of everyone, two, four guys in a comic podcast. Today we're talking about the one and only Infinity Gauntlet event. For those of you that don't know, at this point, Thanos has acquired the Gauntlet consisting of six Infinity Gems. These gems give control over all of reality.
So the series starts up and we basically see beautiful George Perez art. For those of you that don't know, it's a six-issue main series. And right away, we see a nice big splash page that has made out of stone. It says the word God.
And I think that's a very accurate description of Thanos at this point with the Gauntlet. Right off the bat, I'm going to mention Mephisto is here. And the reason he's here is to get the Gauntlet for himself, obviously being Mephisto. He's selfish and whatnot.
So he's basically Thanos's laptop. Yeah, you know, when I first opened the page of this book and I saw that, I actually hadn't read anything pre to this. I hadn't really explored it. I just heard that it was a good series and I picked it up.
But when I saw Mephisto on the first page, I was like, why is he here? And I never figured it out until you just explained it just now. It's, I mean, it's weird that you would see someone that, I guess, powerful on Earth being this worried about the situation. But you know, it's a really cool page.
And like you said, the art is fantastic with it. It really pulled me in. And I mean, I'm always talking about space art and everything else. I mean, I mentioned a few other issues.
And the one thing that tops it for me is these Thanos issues, whether it be Jim Starland or even here, you know, it's George Perez is fantastic. No, he is. I mean, George Perez's work is just unbelievable. And it really just kind of jumps out at you.
And there's a few panels I could hear in there. It almost looks three-dimensional. His artwork really just kind of reaches out to you. Yeah, to me, this is really like the standard for it.
Like, whatever I'm mostly comparing comic art and comparing it to this. Yeah, I mean, George Perez, the amount of detail is just unbelievable that he puts in. So before getting further with this, I was meant to ask you now that you're saying Thanos. I say Thanos.
Potato, potato, tomato, tomato. What is the correct verbiage for him? I don't know. In the movie, they said Thanos.
I like to say Thanos. I guess it's just say how you want to say it, I guess. I've never heard anyone really officially say anything besides in the movie. How do you say it, Donova?
Thanos. Okay, this? Thanos. Thanos.
So we have two Thanos and two Thanos. Is that what I'm understanding? Looks like it. Alright, okay.
So for your viewers out there, feel free to add in the comments down below what you think. Because they know it's a Thanos. Or maybe it's just a Southern thing. Alright?
Oh man. So you told me, you said you actually haven't read this before until recently, right? Believe it or not, embarrassing as that may sound, I just never got around to it. I've been out of the six issues sitting in a long box in my attic for who knows how many years.
I want to say I sold it off like two months ago and here we are, we missed. But I just never got around to it. I can't believe that you sold it off. When did you read it for the first time, David?
A few days ago. Really? Well, you know, this was right before I really started getting into comic books and most of my experience, yeah, I got into comic books and then I fell out of them for a long time. And then I got back into them.
So my experience in the past couple of years has been read everything from the point that I got into comic books forward instead of going further back. So unfortunately, I just missed this series whenever I first started because I actually started with Angel Apocalypse and it wasn't too much after this that that came about. Yeah, it was a couple of years, but I mean, it's, I mean, you got to think, I back then, I guess, no internet. It's not like you can just go and find things real, really easy either.
Like you can't just search it on Amazon or eBay or something. If you want to go read back, you got to go actually go out and hunt for it. I know Nova over here has the fancy omnibus of it. No, but when was the first time that you read Infinity Gauntlet?
It was a couple years ago, I think after, was Infinity two years ago or was that last year? Infinity I think was like 2012? Well, I read it right after that because I was interested in Thanos. And yeah, now I got to read the prequel stuff and all the useless times.
So that was good. Frick reflect back on this. You know, when it came out, it's actually when I joined the military. So that probably would help.
When I first joined, my reading really came to a hall. And the 90s, I'm going to not lie, 90s stuff really didn't excite me that much either. I don't know what it was about 90s comics. At that time, I started going back into the 60s.
Angel, Angel, Apocalypse. Angel, Apocalypse was really, really good. See, that's the thing though. Like, I mean, I wasn't necessarily, I couldn't comprehend how popular this stuff was back then.
I was pretty young at the time. So was there a bunch of hype around Infinity Gauntlet? Do you all remember? I don't remember anything but then again, I was on a ship in the middle of the sea.
Well, and that's the thing is the idea of huge crossover events wasn't really as profound as it is now. I mean, now everything's crossing over with everything. I mean, Secret Wars being a good example of that. But you know, they didn't really start with a lot of the crossover stuff until like the mid 80s.
