My Favorite Comic: Marvel's The Infinity Gauntlet

Key Points

• If you only saw the Marvel Movie Avenger's Infinity Wars and not the comic book The Infinity Gauntlet, you missed out

• There were some really cool deaths in the comic of our favorite super heroes that you may have missed

• Several of these deaths are explored in this article

In 1991, I read a comic book that would forever change the way I perceived comic books, "The Infinity Gauntlet" series by Marvel was a six issue series exploring the idea that a certain villain Thanos came into possession of the six infinity stones and because of his love for Mistress Death (an actual character) goes on to kill off to kill one half of the universe in a blink of an eye. Of course, the movie Avengers Infinity War put a different spin on this and opts for the Dan Brown Inferno motive. Both get to essentially the same point but take different routes. The movie and the comic book were both excellent by the way.

Spoilers Ahead

Of course I would have to grade the comic book as being superior for one reason. Thanos physically kills all of your favorite marvel superhero's by hand. I won't go into how everything ends in the comics or the subtle differences between the movie and the comic. If you are curious please read the comic. But I now give you the brutal deaths at the hand of Thanos thanks to Marvel, and Jim Starlin who wrote the Infinity Gauntlet series, George Perez and Ron Lim for penciling, and Joe Rubenstein with Tom Christopher, and Bruce Soltoff as inkers.

As the heroes attack Thanos space palace via a portal opened by Dr. Strange in attempt to regain the Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos freezes time and states he could kill all of the heroes with a blink of an eye. But it is Mephisto who talks Thanos into trying to impress Mistress Death by giving the marvel superheroes a fighting chance. Thanos agrees and grants the hero's a .05% chance of defeating him. What follows is in my opinion the most iconic fight ever to take place on any comic book.

That's right a clear difference already as Cyclops from the X-Men makes an appearance in the Infinity Gauntlet. Cyclops gets a clear block put on his head cutting off all oxygen and killing him. I see this scene in the comics and often wonder if the Avengers Infinity Wars Movie would have ended better had Nick Fury paged Professor X and the X-Men instead of Captain Marvel. Food for thought anyways.

Yep That's Wolverine. His adamantium skeleton turns to rubber in a blink of an eye. I always thought Wolverine's death wasn't really fair and he deserved better. But on the other hand, this is supposed to be cruel and unfair. Almost poetic justice for all those years of healing factor and invincibility.

Namor and She-Hulk are encompassed with a fungus which envelopes and suffocates them completely.

Thanos just rips the wiring right out of Vision. While in the movie Vision has an infinity stone in his head that Thanos has to fight for, in the comic Vision is simply ripped open and tossed aside like an old-tape deck.

Another death I felt cheated by. Tony Stark/ Iron Man is killed by Terraxia! (Terraxia is a being created by Thanos to be his lover and make Mistress Death jealous. Which doesn't really work out) But the fact all we see in the comic is this scene of Terraxia juggling Iron Man's head was almost preposterous. Iron Man who is a lead character gets killed off screen by some second rate villain. I felt Iron Man should have a somewhat nobler ending.

After losing his hammer temporarily Thor reverts to his human self and almost dies from lack of oxygen, but at the last second regains his hammer and strength. As he starts his attack on Thanos, but with the snap of his fingers Thanos turns Thor into glass.

In an attempt to save Thor from being smashed while he is glass, Nova attempts to assault Thanos. Which also doesn't work out so well. As Nova is promptly turned into a bunch of blocks.

Another less than full-filling death as Spider-Man is killed off screen again by Terraxia! Will someone get Terraxia, her own comic book already!

After smashing Captain America's shield and almost having the Infinity Gauntlet stolen. In the final sequence Thanos breaks the neck of Captain America with a back-hand.

Final Thoughts

Never in such a way has one six issue comic managed to bring together all of our Marvel superhero's and simply destroy years of reading about them in one issue by killing them off. This was essentially way ahead of its time or Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire which also began killing off its main characters later in 1996. It wasn't simply that our favorite characters were killed off but in the clever ways the writer's had Thanos do it with very little effort! For this I simply say "Thank You Marvel. You spiced up Comic Books by doing this." I won't tell you how things end for Thanos or our heroes and instead encourage you to read the comic. I promise you will enjoy it and I think I speak for us all when I say we can't wait for Marvel's Infinity Wars II to be released tentatively on May 3, 2019.

I also have to thank CBR.com and Christopher Bagget https://www.cbr.com/infinity-gauntlet-the-15-most-brutal-deaths/ who developed a much more comprehensive list of the 15 kills in the Infinity Gauntlet comic. It is from this article that most of the death scenes or artistry is taken from. (Credit is largely due to you and your website. Thank You.)

Author's note: This article is all my opinion. Again the artistry belongs to Marvel, and staff listed in the first paragraph. Most of the pictures/strip scenes for the article were taken from CBR.com (they were the clearest for visual purposes.) You can follow me on Twitter @TheMoonknight77 where I mainly follow NWBO, send prayers for cancer patients and post Steemit articles on topics which I enjoy. Yes I am NWBO Long and a share holder.