical body and takes the power of the gauntlet for herself.

As an overwhelmed Nebula revels in her newly acquired power, Adam Warlock has Dr. Strange summon the remaining heroes and Thanos to his sanctum. There, Adam Warlock confronts Thanos with the knowledge that Thanos has a deep-seated subconscious desire to fail. A shaken Thanos agrees to help the superheroes resist Nebula and her use of the Infinity Gauntlet. Nearing defeat, Thanos tricks Nebula into restoring everything to the way it was before Thanos destroyed half the universe. Nebula is then attacked by the newly restored astral deities. In the midst of this confusion, Adam Warlock brings himself and the Silver Surfer into the soul gem. From within the soul gem, Adam Warlock is able to reach out and overwhelm Nebula’s control of the Infinity Gauntlet, forcing her to drop it to the ground where Adam Warlock grabs it and ends the conflict. Despite some concern from the assembled heroes, Adam Warlock keeps possession of the Infinity Gauntlet, vowing to keep its power from being used for harm. The story ends with Adam Warlock leaving a humbled Thanos on a pastoral world to engage in a contemplative life.

Characters

•Thanos, the antagonist, is a physically imposing, gray-skinned member of the Eternals from Titan (a moon of Saturn). Ruthless and cruel, Thanos has repeatedly sought to gain cosmic-level power as he attempts to prove his worth to Death. His use of the Infinity Gauntlet forms the central conflict of the story.

•Adam Warlock, the protagonist, is a golden-skinned, white-eyed enigmatic being. Possessed of tremendous wisdom and power, he has an intimate connection with the Infinity Gauntlet. His awareness of Thanos’s limitations provides the key to defeating Thanos’s plans.

•Mephisto is a devilish, red-caped, extradimensional demon. A master schemer and manipulator, he is constantly seeking to turn situations to his best advantage. His manipulations drive Thanos into making key mistakes that lead to his defeat.

•Dr. Stephen Strange is a human who wears a flowing cape and amulet in his role as Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme. He possesses the ability to project himself astrally and to create dimensional portals. His ability to manipulate time and space is key to the defeat of Thanos.

•The Silver Surfer is a silver-skinned hero imbued with cosmic power and awareness who flies through space on a cosmic surfboard. Constantly seeking to understand and protect life, he anchors Adam Warlock’s soul as he fights Nebula for control of the Infinity Gauntlet.

•Death is the mute astral deity who appears to Thanos as a young woman enrobed in a midnight-blue floor-length cape. As the astral deity who oversees the realm of the dead, she seeks to balance the scales of life and death. Her decision to restore Thanos to life in order that he may fulfill her desire to seek balance between the living and the dead combined with her refusal to return Thanos’s affection provokes Thanos’s actions.

•Nebula is a blue-skinned, blue-haired mercenary who has invoked Thanos’s wrath. Her removal of the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos’s body provides the opportunity for the ultimate neutralization of the Infinity Gauntlet’s threat.

•Eternity is an astral deity composed of the collective life force of the universe and appears as a colossal-scale humanoid outline containing the stars and galaxies of the universe. He represents the sum of time and space and is the ultimate representation of power and control within the universe. Thanos’s supplanting of Eternity separates his consciousness from his physical body, resulting in his losing control of the Infinity Gauntlet.

Artistic Style

In the first half of The Infinity Gauntlet, Pérez’s characters are consistently rendered with highly defined musculature and distinctive features that imbue them with a high degree of realism. His pages are infused with color and light, making limited use of shadows. His panels are highly dynamic and typically constructed in medias res, capturing motion and action at its peak of dramatic effect. Pérez further maximizes the dynamism in his art through the use of constantly shifting panel layouts and camera angles, with nearly every page having a distinct panel arrangement. The effect of this is to throw the reader out of his familiar rhythms, thereby generating a deep sense of urgency within the story.

Well known for his character collages, Pérez employs these skills throughout The Infinity Gauntlet, filling his panels with innumerable major and minor characters each rendered in extensive detail. Similarly, his background work abounds with highly detailed and sharply defined settings, giving the story greater verisimilitude. The speech bubbles and captions within the story are also used to convey character, from Thanos’s ragged black-edged balloons to the dramatic starburst balloons that encapsulate various characters’ exclamations of fear, surprise, and horror.