So you didn't really have, I mean, they started with actually the first couple of Secret Wars where there was a lot of this part happens in this book and this part happens in this book. It wasn't necessarily these characters are in this book with these other characters. So it was a piece of the story happened in each title, but they were still kind of compartmentalized. They didn't really start doing huge crossovers until like the mute massacre.
And that's when you really started getting a lot of mixing characters in different books. So the idea of crossover events still wasn't widely found. So it wasn't something that they really hyped up a whole lot. Okay, and you all would say that Thanos's popularity grew a lot after this or did you all really hear about him before this too much?
I mean, he was kind of a major player, I guess in the late 70s and then in the early 80s a little bit and stuff, but he died off for a while. So when he came back, I guess for this and infinity quest was his popularity still up there? Or were you all like, who's Thanos? Yeah, I was like, who is he?
And in the 70s, he wasn't that big of a player in my opinion. There was a few top Marvel two and ones, I think it was a Marvel team up, Daredevil to Avengers, but just a little bit's here and there. It really wasn't till the 90s when they gave him a power of God that he really started to become popular. Everybody loves a good villain.
Yeah, and this is what 1991 I believe is when the series started. Yeah, it's the end of the middle of 1991, the end of 1991. I think it was December 1991 as the first issue came out. Yes, gotcha.
Well, let's dive right in guys. I mean, we've got the we've got Mephisto and Thanos with the offended god on his arm and they're sitting on that cliff, taking a look out at where the rocks form the word God and then Mephisto is telling Thanos that's what he is. That's his power. He's got the power of God.
And when I saw that, no, the first thing that I really the first thing I thought of is I go into our current stuff in Marvel. I think of God doing that was the first thing I really thought of and then we'll do make some entrance and stuff that we'll talk about later. It's like, yeah, okay, that's where stuff is coming from today. Oh, yeah, you know, it's crazy.
I mean, Doom and Secret Wars is the end all be all, but in this in the 90s, Thanos was the end all be all. Yeah, but coming off from this page, we see the God and Mephisto and Thanos standing there on the hillside cliff. And we come right into the moment is upon us and you see Thanos standing there with the infinity gauntlet to his chest. And it's the real first time you're like, wow, this is happening.
He's ready. Everything's about to go down. And just from the context from Mephisto, you can tell that he's like, oh no, like the stars must come to realize what is happening. And you can tell that he's falling behind Thanos.
Like he's worried. He sees Thanos pick up this boulder and this rubble and stuff and he just destroys it and just like, whoa. Yeah, this is Thanos really getting a feel for the absolute power that he has while wielding the gauntlet. And then it just shifts straight over to Dr.
Stephen Strange. And he's at what is Strange's house called again? I don't remember what the what the term is for it. And then the same thing.
Sanctum Sanctoria. Yes, right. Sanctum Sanctoria. Totally.
Yeah. We see Dr. Strange at the Sanctum Sanctoria. And he has a bunch of chairs, but he never uses them.
I've noticed that. The chairs are there for long and that's better. He likes to hover. When he wants to invite the guests into a palm read if you'll make a few extra books.
There you go. There you go. And Rusty, why don't you tell us about Strange's unexpected visitor? Oh, yes.
You hear the noise and he goes to Russian. Dr. Strange goes upstairs and who do you think falls in through the roof but none other than Norrin Rad, the Silver Surfer? And what a lot of people don't know before this is that it was in his Silver Surfer series.
He actually was a part of the revival of Thanos' Second Coming. He landed upon a planet and he ran into what he thought was an illusion, but he walks in and it is actually Mistress Death's palace. And while he's there, he witnesses Thanos re-arise from the summoning of death. And what he's coming to do is after this whole storyline where Norrin Rad wants to stop Thanos from his planet and everything that his idea is from destroying everybody.
And so he wants to come and warn Earth. Now, okay, so I'm always saying missing some other storyline or something because he comes to Earth but he says that he got sidetracked and he wanted and he's hope he's there not too late of a time. Do we know what storyline was his sidetracked? What was happening with him?
Yeah, he got to drive through for Galactus. Yeah. Well, he does he did visit Galactus because he found out I'll just toss this and he found out that Galactus had basically taken away his guilt for all the planets that have been destroyed. So he got that back.
So no, but what story is this thing that's coming out of? It's in the Silver Surfer solo series. Yeah, it's a really good run if you haven't read it. You should definitely try it.
And he also runs into a stone version of Thanos, which is we were talking about Secret Wars and Jonathan Hicken taking from this. It's funny there was a panel here where Thanos is there's a stone statue in its in that position where Thanos was at the end of infinity with his arm sort of stretched in front of him. And it just reminded me of that as well. And so he basically gets attacked by that stone version of Thanos and that occupied quite a bit of time as well.
