This week saw the release of New Avengers #10, which leads directly into Infinity #3, which takes us from the previous revelation that Thanos has a child among the Inhumans whom he’s trying to kill to the cataclysmic confrontation between The Mad Titan and the Inhuman King Blackagar Boltagon. Since they are both part of the massive cosmic saga that Jonathan Hickman is weaving (and it does feel like a planned-out saga rather than a bunch of things slammed together like recent event books), this review will cover both of them.
Firstly, NA #10 picks up right where we left off, with Black Bolt explaining the whole thing – way before his time as king, the Inhuman royal family split up, and thus there are many hidden tribes of Inhumans scattered around the Earth and the stars, and one of them ran afoul of Thanos and “dark things in dark places occurred.” Given the implications, I will hope those dark things are not dwelled upon. The mother came back to Earth, and has been hiding here ever since, and the massive invasion and attacks from Thanos’ brigade and his Cull Obsidian are all to mask this. But now, the Illuminati knows, and they are tasked with finding this boy child to protect him. The problem is that one of Thanos’ Black Order, known as The Ebony Maw, has taken possession of Dr. Strange, and that is the one who finally finds the boy in Greenland – pre-Terrigenesis, so he is not Inhuman yet. He’s just a boy.
In the midst of all this madness and impending doom comes… well, another impending doom. The otherdimensional incursions that the Illuminati have been fighting are acting up again, but the Ebony Maw – and possibly, by extension, Thanos – don’t believe it. “Stop imagining poor endings for the world,” the Maw says. “A very real one is coming soon.”
New Avengers #10 is all set-up, and a little bit of fallout, as Thanos takes a heavy toll on the Black Dwarf, one of his Black Order who was beaten back by the Wakandans. It’s all dialogue and rising tension as the Illuminati wonder if helping Black Bolt is a distraction they don’t need right now – not to mention the acrimony between Namor and Black Panther, after Wakanda just pretty well shattered Atlantis enough for Proxima Midnight of the Black Order to subjugate them. Mike Deodato’s artwork is appropriately moody and dramatic. By the end, encroaching horror is tremendous – the bulk of Thanos’ fleet descends on Wakanda, directed there by Namor, and Thanos himself steps into the Inhuman city of Attilan to face down Black Bolt.
That leads us right into Infinity #3, which brings in artists Jerome Opeña and Dustin Weaver. It takes us back out into deep space, where the Avengers are scrambling to find ways to stop the destruction of the rogue Builders, who have seen fit to destroy everything they’ve created. Thanks to the dickish J-Son of Spartax, the Builders now know where the intergalactic coalition’s secret hideout is, and they hit it hard, to disastrous effect. Killing millions and breaking the spirit of those who would resist… but then, without warning or explanation, they stop their onslaught, and start simply forcing worlds to surrender so that they may live. Hundreds of worlds submit, including the Kree, which deprives the resistance of over a fourth of their fleet. However, Captain America has a plan, borrowed from the Aeneid, wherein they bait the Builders into taking action to mask their sneaking into their World Killer ships to turn them on each other. This hands the Builders their biggest defeat yet, and springs the rest of the Avengers from captivity – allowing Kevin, the new kid from Earth introduced several issues back in Avengers, to unleash the Starbrand and completely end the fight. “This is when the heavens turned,” the narration says. Big shiny light at the end of that dark tunnel.
Back on the home front, we get glimpses of the Thunderbolts and the new Mighty Avengers fighting off Thanos’ hordes, while the incursion continues to impose itself. The big story is Thanos setting foot on the floating city of Attilan, which is empty save for Black Bolt on his throne. It seems Bolt’s brother Maximus The Mad has herded the Inhuman population into a portal that will scatter them far and wide and hide them from the other Madman – the Mad Titan. Maximus has also armed a mysterious device he’s been building under his king’s direction. Thus, with his city evacuated, Black Bolt is free to do what you always want to see Black Bolt do whenever he shows up in a comic. He refuses Thanos right to his face with a NO! so powerful that shatters the entire city of Attilan, activating Maximus’ device in the process and creating a tremendous explosion right over the heart of Manhattan.
It’s a badass moment when somebody can fight Thanos with power enough to hurt him. This explosion is likely the catalyst for the upcoming Inhumanity business where Inhumans start popping up all over the world. Opeña’s darkly epic style handles the Avengers space fighting and does it extremely well, while Weaver’s more traditional look gives us the Earth-bound action, and all of it, both books, come together to form a very compelling whole. There’s a hell of a lot going on, and it all feels incredibly weighty, but even with the encroaching incursion, Infinity #3 is where the worm turns and the light breaks through the heavy darkness that Hickman has crafted.
The only real drawback is that the scale is so huge, so wide and so far-reaching that it’s hard to manage a strong personal connection with the story so far. There’s so much to digest that we rely on quick moments like Captain America telling Gladiator he doesn’t know how to strategize from a position of weakness, or Bruce Banner Hulking out in frustration in the middle of trying to control the World Killers to give us little hooks. That said, the story is just cool… and it’s almost a counterpoint to Avengers: Disassembled, if you think about it. That was Brian Michael Bendis trying to make ‘a day where everything goes wrong at once for the Avengers’ and it just became kind of an insulting character destroyer. Infinity has that same intention – Builders, Thanos, Incursions, oh, my – but it’s a tale being spun rather than a drastic catastrophe being shoved down our throats. It’s an epic you can believe in, as any story featuring Thanos usually has to be. We don’t have all that much invested in The Builders, even less in Ol’ Kevin Starbrand, who seems to have been created just to do this bit, but we really do like seeing the Avengers kick Builder ass – especially when the rogue Builders have these moments of casual arrogant derision. “Do you know what the people will say about this day thousands of years from now? What they will say about these creatures and their valiant last stand? Nothing… because we will not tell them.”
That right there is some alien bastardry that you can’t wait to see smacked down. Hickman has earned the trust that he will deliver that in a very satisfying, yet non-pandering way.
