REVIEW: Thanos: The Infinity Revelation

[megaharrison]

Does anybody know when in the MU this takes place?

[KurtW95]

Does anybody know when in the MU this takes place?

Well, I hear that Warlock does not have the Soul Gem. So that narrows it down, but I haven't read it yet.

[TresDias]

Sometime between "The Thanos Imperative" and "Avengers Assemble." The Annihilators are a thing here (so it has to be after "The Thanos Imperative"), but Thanos hasn't yet gone out of character and become obsessed with making trouble on Earth.

[nightw1ng]

Long story short: The universe gets rebooted, and everything is exactly the same except for Thanos and Adam Warlock.
- In the new universe, Thanos was never spurned by Mistress Death, and they seem to be a happy couple. This is a big change considering a lot of his character's motivation has always been to court Death.
- Adam Warlock's history was slightly altered. He is now ambiguously more powerful in this current incarnation, and this new reality's version isn't as friendly with Thanos (which I don't really like since I enjoyed their relationship). He also has now always had just one costume (the new one featured in the book). I'm not sure why Starlin felt like making this change, since it feels arbitrary. This new costume is the least appealing of all his looks.

[KurtW95]

Long story short: The universe gets rebooted, and everything is exactly the same except for Thanos and Adam Warlock.
- In the new universe, Thanos was never spurned by Mistress Death, and they seem to be a happy couple. This is a big change considering a lot of his character's motivation has always been to court Death.
- Adam Warlock's history was slightly altered. He is now ambiguously more powerful in this current incarnation, and this new reality's version isn't as friendly with Thanos (which I don't really like since I enjoyed their relationship). He also has now always had just one costume (the new one featured in the book). I'm not sure why Starlin felt like making this change, since it feels arbitrary. This new costume is the least appealing of all his looks.

So they're each different characters?

[Haquim]

Sometime between "The Thanos Imperative" and "Avengers Assemble." The Annihilators are a thing here (so it has to be after "The Thanos Imperative"), but Thanos hasn't yet gone out of character and become obsessed with making trouble on Earth.

It's after Assemble and POSSIBLY after infinity too: Thanos mentions how he's felt driven towards Earth and how that's strange for him. He also has a need to punish those he feels deserve a good beat down.
As for the story, Thanos is not "our" Thanos anymore (defeated by Adam Warlock) and Warlock is not "our" Warlock anymore (defeated by Thanos).

I also have a problem with the finale: Thanos says he will have to check on Warlock because he's now distinctly more powerful than before.

Well, Warlock is:

-The person Thanos befriended and then betrayed in order to get rid of his future incarnation (the Magus) because Magus was MORE POWERFUL than Thanos and twarted his future plans.
-He is the "champion of Life" where Thanos is "the champion of Death".
-The one who killed Thanos the first time (turned him to stone)
-The one who took the Infinity Gauntlet from him (well technically form Nebula, but he kept it for some time and emerged victorious).
-Basically the center of a lot of cosmic fuelled events Thanos was involved with (Infinity War & Crusade).

If all that doesn't warrant caution, no matter how friendly Thanos feels towards his opposite, I don't know what could this power up nonwistanding.

[KurtW95]

It's after Assemble and POSSIBLY after infinity too: Thanos mentions how he's felt driven towards Earth and how that's strange for him. He also has a need to punish those he feels deserve a good beat down.
As for the story, Thanos is not "our" Thanos anymore (defeated by Adam Warlock) and Warlock is not "our" Warlock anymore (defeated by Thanos).

I also have a problem with the finale: Thanos says he will have to check on Warlock because he's now distinctly more powerful than before.

Well, Warlock is:

-The person Thanos befriended and then betrayed in order to get rid of his future incarnation (the Magus) because Magus was MORE POWERFUL than Thanos and twarted his future plans.
-He is the "champion of Life" where Thanos is "the champion of Death".
-The one who killed Thanos the first time (turned him to stone)
-The one who took the Infinity Gauntlet from him (well technically form Nebula, but he kept it for some time and emerged victorious).
-Basically the center of a lot of cosmic fuelled events Thanos was involved with (Infinity War & Crusade).