You know, it's weird because actually for the second coming of Thanos, like I said, he had to be reversed basically. At the end of the King size of Avengers issue, with the split story of Thanos versus the Avengers, it was basically at the end to it. Thanos is actually frozen into stone in that position by Adam Warlock before he sucked into his own Soul Gem. And he sacrificed himself basically to stop Thanos before he took over everything.
And one thing that you do see before the end of the comic when you see Thanos just frozen there is that he's standing there with his arms out and you see what looks like tears running down his face. So you can tell he's still alive in the stone. So now like we mentioned, Serfers telling Dr. Strange what's going on.
And we jump back to Thanos in Mephisto. And you know, Thanos is saying, what should I do with my power now? And he says anything I want, and he obliterates a planet. And he says, I am incapable of error.
This is a personification of Thanos that we know and love now, where his ego is immeasurable as well. Oh yes, he is willing to do whatever he can with what literally he has and nothing will stop him. But I want to mention that the art on the exploding planet looks fantastic, especially with the reds and pinks and the yellows really popping out of it. And like I said before, it really looks three-dimensional in this artwork in there.
It really draws you in. But you know, I want to skip back a little bit with Thanos talking. I just got to throw this out there. You know, I have two young boys, six and eight years old, our house is a swaggy house.
So they're watching Superhero Squad every chance. And every time Thanos is talking to this, I just hear the actors' characters' voice from the TV show. So I hear that. I don't know, you guys watch Superhero Squad at all?
No, I don't. Unfortunately, no. Okay. You know what though?
Like whenever I was reading it, I was imagining what his voice sound like. I kind of pictured what it sounded like in the Galaxy. I thought they did a pretty good job on that. I can't get out of this chair when I just...
So one thing I'd like to point out, and it's kind of said as an aside, it's not really an important thing that they try to make it. It feels like I'm just trying to slip it by us. But, you know, Thanos was... Thanos was pretty powerful before.
But what they mentioned is when Death resurrects him, they said, along with renewed life, Death gave him greatly augmented power. And that's not even with the Infinity Gauntlet. So he's already boosted as far as his power levels before he even got the Gauntlet. That's a good point there.
We got rid of that, ask. Yeah. And you kind of see that when he's getting the gems. I have a list here.
He gets the Soul Gem from the In-Betweener, Power Gem from the Carrot-Jenny Champion, Space Gem from the Gardener, Time Gem from the Runner, the Reality Gem from the Collector, and the Mind Gem from Grandmaster. Yeah. So he's already able... I believe the In-Betweener was in a shield that was otherwise impenetrable.
So he manages to break that shield. So yes, he... That is worth mentioning. He is definitely already really powerful.
So Noah, so now that you mentioned where they came from, what about the Blove itself? There's no actual mention of it. It's almost as if he just popped them on his regular Glove. That was kind of curious on how that worked.
Is there a... How does a Blove make all of them connect? Well, if you hold the gem, if you have it on your person, you already control the power of it. Okay.
So yeah, if he has just the Time Gem on its own, he can control Time. If he has it on him, it's... It's in his pocket or if it's in his fingertips. It doesn't.
Yeah. It's on his... Each one kind has a pro and con too, because in the earlier Warlock series, when we first see the Soul Gem on him, he has a certain time period in which he can live. Like he has...
I think they said it's a year, and it's because it's connected to him. It's slowly eating away at his soul and it takes bit by bit from him. And so they gave him a time frame before the Soul Gem finally consumed him. So it's kind of like each one has its pro and con for the other.
Like I guess if you have the Soul Gem that's slowly eating away, you can use the Time Gem and slow down the process. So each kind of like a yin and yang? Yes. Gotcha.
One thing I'd like to point out, because you mentioned the movie's previously, is you do get to see the Infinity Gauntlet itself. It has no gems in it, but you see the Gauntlet itself in Odin's trophy room in the original Thor movie, and it's just for a second. Oh wow. See, I've never seen the Thor movie.
I know, right? There's your homework assignment for this week. Oh, that's the thing though. I don't...
I'm not that into Thor. I'm just gonna say it right now. Save yourself a lot of time. Did I?
Oh, no, it's not a thing. In my opinion. I like the movie. The first one was the first one was okay.
The second one is it looked nice. Oh well, well, I'm just hoping for this Infinity War movie to work out, but with this we already have a story. So it's cool. I think the Infinity Gauntlet looks really cool on Thanos, so whether they want to call it a mitten or not, it's pretty dang cool.
I just like to talk about Thanos's costume. You know, he's kind of gone more purple nowadays, but I do have to say that the gold with the blue really seems to work really, really well for him, because any man who walks out of his house just like that obviously has nothing to fear. I say no. I don't know why I think of Rich Ryder, Nova.
I stand costume in here for some reason, but that's just me. So moving on here, we start to see the end of the flashback where it's starting to explain that he has the soul, the mind, the power, the time, the reality, and the space gym. And he's finally got them all together. And he finally explains that no longer the laws of nature bind him, his will can bend the very fabric of reality, and he is all and all there is now is his command.
