[Comics] The Infinity Abyss

If DC Comics have their staple of Crisis books, over the years Marvel Comics seems to continually return to their Infinity titles. You'd think that in the aftermath of the events in previous books that the Marvel Universe was done with near-omnipotent weapons and artifact that always fall into the wrong hands that they'd have learned their lesson, but that isn't necessarily the case.

I always feel that if you drag out a particular crossover concept too long, it cheapens the universe-spanning impact of the series and results in some pretty lame sub-plots, storyline consequences and even characters.

This title is a pretty good example of how a good thing can go pretty wrong no matter how well-intentioned the original story may be.

Image via Wikipedia The Infinity Abyss was yet another 6-issue limited series featuring a somewhat Universe-spanning storyline with Thanos of Titan as one of the key players. Instead of Infinity Gems or Cosmic Cubes / Containment Units being at the core of this storyline, one can't really identify a central near-omnipotent artifact at the core of this tale.

Instead we're given warped Thanos clones. Yes, I said clones! You'd think that Marvel would learn to avoid Clones after the debacle with Spider-Man many years back, they jumped into the concept again, this time with Thanos having experimented on himself to create variants of himself spliced with other heroes and notable Marvel characters. The five clones, namely Armour, Mystic, Omega, Warrior and X (derived from Iron Man, Doctor Strange, Galactus, Guardian and Professor X) had managed to escape and were acting upon their nihilistic tendencies derived from Thanos himself and were bent on trying to end all creation.

As much as I respect Jim Starlin's work with Thanos as an evolving character over the years, this one was a bit of a stretch for me. I guess just seeing X's enlarged head very similar to the Hulk villain, the Leader was a bit too much for me and it was a little hard to take him seriously. The only cool aspect of all this was the Omega clone given the needed power and cunning for anyone to try and derive a clone of the planet-eating Galactus, and of course Thanos of Titan would be the one to somehow manage that feat.

Instead of dragging the entire Marvel Universe into the conflict pretty much centered around former members of the Infinity Watch and a few other heroes like Spider-Man, Captain Marvel and Doctor Strange. It also featured a new version of the hero of the past Infinity sagas, Adam Warlock, although I'm not too keen on his new appearance in this title.

I'm not sure what this story arc was meant to accomplish, really. I don't think it really had a lasting impact on the Marvel Universe at large. At the same time, it left us with the image of all those weird Thanos clones and I'm not sure if I want to even remember them at all.

This is one saga that you might be better off skipping entirely and leaving it behind in the void.