If all that doesn't warrant caution, no matter how friendly Thanos feels towards his opposite, I don't know what could this power up nonwistanding.

This is really confusing. (Not your explanation. The whole concept.) So it's not 616 Warlock and Thanos? Well, that sucks.

[Drakeon]

I hope this reads better than it sounds. I get feeling attached to characters he pretty much created, but I don't like it when a writer creates plot that ignores or diminishes continuity that is not his own. Sometimes its for the good, but sometimes it's just irritating. Then again, retcons irritate me in general.

[Haquim]

This is really confusing. (Not your explanation. The whole concept.) So it's not 616 Warlock and Thanos? Well, that sucks.

As I understand it one Thanos becomes the supreme being of his reality and one Warlock becomes the supreme being of another. The realities they rule are nightmarish: Warlock rules a multiverse made of pure randomness and chaos, where people are brought to meaningless suicide only to get resurrected and have to suicide again. Thanos rules a bleak wasteland where the only living things are ghoulish monsters feeding from the dead. One Warlock and one Thanos are the only beings who can stop this state of things (as they exist outside the normal cosmic order and can cheat its laws). They proceed to defeat the ruling Thanos/Warlock (with the later acceptance) and are brought back to their "normal" state. Yet Warlock is now a merged being with his other half and Thanos (although he doesn't tell it to Warlock) is the same.

Quite complex really, but nothing compared with Warlock '70s stories.

[Username taken]

I didn't like this.

I have a problem with the way Starlin writes Thanos as the "greatest, bestest, strongest" villain in the universe,

[ShaunN]

I didn't like this.

I have a problem with the way Starlin writes Thanos as the "greatest, bestest, strongest" villain in the universe,

This is my feeling too. I haven't yet read this and I am debating buying it. I am willing to bet any amount of money, however, that Starlin jobbed the Silver Surfer again, in order to make Thanos look even tougher. I share Username's distaste here; I like Thanos but I get the feeling that Starlin likes his character too much, to the extent that he makes Thanos the most powerful, smartest, etc., etc. being around. The effect is that almost all other characters (except Warlock) are reduced in order to make Thanos look better and more powerful.

I noticed this when Starlin took over the Silver Surfer book (back in the 90s, I think). One of the first things he did was to bring Thanos back to life, much more powerful than he had been before he was turned to stone by Warlock. He immediately established that the Surfer was no match for Thanos at all and, indeed, much of the time the Surfer was left looking like a complete chump when facing off against the Titan. I was left with the impression that Starlin may not even have liked the Surfer; he certainly seemed to make the SS a secondary character in his own book.

Of course, having written on this, I have not read "The Infinity Revelation." Maybe I'm totally wrong; maybe Starlin treats the Surfer (and the other cosmic superheroes) with the great respect that their considerable power merits.

BTW, I am glad to hear that Gladiator gets some respect. He is, or should be, one of the most powerful heroes in the MU by far, but he is often jobbed himself.

[pinoypanzer]

I guess I spend too much time lurking the Rumbles Forum but I wouldn't call The Annihilators losing to Thanos "jobbing". Gladiator losing to Gambit because he threw a full deck of cards, Silver Surfer being placed in an armlock by Black Panther, Captain America knocking out the Hulk with a punch, Spider-man beating up Fire Lord just because he's pissed off would all be examples of what I would call jobbing.

With the exception of Thanos' loss to Ka-zar even when he's not written by Starlin he's shown to be above most characters and he should be since he's the antagonist in those stories. I definitely agree though that it is tiring when Starlin retcons the losses since again with the exception of the Ka-zar battle, they weren't bad showings by any means.