So obviously this is from Surfer explaining to him to Strange on the couch what exactly he has and what exactly he can do to it. But then we go into the scene where we're watching a few people come out of a bar. We see a guy smoking a cigar and they are complaining that they should have left hours ago, but little did we know who they are. Vandy Long.
How much did she get? More of a couple more pounds. Oh, the blonde bimbo. Yeah, it's a big long.
So these three miscreants that we're talking about here is Jake Miller, Ralph Bunker, and Vandy Long. And they apparently are just common criminals at this point. They just committed a crime. They knocked off a liquor store, wasted the shopkeeper, and then spent the rest of the day in a bar.
Another one of them, Eve the State and go to Canada. Better watch out, know that. I was just gonna say, yeah. Nothing to worry about because as they're driving, they drove right off the cliff and they all died.
But it kind of makes you wonder it's like, okay, we're reading the story about they know, and civil surfer and Stephen Strange. What do these common criminals have anything to do with anything? But so those miscreants just died. They just drove off the cliff.
And then it goes right into talking about a little bit more flashback stuff by a silver surfer, talking about him and destroyer essentially getting sucked into the the Soul Gem. And that is where they meet Adam Warlock. And Adam Warlock was able to, after some time spent in there, cast a spell that the destroyer and he were able to return to the reality that they were ripped from and back into their bodies. But by that time, Thanos had disappeared.
Yeah, Thanos was frozen in stone and then nowhere to be found. But we see Adam Warlock come out of this and he's been gone for a while the same amount of Thanos was. He sacrificed himself to kill Thanos. But right after this page, we see the birth of Nebula, right?
Well, kind of the undeath of Nebula. That's what Thanos is relative of some sort. Hold on, let me find it. Yeah, it's his grand, his proclaimed granddaughter.
Yes. And on dying of her, I don't know what to call it. He basically burnt her in one of the prequel issues as well. To me, he basically made her into a zombie.
It's pretty much the best way to put it. And she exists between life and death. Yes. It's almost like a Deadpool in Age of Apocolips, David.
Dead Ben, wait, yes, sir. Yeah. And basically the reason he's doing all this is to impress death. Yes, his love, his love of death.
Yeah, I just wanted to mention that the three strangers that died in the car crash, Adam Warlock, Gamora and Pip the troll, they're basically incarnated in these people. And they're going to transmute into the regular forms over time. Yeah, you don't really get any clue as to that until Bambi starts turning green. Yeah.
You know, when I first read this, I was like, what the hell is going on? Basically, I was like, I'm sure you felt that way too, read a little bit. I was like, I was like, what's going on? They killed off the Bimbo and now she's turning green.
I was like, what is happening here? That's like, all right. Okay, okay, they're being possessed by those me by bad guys. Yeah.
Oh, yeah. Who knew that it would be the people randomly see die earlier on turn into the three more important people in the series. Exactly. Yeah.
Well, I mean, I guess they had to insert them in here somehow. But let's get into because this is actually the point where they start talking about, you know, why Thanos is there, what his purpose is. And that is because he is in love with death. And she is at this point, spurning him because she gave him a task and he hasn't done it.
He's like, well, I have the infinity. You go, what are you going to do now? And she's just like, turns around and walks away. He's like, what the hell?
What am I supposed to do? And then he remembers what he has to do. I was messing with death. She never really speaks either.
You know, it's all him basically in his mind or talking with, who was he talking with again? Um, yeah, thank you. Talking with him. And he's trying to piece it all together.
But death, she doesn't really, she doesn't say a word. And what else interesting that she went from a school face to now a woman's face. Yeah, death does that. She goes in between from living to dead appearance quite often.
If you've read the thing, I was rising, you can see when he first meets her that she is in the human form. And that's the form he actually falls in love with. So whenever she turns it into that form, it's actually the woman he loves. But when she is school faced, that's when he knows that she is serious.
It's actually whenever she shows emotion that she turns back into this human form. Now, stand up rising time with that. That's that four issue series that's a flashback from his childhood and everything like that. Yeah, you see him growing up on time.
Yeah, that was actually really good too. That really, you know, post-pussing perspective on when I was reading this as well. Oh, yeah, definitely. I mean, it's so weird that an origin story like that came out so late in his lifespan and that they actually ran with it.
But it was good. Yeah, it was really, really well. It helped me actually a lot when I was reading this for the first time. But moving on, like I said, it's, she turns into that when she's showing some kind of emotion.
And she always, as weird as it says, gives him the cold shoulder like that. You see it many times before this and you see it many times later. But I want to go on to this page of his throne. The art looks amazing in it and he just pops it up out of nowhere.
