Roger Stern’s tenure on the “Avengers” – which lasted for most of the 80s – is a masterful run of carefully interconnected issues. In a just world, Stern’s “Avengers” would be mentioned in conversations about essential comics with the same frequency that Frank Miller’s “Daredevil” or Alan Moore’s “Swamp Thing” now enjoy. In his work on the Avengers, Stern took the frequently burdensome practice of writing with a devotion to continuity and elevated it to a thrilling art form. A fascinating and unexamined addition to Stern’s body of Avengers work is “Avengers Infinity,” a mostly forgotten four-issue miniseries published in 2000. It has nothing to do with the similarly-named blockbuster film being released later this month (although Thanos is mentioned in passing by his brother Starfox in one panel).
The miniseries (written by Roger Stern, penciled by Sean Chen, inked by Scott Hanna, and colored by Steve Oliff) was born out of two incidental panels from “Avengers Forever” #10. That type of artistic impulse fascinates me. The impulse that makes creators say, “Oh that little sliver of information? I’m going to build a whole masterpiece out of it.” In the same way that Ski Beatz and Jay-Z flipped a few seconds of a Nas song into a career-establishing hit, Stern and Chen weaved a story of cosmic scale from a picture of a gigantic hand.
Plot development and character development are too-frequently seen as storytelling goals that work in opposition. Conventional understanding states that if you want to get to know a character better, you have to slow down the action. Stern makes a habit of demolishing that construct. In his stories, the most illuminating moments of character development often occur in the heat of battle (see Captain America’s rooftop battle with Barron Zemo in “Avengers” #277 for a powerful example).
Stern’s work on “Avengers Infinity,” two and half decades after he first broke into comics, is a great example of this brand of storytelling multitasking. The series begins when an unusual bunch of Avengers
(Thor, Starfox, Tigra, Photon, and Moondragon) are called into action by Quasar after he discovers a planet that has been horrifically destroyed.
As soon as the team gets together, Stern starts pulling at the personal tensions that have built up over these characters’ personal histories. Tigra is restless and despises Moondragon. Moondragon is domineering and arrogant and the other Avengers hold a massive grudge against her for past actions. Photon’s personal arc was greatly developed by Stern during his 1980s “Avengers” run (she served as team leader for a while), but almost as soon as Stern left the title, she experienced a horrible ordeal and left the team. This miniseries is Stern’s chance to give us some degree of closure on that wonderful rise and depressing fall. We get to see the character deal with doubts about her leadership skills and we see her struggle with relatable uncertainty and regret.
Throughout the four issues of the series, battles erupt in waves against increasingly massive interdimensional entities. There have been many effective and beautiful ways that comic artists have depicted encounters between cosmic powers and superheroes. Ditko used psychedelia, Starlin merged imagination with hypnotic repetition, Walt Simonson and his collaborators (including the masterful colorist Christie “Max” Scheele and letterer John Workman) made comics that felt like action movie special effects. Instead of replicating or aiming for an approximation of those successful styles, Sean Chen boldly trusts his own instincts and opts to rely on power and clarity. He uses perspective and scale to communicate the immensity of the threats the Avengers face and the relatively insignificant size of our heroes. Scott Hanna’s inks and Steve Oliff’s colors bathe each page in a detailed gloss that greatly magnifies the power of the series. The artwork first connects you with the humanity of the Avengers, and then makes you feel the horror of those Avengers facing destructive beings who don’t care about humanity (or generally don’t even notice its existence). In my last column I said that, “I will never get tired of the optimism of a bunch of humans in costumes going up against reality-warping pretenders to godhood.” That beautifully illogical optimism can be found again in “Avengers Infinity,” it’s a theme that can be found in almost every great Avengers story.
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I recently read through Jonathan Hickman’s incredible and massive Avengers run and it’s a fascinating point of comparison to “Avengers Infinity.” I love Hickman’s run, it’s packed with simultaneously epic and nuanced plotlines and ideas that creators will be able to unpack and expand upon for years, but at times it felt like those huge ideas overshadowed the heroes on the team. The story Hickman told was largely a tragedy about the corruption of heroes and it frequently lacked the optimism that I treasure in Avengers comics.
Stern’s ability to saturate plot with human emotion is on full display in the fourth and final issue of Avengers Infinity. In a last-ditch attempt to stop their cosmic foe (The Infinites), the Avengers call on the being known as Eternity (“the embodiment of our Universe’s life force”) for help. To do this, they have to put aside their differences, they have to place their trust in Moondragon and bond together. To summon the strength to call upon Eternity, they have to think about their loved ones, their homes, the things they hold dear. Stern makes his character development and character history integral to the plot, not just asides to the story.
When Eternity does arrive to aid the Avengers, the cosmic being does not feel lifeless and empty as these massive deities often do in comics. Instead, Eternity struggles for life, for existence. Just as Ditko and Lee once showed us Doctor Strange gazing up at Eternity, Stern and Chen show us Eternity gazing up at The Infinites.
The battle is ultimately won because our heroes make a successful argument in support of humanity and the beautiful chaos of life itself. Stern then punctuates the story with a beautiful little William Blake excerpt:
To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