Lim’s art in the second half of The Infinity Gauntlet is highly complementary to Pérez’s. While Lim’s work does not typically contain as much dynamism as Pérez’s (Lim tends to choose more conventional camera angles and panel layouts), Lim’s character work nevertheless hews fairly closely to Pérez’s, with both working toward highly rendered realistic characters. While Lim’s backgrounds are generally less detailed than Pérez’s, his art in the cosmic-level battle scenes in the second half of The Infinity Gauntlet achieves a high sense of place and dynamism through highly effective uses of dramatic color and motion lines that imbue his panels with a real feeling of the epic scale of the conflict taking place. With frequent use of oversized panels that fill half the page or more, Lim stretches the scale of his art to match the level of conflict. Lim’s use of these techniques propels the story forward and works well with Pérez’s earlier dynamic techniques.

Themes

The major theme of The Infinity Gauntlet is the nature of love and the soul. A being so ruthless as to be willing to cavalierly eliminate half the sentient population of the universe, Thanos finds himself helpless to resist the power of the love he feels for Death. In this manner, the story treats love as the ultimate power in the universe. Thanos is willing to do anything to prove his love and is driven increasingly mad by Death’s refusal to return his affections. Similarly, The Infinity Gauntlet emphasizes the importance of the soul in guiding people’s actions. Indeed, Adam Warlock, who appears as a messianic figure in the story by arising from the dead to command the astral deities of the universe, draws his power from his deep connection to the soul gem.

The power of the soul gem is so strong that Warlock can ultimately use it to overwhelm Nebula’s control of the entire Infinity Gauntlet. In this way, The Infinity Gauntlet makes the soul gem preeminent over the mind, time, power, reality, and space realms of the other gems. As if to emphasize the importance of knowing one’s soul, Thanos finds that the instant he embodies the universe he loses control of his physical body and the Infinity Gauntlet. Indeed, by the end of the story, Thanos has had his soul exposed to himself by Adam Warlock. Learning his true nature, Thanos is finally liberated from his madness. The power of the soul has given him peace, even from the madness of love.

Impact

The success of The Infinity Gauntlet led it to become the first in a trilogy of interrelated miniseries. In this way, The Infinity Gauntlet helped to propel the trend toward crossover-event publishing that had developed at Marvel Comics during the 1980’s and early 1990’s. Most immediately, the plotlines introduced in the The Infinity Gauntlet miniseries were continued in Marvel Comics’ Infinity War and Infinity Crusade miniseries. The events of The Infinity Gauntlet also formed the basis for Marvel Comics’ ongoing spin-off series Warlock and the Infinity Watch, which ran for forty-two issues from 1992 to 1995. As part of this series, the character of Thanos continued in the new characterization he had acquired at the end of The Infinity Gauntlet, working beside Warlock as the entrusted caretaker of the reality gem of the Infinity Gauntlet.

With his work on The Infinity Gauntlet and its related series, Starlin cemented his reputation as the driving creative force behind the Thanos saga, a relationship that would continue with Starlin writing and illustrating numerous Thanos-related projects over the following twenty years, including Marvel Comics’ 2002 Thanos: Infinity Abyss miniseries and the 2002-2003 Thanos: Epiphany series.

The Infinity Gauntlet also had a significant impact on Pérez’s career. Pérez has commented on how his inability to fulfill his artwork commitment for The Infinity Gauntlet along with related problems on other projects tarnished his reputation for reliability within the industry, limiting his access to big projects for a period of time.

Further Reading

Starlin, Jim. Infinity War (1992).

Starlin, Jim, and Ron Lim. The Thanos Quest (1990).

Starlin, Jim, and Mike Mignola. Cosmic Odyssey (1988).

Bibliography

Baker, Bill. George Perez on His Work and Career. New York: Rosen, 2007.

De Blieck, Augie. “Pipeline Retro: Infinity Gauntlet.” Comic Book Resources, August 24, 2010. http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=27982.

Lim, Ron. “Interview with Ron Lim.” Interview by A. David Lewis. PopMatters. http://www.popmatters.com/comics/interview-lim-ron.shtml.

Pérez, George. “An Interview with George Pérez.” Interview by Jamie Coville. Coville’s Clubhouse, June, 2000. http://www.collectortimes.com/2000‗06/Clubhouse.html.