You can tell he shows his love for death by even making her in the pillars. Yeah, he has his thrones. It's cool. I mean, you don't see the floating chair anymore, but you see a whole floating basic planet asteroid.
No, and it's basically palace in her honor. Yeah, and he is boasting about his gauntlets and what he can do with it and how everyone should be threatened by it. And all he wants to do is prove to death that he can make her happy in some way and that he deserves her love. And you see what he does to Nebula and he's basically torturing her.
And he's like, please just love me before he just gets frustrated and boom. You can see they get more frustrated from the unrequired love he's been getting from death. And the more she doesn't do anything, the more frustrated he gets, the more he wants to impress her. So he's, you know, he's on a cycle is just not working for him.
Yeah, absolutely. And then like I said, you know, she keeps giving him the cold shoulder until he realizes what he has to do. And what is it that he has to do, Rusty? What is what is Thanos's big mission to get death's attention?
With a snap of the finger, he gets rid of half of the universe. Half of population. Yeah. And that was not just only the population, the human population, but that was also the animal population as well.
Yep, anything living. It's half, yeah, half of all life on the planet or in the universe is completely and totally just gone, vanished. And you can see this in some of his silver surfer stuff too, like in the original, what's it, silver surfer 34 Nova or it's 34 or 35. Either way, he does kind of a tease to surfer where he takes him to a planet and shows him this population of animal life.
And he's like, Oh, you know, it's never been touched before. It's never been here. And then surfer's like, what's the point of this? And he's like, well, because we were there, we shared bacteria with him and now they're all dead basically.
And it's like, Whoa, that's what he's doing. And then he continues on from there to gather the gems. And now this will snap with a finger half the population gone. Right.
And in the next few pages, we see Spider-Man seeing half the population disappear. People are freaking out. Someone's baby is gone. Friends are disappearing.
You know, we see Captain America walking in the Avengers building and Hawkeye and Circe disappear right in front of him. And it's really interesting to see how shocked everyone is and the desperation when he can't do anything about it. And after that, we even see Red Skull's favorite person floating in space. Did I miss a panel?
After you has an eye patch. Oh, sorry. Yes. Nick Fury, I was so excited when we saw Colonel Furry in this, you know, I passed the goth.
I was like, all right. Now this is going to go somewhere. I think he said Colonel Furry. Very nice.
I got excited there. Okay. Colonel Nick Fury when he gets me all hot. What can I say?
You got to keep all of that. Alex, you got to keep all that. It's all going to be in there. It's okay.
Okay. So now that I mean myself, look like an ass. Nick, I was excited. Okay.
Yes. Between that and then talking about the cube, the cosmic cube. What do you think about Hulk just sitting in the diner like that, Nova? I like to.
I know that at this time, Hulk was pretty smart. So I just really come up with his costume. He's wearing, he looks so weird. It just his shirt is opened completely, but I don't know.
It's funny. It looks like it's 1970s. He's just missing a gold chain across. Yeah.
He wears a belt with his shirt unbutton tucked into his pants. Yeah. Oh, man. Well, I mean, the Hulk does is I mean, he's just basically a walking Christmas because you know, red, red shirt, red pants, green skin.
Yeah. And then, you know, he's been sitting there drinking. Like, I mean, that's a thing really. Drinking pitchers, drinking pitchers.
But I mean, let's be honest, it's Hulk. You think that's going to affect him? So I don't understand the reason why he's there in the bar. I never knew that.
Hulk drink is just he's so hulk. He just tosses like the pitcher into the TV. Oh, I've heard enough. This is a great page actually now that we're talking about.
But bottom line is Hulk does what Hulk wants who's really going to see anything. All right. Then we move on to the scroll here. And why don't you tell us what's going on with the scroll, David?
Well, the scrolls, essentially, this just goes on to continue with half the population everywhere is gone. So they're talking about the scrolls. They're like, well, I don't know what's going on, but we got it. We know exactly who's up, who is up to this stuff.
And it's got to be the Cree. So it's like, oh, we're going to go to war because the Cree had had to be the people responsible for doing this. And see, this was a little panel, but I wanted to bring it up because later on, crazy stuff happens. Well, we see we see basically more people disappearing.
And what the rest of this issue basically did was involve, you know, the entire universe is feeling this. And we see multiple characters that we've made that we may or may not have been introduced to yet in the story. Start to get involved with it. If you go, if you're in that room where you see a fire lord and drags and everyone in there, if you look at the TV screen, you can actually see alph on it.
I got kicked out of that. Yeah, you know, I never noticed that before now, even just flipping through it right now. I'm just like, whoa, alph. But anyways, let's move on.