Thanos has generally shown that he’s one of the higher end cosmics (not counting abstracts, skyfathers, etc.) regardless of who’s writing him. He tanked Black Bolt’s scream point blank and swatted the Hulk in Hickman’s Infinity. Richard Rider with the power of the World mind and Star-Lord armed with a cosmic cube was needed to hold Thanos back at the conclusion of the Thanos Imperative. In Marz’s Cosmic Powers mini series, Thanos (with an orb) managed to briefly stalemate Tyrant.

So, I have no problem with Thanos and Adam Warlock coming out on top when they faced off against the Annihilators but I do agree that they went down too quickly.

That said, Starlin does get carried away with Thanos, like 6 year old boy who has either played by himself or played with kids younger than him so when he goes to daycare and plays with kids his age he acts like the absolute winner.
“Your car shoots lasers? Well my car has a force field…and…and…it absorbs you lasers..and..um…it fires them….back….at…um..100 times infinity the power….and even if you break the forcefield…um…its immune to laser anyway, so I win.”

The Annihilators are among the top heroes and should pretty much stomp anyone who isn’t on a cosmic level and against Thanos they should at the very least him give a very solid fight and land some good shots before going down. Now if it was a street-level group (in power set) then they absolutely should be hosed going up against Thanos.

[agrich]

Starlin's work with these characters in the '90s was what got me back into comics after being away for a few years, and it's one of the few things that's kept me around. Big Starlin fan and love the characters. But to me this story made it clear that he just doesn't have much to say or do with them. It just seemed kind of pointless, and I don't think any of the developments, such as they are, are particularly noteworthy or will necessarily even be acknowledged at any point in the future. Unfortunately, while I do enjoy seeing Starlin's art and Warlock and Thanos, I really wish I hadn't spent $25 to see what I feared might be the case anyway. At least the Thanos Annual, which suffered from the same failing, was cheaper. This just felt like a naked cash-grab -- by Starlin, by Marvel, or maybe both.

[Username taken]

This is my feeling too. I haven't yet read this and I am debating buying it. I am willing to bet any amount of money, however, that Starlin jobbed the Silver Surfer again, in order to make Thanos look even tougher. I share Username's distaste here; I like Thanos but I get the feeling that Starlin likes his character too much, to the extent that he makes Thanos the most powerful, smartest, etc., etc. being around. The effect is that almost all other characters (except Warlock) are reduced in order to make Thanos look better and more powerful.

I noticed this when Starlin took over the Silver Surfer book (back in the 90s, I think). One of the first things he did was to bring Thanos back to life, much more powerful than he had been before he was turned to stone by Warlock. He immediately established that the Surfer was no match for Thanos at all and, indeed, much of the time the Surfer was left looking like a complete chump when facing off against the Titan. I was left with the impression that Starlin may not even have liked the Surfer; he certainly seemed to make the SS a secondary character in his own book.

Of course, having written on this, I have not read "The Infinity Revelation." Maybe I'm totally wrong; maybe Starlin treats the Surfer (and the other cosmic superheroes) with the great respect that their considerable power merits. BTW, I am glad to hear that Gladiator gets some respect. He is, or should be, one of the most powerful heroes in the MU by far, but he is often jobbed himself.

Believe me, the Annihilators look really bad and stupid in this book.

I mean, what happens to Beta Ray Bill borders on shameful.

I don't want to spoil it too much, I will allow you to form your opinion after you've read it.

[ColdFury]

Believe me, the Annihilators look really bad and stupid in this book.

I mean, what happens to Beta Ray Bill borders on shameful.

I don't want to spoil it too much, I will allow you to form your opinion after you've read it.

I'm sad to hear this, but I am honor-bound to buy it, as I have sworn an oath to buy any comic in which Quasar appears. Thanos doesn't kill Quasar this time, does he? (I think Quasar is like, 0-2 on living through Thanos encounters.)