''Avengers: Infinity'' is a four-issue
American comic book limited series Limited series may refer to:
*Limited series, individual storylines within an anthology series
*Limited series, a particular run of collectables, usually individually numbered
* Limited series (comics), a comics series with a predetermined number ...
published from September to December 2000 by
Marvel Comics
Marvel Comics is an American comic book publisher and the flagship property of Marvel Entertainment, a divsion of The Walt Disney Company since September 1, 2009. Evolving from Timely Comics in 1939, ''Magazine Management/Atlas Comics'' in 19 ...
. It was written by
Roger Stern
Roger Stern (born September 17, 1950) is an American comic book author and novelist.
Biography
Early career
In the early 1970s, Stern and Bob Layton published the fanzine ''CPL'' ('' Contemporary Pictorial Literature''), one of the first platfo ...
and drawn by
Sean Chen,
Scott Hanna,
Steve Oliff and
Troy Peteri.
Publication history
Writer Roger Stern explained a number of the decisions that went into planning the series. On the diverse team lineup he said, "I just put together a list of Avengers who would be at loose ends, and who would be good choices for a big, cosmic adventure ... with a welcome bit of kibitzing from
Kurt Busiek
Kurt Busiek ( ) (born September 16, 1960) is an American comic book writer. His work includes the '' Marvels'' limited series, his own series titled ''Astro City'', a four-year run on ''The Avengers, Thunderbolts'' and '' Superman.''
Early life
...
and
Tom Brevoort
Tom Brevoort () is an American comic book editor, known for his work for Marvel Comics, where he has overseen titles such as '' New Avengers'', ''Civil War'', and '' Fantastic Four''. He became Executive Editor in 2007, and in January 2011 was pro ...
."
The idea of the huge hand "came from the image that
Carlos Pacheco gave us in ''
Avengers Forever
''Avengers Forever'' is a twelve-issue comic book limited series published from December 1998 to November 1999 by Marvel Comics. It follows the storyline of Rick Jones and his quest to build a team of Avengers from the past, present, and future. ...
'' #10. Kurt and I had asked him for a shot of a gigantic hand bigger than the star it was reaching for -- and, boy, did he deliver!
The story also partly led into the "
Maximum Security" storyline.
Plot summary
The cosmic hero
Quasar
A quasar is an extremely luminous active galactic nucleus (AGN). It is pronounced , and sometimes known as a quasi-stellar object, abbreviated QSO. This emission from a galaxy nucleus is powered by a supermassive black hole with a mass rangin ...
receives a distress call from a
colony
In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the ''metropole, metropolit ...
of the alien
Rigellians in deep space. The character arrives to find the colony destroyed and a single survivor, the superhero
Jack of Hearts, who is in a
coma
A coma is a deep state of prolonged unconsciousness in which a person cannot be awakened, fails to respond normally to painful stimuli, light, or sound, lacks a normal wake-sleep cycle and does not initiate voluntary actions. Coma patients exhi ...
. Quasar summons all nearby members of the superhero team the
Avengers
Avenger, Avengers, The Avenger, or The Avengers may refer to:
Arts and entertainment In the Marvel Comics universe
* Avengers (comics), a team of superheroes
**Avengers (Marvel Cinematic Universe), a central team of protagonist superheroes of ...
, and the Thunder God
Thor
Thor (; from non, Þórr ) is a prominent god in Germanic paganism. In Norse mythology, he is a hammer-wielding god associated with lightning, thunder, storms, sacred groves and trees, strength, the protection of humankind, hallowing ...
, the Titanian
Eternal Starfox
is an arcade style rail shooter and third person action-adventure video game series created by Shigeru Miyamoto, produced and published by Nintendo. The games follow the Star Fox combat team of anthropomorphic animals, led by chief protagon ...
, heroines
Tigra
Tigra (Greer Grant Nelson) is a fictional character, fictional superheroine appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. First appearance, Introduced as the superpowered and gadget-wielding crime fighter the Cat in ''The Claws o ...
and
Photon
A photon () is an elementary particle that is a quantum of the electromagnetic field, including electromagnetic radiation such as light and radio waves, and the force carrier for the electromagnetic force. Photons are Massless particle, massless ...
, and outsider
Moondragon
Moondragon (Heather Douglas) is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. A powerful telepath, master martial artist, minor telekinetic and highly skilled geneticist, Moondragon's most notable characte ...
respond.
When the heroes arrive on the planet, Moondragon scans Jack's mind and detects a single word: ''Infinites''. The heroes are then attacked by thousands of
robot
A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be ...
s, and eventually retreat via ship into space as the artificial life forms seem to be forming from the planet itself. Moondragon continues to scan Jack's mind and learns the robots' purpose is to break down the entire planet into a molten mass. The planet's crust is breached by the robots and as it becomes molten ore, Jack of Hearts wakes and states that the master of the robot hordes has arrived. A spatial rift opens, and a being the size of a planet emerges.
The Avengers—at
microscopic
The microscopic scale () is the scale of objects and events smaller than those that can easily be seen by the naked eye, requiring a lens or microscope to see them clearly. In physics, the microscopic scale is sometimes regarded as the scale be ...
size compared to the entity–breach its head and attempt to reach the
brain
The brain is an organ that serves as the center of the nervous system in all vertebrate and most invertebrate animals. It consists of nervous tissue and is typically located in the head ( cephalization), usually near organs for special ...
to learn more and possibly neutralize it. As the Avengers battle more of the same robots within the entity, Tigra watches as it shapes the molten ore into a
cylinder
A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base.
A cylinder may also be defined as an infi ...
. Several more beings of the same size and scope arrive, bearing similar cylinders, which Tigra assumes are former planets. The group fuses with the cylinders to form a huge circular ring that clamps the
star
A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by its gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night, but their immense distances from Earth make ...
close to the original planet the Avengers visited.
Another spatial rift opens and an even larger hand appears and begins to drag away the entire
galaxy
A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar Sys ...
.
The characters retreat from the entity, now part of the colossal ring. Moondragon determines the entire construct is called a ''Walker'', and being dragging away the galaxy an ''Infinite''. She suggests summoning the cosmic entity
Eternity
Eternity, in common parlance, means infinite time that never ends or the quality, condition, or fact of being everlasting or eternal. Classical philosophy, however, defines eternity as what is timeless or exists outside time, whereas sempitern ...
to stop the act. Quasar is able to call Eternity, and the entity wrestles with the hand before travelling with the Avengers to the Dimension of Manifestations, where cosmic entities converse. The Infinites claim they are rearranging galaxies to improve the flow of energy, and Eternity advises them that this would be fatal to all affected life forms.
The Avengers each make a case for the sanctity of life. The Infinites explain that they were ignorant of the fact that life could exist on planets. They abandon their plan, and one of them sacrifices itself to restore all destroyed planets. The Avengers are transported back to the now recreated Rigellian colony, which is a paradise as
animal
Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the Kingdom (biology), biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals Heterotroph, consume organic material, Cellular respiration#Aerobic respiration, breathe oxygen, are Motilit ...
life has yet to appear.
[''Avengers Infinity'' #1 - 4 (Sep. - Dec. 2000)]
References
External links
*
*
*
''Avengers Infinity'' at the Unofficial Handbook of Marvel Comics Creators
''Avengers Infinity''at the Marvel Database Project
Comics Bulletin
Comics Bulletin was a daily website covering the American comic-book industry.
History Silver Bullet Comicbooks
The site was founded in January 2000 as Silver Bullet Comicbooks by its New Zealand-based publisher/editor Jason Brice.
During thi ...
{{Avengers publications
Comics by Roger Stern