So then we go to the hotel or the motel room where the three miscreants that have just been risen from the dead after being possessed by cosmic entities. We know who they are at this point as far as, you know, us, the readers, well, us, the four guys know who they are, but we don't know, we aren't introduced to who they are in the story yet. But we see to continue the trend of people just randomly disappearing. Bambi just fades into nothingness.
It's kind of strange because, you know, if they're already dead, how are they getting taken away again? She just got really unlucky and found the five hour gap where she brought, was brought back to life and then died again, basically. And it's like, oh, poor, but after that, you see Pip freak out. And he runs into the room and you see Adam more walking a cocoon.
He hasn't disappeared yet. And this leads us into issue number two. Hold on. Say with that cocoon thing.
I had no idea what that was at first, to be honest. I thought it was a sleeping bag or I had no clue what I was looking at. If you look at the original Warlock series, he actually like hibernates in this cocoon sometimes to where he needs to get back into a certain part. And it's like he goes there to meditate, he goes there to reform himself sometimes even.
But I think it only happened one other time or two other times previous to this. And that was in between the original series with Roy Thomas until Jim Starlin reimagined him back in the 70s. It was basically like a hibernation. Let's put it that way.
So we go into issue number two. And that's a pretty cool issue because it's one of the ones I own. I mean, I don't own the whole series, but this is the one ones I can pull out and look at. So it's pretty cool.
That's our first for Rusty. I got some I got a bunch of old stuff, but we've been reviewing some newer stuff mostly lately. So this is nice for me to go into my collection and pull out some older stuff. I got it.
That's cool. No, it is fun. So the issue starts off again, showing us the gravity of the situation a pilot has disappeared from the plane and the plane crash landed, but it'll safely landed thanks to the Avengers help and obviously helping people people are freaking out. And we're introduced to more heroes getting involved with the story, particularly the cosmic guardian, Kesar.
Is that how you pronounce your name? Quasar. Quasar. Quasar.
Yeah, it's like an event that happens in space. I don't know exactly what it is, but I've heard that in my astronomy class. So let's just roll with that. And yeah, Kesar is actually the guy down in the Savage Land.
Yeah. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. And as we mentioned before, we now see the Kree Empire and the Kree is blaming the scrolls. So I'm guessing this is where Rusty was foreshadowing. There must clearly be a war between the worst of the Kree scroll war, obviously that starts.
Yeah, it's kind of cool that they reflect back to the Kree scroll war. It's one of my favorite Avengers stories. And I mean, it came out in the early 70s. So I mean, you might have read it, read school maybe.
I mean, you're alive around then. So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, it's cool to see that Quasar is coming around and that we have this battle reemerging between the two races. Yeah, definitely.
Well, let's be honest though, the Kree's and the scrolls are always just one step away from war. They always like, my pizza is like, we must go to war. Exactly. I got to ask this though.
And I'm hoping one of y'all knows this. Why does Thor have the weird funky mask on his face? I've never known this. It's not really a mask.
It's supposed to be his helmet. You'll notice that later versions of Thor, specifically Lady Thor currently, they've got the full face mask. But one thing that really that's less of an issue for me than the mask than the face helmet is the big bushy beard. It's not something that you see very often when Thor has a big beard.
No, it's not. Makes me take it more seriously. But as we learn, it's not really Thor. No, or we get that hint.
He gives us that hint. And there was it says, even the miss of the chaos, I've got to cover that I'm not the original Thor in a thought bubble. Yeah, no, I was what that's why I asked. I was like, who's this guy?
But moving on from that, we go back to Strangers apartment. I just want to say if you're looking at the full page of page 9 of it, shoot two, it looks crazy. And I cannot imagine how hard it was to design this page. Oh, yeah, I know.
To me, what it looks like, it's, you know, he probably drew the main stuff and handed off to some young kid. Okay, get all this background stuff done for me. That's a lot of stuff on there. Like three fourths of the page there.
Yeah, it's Adam Warlock talking to Dr. Strange. But obviously, Strange does not know who that is at the time. And what they decide to do is share minds more specifically opens his soul to him, which is not something that Dr.
Strange does likely. Yeah, but with Adam Warlock, he's had the Soul Gem for this before so long, he's used to having multiple personas. And so this is something that he's able to do, even across the vast gaps of space and time. I'm also looking at this, I'm seeing the cool t-shirts and it's ad right now.
And I'm like, yeah, if you have the actual issue, that's cool. T-shirts aside, the energy given off by Strange's encounter with Adam Warlock is sensed by everybody's favorite metal mast villain, Dr. Victor Von Duh. You mean God, right?
Speaking of three guys. Pretty good. If you look on that page, you know, it's a black screen in the eyes slowly fade in. Doesn't it remind us Secret Wars number one?
Yeah, a little bit. Yeah, I mean, you can see that's where they got some of that from. But then after that, I mean, the art looks on it though. Obviously it looks great.
