INFINITY is here!
Thanos wants something hidden on Earth. The Builders want to destroy and remake Earth. The Avengers face an impossible war in space and on the homeworld. I love the big space operas but they don’t always work so I wanted to share part of this story on how Jonathan Hickman’s series will compare.
Infinity is the latest in long line of Marvel sci-fi space epics like the Kree-Skrull War, Operation Galactic Storm, The Infinity Gauntlet and more. Executive Editor Tom Brevoort tells Marvel.com how this new limited series compares to previous space sagas:
“It’s really nothing like them. This is going to be difficult to define for people until they get to read the issues for themselves, but Infinity isn’t like any of the other space/cosmic storylines we’ve done in the past. It’s got much more of a genuine hard [science fiction] aesthetic to it; for a good portion of it, it’s barely a super hero story at all, simply because the scale is so absolutely large.
So on that level, it represents an experiment, an attempt to do something different from what we’ve seen before. Probably the closest thing I could point you towards, in terms of giving you an idea of what Infinity is like, is the series of issues of Fantastic Four that ran from #600-604, the climax to the death and return of the Human Torch as well as the Council of Reeds/Celestials plotline, in which all of these threads that Jonathan had laid down were woven together into a pattern that provided payoff after payoff that you didn’t see coming, and for which the scale was large. This is very much like that, but even more so.
Infinity is the second big event of the year for Marvel. Editor Jake Thomas explains the difference between Age of Ultron and Infinity:
“I recently worked on Age of Ultron, where we totally broke the time stream, and now I’m on Infinity, where the Builders have come to destroy all of space. So now that I’ve helped ruin all of space and time, I can’t help but wonder where I’ll go next…
I love these big, crazy adventures, and I’d say Infinity feels particularly epic. The way Jonathan’s working all the action on multiple fronts makes it feel like one of those classic large-scale war movies like “A Bridge Too Far” or “The Longest Day,” something that really takes on the challenge of portraying the scope of something so incredibly massive but still makes room for the personalities involved.”
For the entire interviews here’s the Marvel.com link.
Only after Infinity #6 will we know the impact this saga has on the Marvel Universe and how it ranks in the pantheon of sci-fi epics. Based on what Hickman has done so far in Avengers and New Avengers I think Infinity could soar to the top!
Infinity #1 is out now.
By Editor