Secret Wars on Infinite Earths: The Comic Book Fight Club

Monday, April 30, 2018

It was a close race for this week's Hero of the Week! The globally trending CinemaCon first-look at the symbiote very nearly made Venom the easy pick! We'll probably be talking more about him later in the year, which meant there was really only one way to go. Thanos has conquered vast portions of the globe (and HOTW) with the international theatrical release of Avengers: Infinity War!

The clichés are all in tact as Disney trots out their long awaited franchise megamix. The Thanos of the big screen isn't your father's Death-loving maniac, but the close approximation is being called by some Marvel's best villain yet. Yes, an accolade previously awarded to the last few baddies. This is, of course, also being heralded as the best movie evar. About standard for the post-sugar rush hysteria.

Here on Secret Wars on Infinite Earths we've had our own four-colour rush of glorious Ron Lim and George Perez art, with a grand designs by The Maddest Titan of them all: Jim Starlin!

The tour of heroic sacrifice has occupied the last couple of weeks, delivering thrills you won't see on the big screen. Firelord, Cloak, Wolverine, Cyclops - just a few of the heroes the movies can't and won't deliver on! The Infinity Gauntlet was never the deepest event series, but what it lacks in deep and meaningful storytelling, it makes up for in sheer superhero excess.

The movie version may not be able to compete with comics, but it does offer up two particularly Marvel Universe morsels that genuinely scratch an informer fans' itch, at least for a minute or two. One picks up the tab on a long dangling thread from a previous Marvel film. The other weaves a strand that could lead to something very exciting further down the line! If there aren't any big topics, we might explore these genuinely exciting elements in the next couple of weeks.

I'm a little dubious about praise for the film's ending. It's been called 'surprising', 'shocking', and a 'daring risk' for Disney and the filmmakers. I tend to disagree. It strikes me as a very safe, very franchise oriented use of one of The Infinity Gauntlet's first-half premises. As was noted in our first featured fight; Thanos uses the gauntlet to eradicate half of all life in the universe in an instant. Heroes missing, presumed casualties of this purge, were: Archangel, Beast, Black Cat, Black Panther, Box, Dagger, Daredevil, Diamond Lil, Firestar, Guardian, Hawkeye, Hercules, Human Torch, Iceman, Invisible Woman, Makkari, Marvel Boy, Marvel Girl, Mister Fantastic, Night Thrasher, Northstar, Power Man, Puck, Quicksilver, Sasquatch, Sersi, Shaman, Thing, USAgent, Vindicator, Wasp, Windshear.

Even in '91, the danger of the mass execution took the teeth out of The Infinity Gauntlet. It was always a comic with an isolated sense of consequence. Which was somewhere the movies could improve, but they chose to finish Infinity War with deaths that very clearly tell the story not to worry. Of course, that just means their undone fates may come at the cost of the heroes actually on the dead pool. Not that I'm necessarily counting on death being the means to removing players from the board. Most of Marvel's trajectory seems to point to the stars, and that's as fine a reason as any to put the likes of Iron Man and Captain America to the side.

Of course, here on The Comic Book Fight Club, we've got our own system of consequence - namely the Fight Club Rankings! As we begin this week's final running of the gauntlet, the big question will be - can Thanos break into the Top 10?! At the time of this writing he's just outside at #15!

Check out the links at the top to see the Infinity Gauntlet battles we've covered so far. Keep your eyes peeled to Twitter, Facebook, and the Secret Archive Index to catch-up on subsequent updates. You should also find lots of links littered throughout each featured battle. Yay!

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