Everything looks great in this. But we go past that page and we skip a little further and we see arrows and fire lord and drags looking at a screen. And we, they're explained what exactly has happened. Half the population is missing and they're freaking out trying to figure it out.
But I think they have an idea of who it is. But the coolest thing is the very next page. They're very obviously blatantly shown who did this. Because who shows up but our favorite purple face titan?
They know. Arrows, they're watch out. You know what's funny is the last issue of Arrows before this. It was an issue of him flying in on a Warlock issue of all things.
And they have these things called pleasure carts. Okay, this might be a little risque. But in the issue, Pip is tricked into going to this pleasure cart with this Vixen. And he's told by her that he will get endless pleasures if he helps her escape this cart.
And so he gets to find some clippers from someone in a bar and he's needs them away from him. And he clips her chains and sets her free. And what happens afterwards is he has to confront the owner of the cart that enslaved her. And no other than Arrows flies in after he defeats the guy and is like, thank you for helping me and freeing my lady.
And then she's like, yes, the pleasure has been all mine. And your reward, he's like, yes, my reward, the pleasure. And he's like, you get to have my pleasure cart. And then he flies away with Arrows in a romantic getaway kind of thing.
And Pip's kind of screwed out of it by Arrows. Little bounce, you can bounce, bounce. Yeah, so it's funny that you see him here now and that he's reemerging in the Thanos story for this. But moving on, I mean, we see Arrows bound to the chair by Thanos.
And Mofisto just stands behind him while watching him while Thanos grins at him. And this is when it takes us back to his palace. And throughout all this, he just gets tired of Arrows' commentary. And he makes his mouth disappear.
It's kind of weird. It reminds me of the Matrix. I was thinking of the Twilight Zone episode. Oh, yeah, a little more old school than me.
So then after the disappearance of Arrows' mouth, it goes to Captain America with a roster of disappeared superheroes. And some of the more notable superheroes on here are Archangel Beast, Black Cat, Black Panther, Hawkeye, Firestar. We've got Marvel Girl is gone. Mr Fantastic.
It's basically the entire Fantastic Forge. Yeah. Except for Invisible Women's there too. Yeah, I see Human Torch Invisible Women's thing and Mr Fantastic.
Yeah. Yep. And a lot of Alpha Flight makes an appearance on the disappearance list. You've got Dagger from Cloak and Dagger, Daredevil.
I mean, you've got a lot of the big name people like Hercules really could help out with this whole situation, but he's disappeared. So it's like, let's see how we can take our roster of people who can make this kind of an easier transition, an easier trial, fighting Thanos, and take them out of the picture. And they do that in this roster type format, which is actually kind of cool if you ask me. Real quick, if you could put any of these people in the story, who would it be?
Just say it real fast. I think that I would put probably Beast in the story. Does it have to be Marvel? Any of the people in the list?
Okay. Anyone that disappeared, I don't think. Thing? Yeah.
Why not? See, I'd have to go with Archangel because he's one of my favorites off of this list. See, now I'm going to kind of jump ahead because we need to start getting all this battle stuff down. We're talking about rosters.
The one thing that came to my mind is what would Batman do? Oh, what would Batman do, Nova? And he has prep time. He has prep time.
He would have had the gauntlet off ready. He would have had the gauntlet already. How would he get the gauntlet? That's what I want to what would Batman do?
Or Batman decided. Batman decided. Batman aside, let's go now straight to because I mean, we were in the Avengers ready room, but let's go straight to Asgard, another group of people that they decided to pull in for this event. Let's talk about what's going on in Asgard.
They're all freaking out is what's going on. But what I'd like to point out is it looks like a council of the gods because you've got Odin officiating, but making an appearance also or Celtic gods, Egyptian gods, Zeus is there. It's basically there the what Odin calls the sky fathers, the heads of the pantheons, and they're all in Asgard for this war room session. You know, I didn't know who a lot of these people were before I saw this and I would never seen an Asgardian council before because like I said before, I don't really enjoy Thor too much.
So we'll see, like I said, it's not an Asgardian council. It is a council of the sky father. Is it the first time that we see this though? Do you know?
This is the first time that I recall seeing this to where we have the leaders of each pantheon. They're being represented in this setting. Okay, cool, cool, cool. So after this page, what do we see Nova?
What is flying in space? Quasar is flying in space with his, I guess, mental link. I thought I think his name is. Something like that.
But anyway, we jump back to the motel. Alpha is on again, of course, and we see Pip the troll sitting with a bag of chips covering a convenient spot. And he's by himself, like we mentioned before, Warlock is meditating and Gamora has disappeared. So there's a big explosion and of course, Warlock has left his cocoon and he is revitalized.
Yep, and in big words, he says after Thanos. So now we're back to Mr. Victor Von Doom. And what is he doing there, Red?
