The Marvel Crossover is a more-or-less yearly occurrence, but this year’s Infinity event looks a little different. For the past few years the crossovers have stuck to a basic formula; super-heroes fight other superheroes, or sometimes bad guys dressed as superheroes. Infinity, written by Jonathan Hickman, has two key threats to the future of mankind. The Avengers are venturing into space to fight a race of evolution-altering aliens called “The Builders”. Meanwhile Thanos, the mad tyrant, is heading to a now undefended (or at any rate less defended) Earth. For those of you who have not been following Avengers and New Avengers, here is a quick breakdown of the characters and events which have led up to this latest epic.
WARNING: Spoilers for comics preceding the Infinity event.
At the beginning of the Marvel Now! Avengers comic, Iron Man proposed the Avengers “Go Large”, by which he meant expand the roster of Super-Heroes. This expanded team, containing a number of high powered characters, such as Hyperion, Smasher, Night Mask and Starbrand, has been fighting to contain bizarre and unaccountable jumps in evolution, countering the threats and those who would exploit them. The cause of these problems, it has been suggested, is a problem with the system of evolution which guides the universe.
The Super-Powered brain trust known as the Illuminati have been struggling to defend Earth from “incursions” which is what happens when alternate planet Earths try to occupy the same time and space. The alternate Earths have been destroyed in order to protect the world from such an event. These heroes have been aided in their endeavours by the mysterious Black Swan, who seems to know a lot more about the cause of these problems than she is letting on. One of the weapons the New Avengers have used was the Infinity Gauntlet, the reality altering glove which bestows god like powers on its wielder.
The underlying theme of these two comics is that there is some kind of problem hidden deep within the life-cycle of the multi-verse, which is manifesting as problems on both cosmic and evolutionary levels.
The Mad Skrull is a long standing Marvel antagonist, who seeks dominion over….well everything really. Thanos is taking advantage of the Avengers absence to invade Earth, having built a coalition of generals to fight for him. It was suggested in Guardians of the Galaxy that Earth’s reckless meddling in the time/space continuum has galvanised galactic opinion against the Earth.
There are, it would appear, some other players in the Infinity Event, including The Guardians of the Galaxy, Nova and The Inhumans, whose roles and motivations shall be made clear as the series progresses. We hope that this has got you as excited for Hickman’s crossover as we here at Ace are.