Today we’re going to do things a little differently. I’m going to give you a brief, spoiler filled obviously, synopsis of both Thanos Quest and Infinity Gauntlet and then you’re going to hop on over to The Cavalier Nerd for a great discussion post we did for this buddy read!
Check out what two nerds think of this epic event in comics history instead of just one!
Check out the rest of his site while you’re there. He’s doing some great work and you should follow him!
Thanos Quest
Author Jim Starlin, Illustrations Ron Lim
Thanos is a servant of Mistress Death. He loves her and will do anything to prove it. She tasks him with killing half of all sentient beings in the universe. He knows how he can do this quickly and efficiently.
He needs to find all of the infinity gems.
From there he goes to several planets and out-smarts, out-wits, out-strengths, and out-cheats all of those who possess the gems. He is really formidable at this. He knows all of his enemies’ weaknesses in advance and knows exactly how to play them.
And some of the ways are kind of brutal.
He is much more than brute force, he’s extremely competent on all fronts. And he’s got a delightful eye twinkle.
He returns to Mistress Death who recognizes his power. He desired to be her equal but he has now far surpassed her. She is uninterested in being his sex slave and still shows him no love.
Unsatisfied by this Thanos leaves again, determined to figure out this one puzzle he hasn’t been able to solve.
Infinity Gauntlet
Author Jim Starlin, Illustrations Ron Lim and George Perez
Thanos is still trying to impress mistress death so he takes his granddaughter Nebula and forces her into a grotesque state of in between life and death in order to mock life.
Mistress Death basically yawns in his face so Thanos’ new right hand man Mephisto suggests he do what she wanted him to in the first place and kill half of all life.
So he snaps his fingers and does just that.
From here we get quite a lot of characters added to the story, all the heroes still left alive across the galaxy want to reverse this.
Adam Warlock is the main player here, taking lead of all heroes from Earth as well as the celestial deities.
In the meantime, Mistress Death is still bored of Thanos so he conjures up a girlfriend to make her jealous. It doesn’t work and I laughed out loud.
Mephisto is not the most loyal assistant to Thanos and suggests that in order to impress Mistress Death Thanos must relent some of his power before all the heroes and gods come to battle him. If his power is limitless that’s just too easy and so unimpressive. So he does, he decides to give up omniscience and now cannot see the heroes’ next moves.
Adam Warlock sends a bunch of heroes in to their deaths and doesn’t seem to care, Silver Surfer gives him strong stink eye the whole time. Silver Surfer then shoots his shot at Thanos and misses, which cues Thanos to reinstate his power so he doesn’t come close to losing it again.
It’s not until Thanos reaching a point of arrogance that he decides he no longer has use for his flesh prison body and ascends to celestial ghost god. At this time Nebula sees an opportunity and rips the gauntlet from Thanos’ body.
She heals herself and is now in control.
Adam Warlock teases Thanos until he decides to help them bring down Nebula and restore order. A series of back and forths lead us to a tussle for the gauntlet.
Adam Warlock gets it and is now the god of gods. But… is this really who you want as god?
He goes to visit Thanos on his cute little isolated farm and we learn that Adam Warlock maybe doesn’t enjoy ultimate power and Thanos maybe prefers a simple life.
Power isn’t everything folks.
Well there you have it, a huge event in comics that is actually only 8 double issues long, impressive. Definitely worth checking out, the art is fun, and it’s interesting to see the differences between it and the movies.
If you love Thaos you should also read about his surprisingly sympathetic childhood.
And go check out the discussion post for thoughts and opinions on that and more!
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I loved Infinity Gauntlet when it first came out (though I missed Thanos Quest); it gave Thanos some depth that he maybe hadn’t had in his earlier appearances. I particularly like Adam Warlock’s suggestion that the reason Thanos keeps gaining omnipotence and then losing it (as he did in the 70s against Captain Marvel and the Avengers) was because some part of him knew he didn’t deserve that kind of power. I’ve always loved George Perez’s art; he’s great at depicting scenes with dozens of characters. I wish he could’ve done all the issues.
As for Nebula, I like the movie version of her better; she’s kinda crazy, but she ends up being a hero … and I like the antagonistic relationship between her and Gamora.
I liked Thanos Quest quite a bit, really showed a lot of how Thanos works. And I agree about Nebula, she’s really unfortunate here but gets more redemption in the movies
Great post! 😉 (that eye twinkle loll)
Was probably my favorite detail of the whole book lol