In one of today’s features for our Guardians of the Galaxy Month here at Multiversity to benefit to Bill Mantlo (which you can read more about here and here), we bring you a special intermission from artwork and interviews as Marvel gave us an advance of their upcoming Jim Starlin graphic novel — and boy, if you’re a Cosmic fan, you’re going to want to give this a read.
Set for release next month, “Thanos: the Infinity Revelation” is the latest in Marvel’s line of new OGNs which allows creators to tell “in-continuity” stories outside of the traditional means as we’ve come to know them. Of course, “Infinity Revelation” is also a bit more noteworthy than your average OGN as this time, Jim Starlin is the writer/artist of the book, having notably launched the first ever Marvel OGN back in the 70’s. Now Starlin returns to one of the characters he is most known for in a playing field that any Starlin fan would recognize as his own, and the result is “The Infinity Revelation.”
Picking up with Thanos out in the depths of space, the book finds the Mad Titan contemplating existence. Typically Thanos stories revolve around power and control, mostly to do with his repeated attempts to woo the living embodiment of Death, but this one is a little different. Thanos certainly seeks her embrace as he always does, surely, but it is not his primary motivation. Instead, “Infinity Revelation” is more about Thanos attempting to learning the truth behind the ways of the universe than it is anything else, and he does so with an old friend: Adam Warlock.
It’s with this that we really get the interesting dynamic of the series. Thanos is surely the character most Starlin and non-Starlin fans alike will recognize, but Adam Warlock is just as big if not bigger to Starlin’s work. In fact, Starlin mostly came to prominence as the preeminent Marvel Cosmic writer due to his “Adam Warlock” ongoing in the 70s, which launched and fed most of what we traditionally recognize as Cosmic Marvel stories and characters. Thanos certainly got a lot bigger than Space-Jesus, but in Warlock exists a rather interesting foil to the machinations of Thanos, and while they spend most of their times at odds, “Infinity Revelation” brings them together again in a rather unique and interesting way.
So while you can sort of look at “Infinity Revelation” as a book about Thanos and Adam Warlock having their own Before Sunrise-type of journey and discussion, this book stands as noteworthy as the first major work from Starlin in the re-imagined Cosmic landscape. Starlin last worked in Cosmic Marvel in the twelve-issue Thanos series pre-“Annihilation” (which this book addresses and apparently takes place after, though the timeline isn’t fully confirmed), and it’s interesting to see him play with some of the concepts that were created without him. There are appearances from the Guardians as Thanos seeks out Drax, the Annihilators appear for the first time since 2012 and even The Living Tribunal, Eternity and Infinity all play roles within the narrative. Starlin even works out ways to acknowledge the differences in characterization that have taken place with many characters as of late. In that way the book feels like Starlin coming in and attempting to rearrange the Cosmic Marvel landscape back to how it used to be, like a picture that was torn up and is now being taped back together again.
The book also walks a very fine line between being friendly to the casual Thanos fan and the hardcore Cosmic scholar. It’s actually interesting to see, at times; Starlin clearly is writing this for people who were fans of his epic Cosmic run, with copious references to the dynamics and inter-personal relationships that were such a huge part of what made the work legendary. Characters like Drax literally flip between their old personas and their new, which adds a slightly schizophrenic aspect to the narrative, yet it’s one that Starlin finds ways to feeds off of and tie together in the finale. At the same time, though, the book does a fairly good job of introducing these old concepts as if they were something new, something more accessible. Adam Warlock’s grandiose history may be lost on the neophyte reader, but there’s certainly enough presented about this iteration of him that new readers should be able to understand the core of why his relationship to Thanos is important.
Continued belowIn other words: “Thanos: the Infinity Revelation” is great if you’re a fan of the old Cosmic Marvel that Starlin was in charge of, especially if you miss it, and the book is probably a relatively decent read if you’re just looking to find out why Thanos is a big deal. The character here is certainly different than what we currently see in the Marvel U, but the never-ending soliloquies and the pompous attitude of the character is certainly a return to form for the bombastic villain.
(It’s hard for me to imagine what reading this as a non-Cosmic fan is like for obvious reasons, but I’m optimistic. This isn’t a follow-up to Hickman’s “Infinity,” but if you wished Thanos had a bigger and more steady role in that like I did, “Infinity Revelation” should address those concerns fairly well.)
The drawback, of course, is that Starlin’s creative tendencies don’t seem to have aged too much here. “Infinity Revelation” is more like a throwback than the logical next step of an artist’s evolution, which is the difference between a book that fits into today’s comic atmosphere versus something that feels like it’d be more at home a few decades ago. “Infinity Revelation” is incredibly time displaced and at times in very odd, stand-out ways; there are a lot of habits of writing that have changed since Starlin’s heyday in comics, such as the external monologues to no one in particular that Shakespeare would be proud of and a penchant for overbearing exposition. Starlin doesn’t seem to have any interest in updating his own habits for favor of the more stoic, modern archetypes, for better and for worse, and that makes the book a somewhat disorienting read — especially if, say, you had just been reading a batch of current weekly comics before hopping over to “Infinity Revelation.” The differences are obvious and palpable.
Of course, this isn’t to say that this isn’t in some way a draw as well. Starlin certainly has changed in some ways; his art, for example, is much more refined and exploratory now. There are some sequences in the book that are truly incredible, almost baffling in their intimacy, like a more madhouse version of MC Escher. If nothing else, “Infinity Revelation” is essentially like a more refined Starlin, one that’s infinitely more confident and relaxed, going through the motions in some sequences but then truly dazzling in others. While the characters do show a few slight inconsistencies (especially in the size of Thanos, who does seem to grow and shrink at points), the characters maintain their larger than life attributes that made Starlin’s original run in Cosmic Marvel so truly epic. This is a big book, one that plays with big ideas and big characters, and you can feel that energy emanating all around the pages like a glow.
Without a doubt, though, “Infinity Revelation” is perhaps one of the smartest books Starlin has ever worked on. It’s tough to explain exactly why without getting into too many spoilers, but if nothing else “Infinity Revelation” feels like Starlin’s attempt to make his own “Incal.” This is a book about rebirth and reinvention, about the never ending cycles of life and the relationship that Thanos has with life, death, Death and the cosmic embodiments of the universe. Starlin’s Cosmic Marvel always asked big questions about the nature of the universe, but utilizing Thanos and Adam Warlock to go on a quest to literally try and understand how the universe works is perhaps Starlin’s most ambitious work in the Cosmic realm to date; no longer shackled by the duties of holding a monthly series together, the limited nature of the OGN allows Starlin to pose his questions, offer up something akin to answers and leave things open-ended for whomever else would attempt to take the ideas he puts into play.
So “Thanos: The Infinity Revelation” is an interesting beast, as it’s not something that necessarily fits in with the rest of what Marvel is doing right now but is never the less a relatively interesting comic. I can understand the want and need for a Thanos book given the profile of the character thanks to movies, but this particular tome feels more like a book that was lost in time and is only now seeing release, not entirely sure of which audience it should appeal to most. There’s certainly enough here for the person coming into the store off the street, looking for more of the Mad Titan, but the experience is more truly rewarding for those who yearn for the Cosmic Marvel of yesteryear.