He's just basically trying to put it. Yeah, there's those those eye panels I was talking about earlier that we see from Secret Wars. But he's just confronting everybody. I think this is where you can see, you know, he wants to be in charge, but it's just not going to happen.
Oh no. And that's just the reoccurring theme in this too. He keeps trying to take charge and if things are going to happen, you can kind of think it's like, man, you got like a security complex over here or something. But the very next page, we see a very, very beautiful, full page art of Warlock and Pip.
And it's really cool to see them together again after so many years. And the whole thing with Warlock and Pip is, you know, that's who thwarted Doom whenever he essentially took down the surfer with power and then took down or was about to take down Stephen Strange with magic. You know, next thing you know, but they show up and they thwart Doom from, you know, taking over. You know, it's funny on the very next page, if you have the comic, it's an advertisement for Terminator 2, Judgment Day, Collector Cards.
Oh, oh, buddy. But after that, after some sort, I'll be back. After that, we see, they know, it's floating in his palace again. And what looks to be like some very, very creepy worm things coming out of arrows.
And he's basically just sitting there torturing him. He's torturing him and Nebula. And he's trying to do it for death's amusement, but she still sits there, giving him the cold shoulder. And that's when we go back to Dr.
Strange's player, the sanitary sanctum and- Sanctum-sanctorium. Sanctum-sanctorium. That's like a tongue twister. And then we see him back there.
And we see Doom sitting there. We see all of the major players in the game, I guess, at this point in time, discussing things. And I would like to note that once again, Stephen Strange is floating. What do you want to see floating on the toilet?
No. I don't know about that one. But like I said, he does own a lot of chairs for floating, you know, all the time. But it is everybody that was at the Sanctum-sanctorum there.
And they're discussing, you know, what are they going to do? We're some of the most powerful people involved in this. Let's do what we have to do. And then it immediately goes right back to Thanos again, trying to impress death.
And it's funny that you keep mentioning death, giving him the cold shoulder. Does death actually have a warm shoulder? Right. Well, she's always talking to Deadpool.
Flirting with him, so to speak. So I always found that funny. We said she doesn't talk to Thanos, but in the Deadpool stuff I've read with her in it, she's always talking to Deadpool. You know, there's only like maybe three or four times out of all the Thanos things I've read.
I've read almost all of it that I can recall her actually talking to him. And the most she's ever talked to him is when they first met in Rising that I can see. Okay, I always took the impression that basically she's death. She has no heart.
Since she has no heart, how can she love? See, that's the thing. She can, I guess, in certain ways, because obviously she shows emotion. But at the same time, it's kind of like a metaphor for, I guess, what it takes to make a woman happy.
Oh, good Lord. Yeah, that's enough. That's the whole another podcast series. Yeah, let's not open that camera.
We're not going to have that camera worms, but I think we all know what that means. So what happens next actually kind of goes along with what we're talking about now, because they know it's like, I would do anything to just hear you say my name. And then with a clinch of the gauntlet of this, anything, and then everything goes white. And what happens, Nova?
Yeah, he sends a psychic wave of power. And that wave basically flows through. I would have to assume the entire universe as he's destroying planets, he tussles Galactus, his little flying orb. And we see a page of Galactus basically getting a little annoyed, and he had a running with Thanos in the Silver Surfer series as well.
So he's already not on the best of terms with him. And we see Galactus quickly fly away, basically going to Earth. And then we see Cloke, who as we mentioned before, has lost Dagger. And what is Cloke witness to?
They see the destruction of the city. There's things falling into rubble around him. You know what's weird though? I think it was in Maximum Carnage.
He lost Dagger, and that's Storyline 2. So I guess this is the first time he lost her. And later on, he lost her again. Sorry for the spoiler.
But who else is there with Cloke? David? You know, he's kind of in disguise, but you cannot disguise that dubious hairstyle. Yeah, it is none other than the Wolverine.
Logan. And that's when you know things are getting serious. The X-Men are getting brought in for this semi-eventful. The ones that are around.
Because remember, Iceman and Jean Grey, or Marvel Girl, are among the disappeared. Same with Beast. Who Beast was on the Avengers at this point. He was kind of bouncing back and forth whenever he was needed.
But you know, some of the original X-Men, some of the most important players in the team, are they're among the missing. Oh yeah, you see that. I mean, it shows that Quicksilver was missing too, but Scarlet Witch is still running around. So yeah, so essentially it's like they took, they went through each major Marvel title and took half.
You know, they had to disappear half, except for, of course, you know, Fantastic Four. They're like, oh, we don't want to tell their story. They're gone. Kind of like Fox had the rights.
Yeah, Fox had the rights. But you know what? I see this similar thing here. I know I mentioned this in our Secret Wars podcast.