Age of Ultron just wrapped up last week, but Marvel is already paving the way for its next event comic. But despite the short gap between the two stories, Infinity has been in the works ever since Jonathan Hickman first took the reins of Avengers and New Avengers. The story spins directly out of current conflicts and sees the Avengers fighting a massive battle on two fronts. On one hand, Captain America leads an A-List team of heroes deep into space to confront a looming threat from a group of beings called The Builders. That leaves Earth almost completely unprotected and ripe for an invasion by Thanos and his army.
That's the crux of Infinity, a story which will unfold in a mini-series of the same name, both of Hickman's Avengers titles, and various other tie-ins (including the recently announced Mighty Avengers ongoing). Marvel held one of their "Next Big Thing" press calls today to shed more light on Infinity and how it fits into Hickman's overarching plan for the Avengers. Joining Hickman was Marvel Executive Editor Tom Brevoort.
To start off, Brevoort reiterated the core concept of the event. "Infinity is a direct outgrowth of the events that have been building slowly through Avengers and New Avengers since we started the books as part of Marvel NOW. It is a big, epic, space sci-fi spectacular in which, in terms of the little loose shorthand we've been using, there's a war on two fronts. The Avengers and most of Earth's other big heroes have to head out into the outer reaches of the cosmos to deal with a threat coming this way that's plowing its way through the other known cosmic civilizations on its way to Earth."
Brevoort continued, "While that is happening, Thanos sees his opportunity for he and his forces to descend on a largely unprotected Earth looking for something - looking for that which Thanos desires. So there will be stuff going out on the biggest canvas you can imagine in terms of space, cosmic, and galactic, but there will also be things simultaneously going on in our own backyard. These two arms of the story will intersect and dovetail before the piece is over."
The conversation then shifted to how Avengers and New Avengers will intertwine with the Infinity mini-series. Brevoort said that Infinity will veer slightly from Marvel's traditional strategy of offering a core mini-series and a slate of tie-in projects. "There are events taking place in the core Infinity series that will be greatly expanded upon and illuminated in the Avengers and New Avengers tie-in issues. It's really not wrong to say that these are virtually as important as the core book. That's why, even in terms of the cover setup we're using for them, Avengers and New Avengers will carry an Infinity cover dress that is much closer visually to the Infinity mini-series."
Brevoort compared it to the relationship between Secret Invasion and concurrent issues of Mighty Avengers/New Avengers. "But in this case, even more so, because these tie-ins are happening in real-time, whereas Brian [Bendis] tended to use those tie-ins to kind of tell side-stories or focus in on a single character or two characters... Here, we're dealing with the actual big events of this massive cosmic war that's going on in linear, regular time. There are essentially two tracks - you can follow the Avengers track and you can follow the New Avengers track. But they do kind of jig together in this nice symphony if you're looking at it all together." Hickman joked that Marvel solicited a six-issue mini-series and he delivered a 16-issue series instead.
Hickman then clarified how the art duties on the core Infinity series will be divided. Jim Cheung is pencilling the first and last issues of Infinity. Jerome Opena and Dustin Weaver are splitting pages on issue #2-5, with Opena handling the cosmic sequences while Weaver tackles the material set on Earth. Hickman said, “I've worked with Jerome and Dustin before, and they're both fantastic artists that are equally adept at world-building and character interaction. It's always a pleasure. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say that the big stuff inside my head is always better when it's realized by those two guys.”
As for Cheung, Hickman said he had been looking forward to the chance to work with the artist. “He's one of my favorite artists... I've asked for him on pretty much everything. It was such a pleasure to start seeing him draw the stuff I'm writing. He just makes it so much better.” Cheung had previously drawn the Infinity FCBD prologue issue, and Brevoort revealed that that comic will be made available digitally for readers who missed the print version.
Mike Deodato will continue drawing New Avengers for the course of Infinity, while Leinil Yu is handling Avengers. Hickman praised both artists, and said of Yu's work, “I gave Leinil some of the hardest stuff I've ever given anyone, and he's just crushed it. I feel like every time I start a new script I need to write even more difficult stuff just to see if we can break him.”
As press questions began, Hickman was asked to shed more light on the Builders and what specific threat they pose to the galaxy's heroes. “Before I was doing Infinity, I was always going to do a story called 'Avengers Universe,' happening at this exact same time in the Avengers. All of this kind of got married into that. This is sort of the culmination of everything we started back in issue #1 – the guys on Mars, the garden created by the Builders, who are this nebulous, older than ancient race in the universe. They've been building great societies and destroying them based on whether or not they were were worthy enough to evolve. This all comes to a head, like everything I'm doing in the Avengers books. There's the stuff happening on the top with the Avengers, which is what this is. There's the stuff happening underground, which is what New Avengers is. Because of the events in New Avengers, all of these guys start interacting with the Marvel cosmic and are heading to Earth, and the Avengers have to become prime players in stopping them.”
Infinity will mainly focus on the same large cast of characters from Hickman's two Avengers books, along with characters like Nova and the Guardians of the Galaxy. However, Brevoort teased a large presence from the Inhumans, as well as appearances by Super-Skrull, Ronan the Accuser, Gladiator and the Shi'ar Imperial Guard. “This is about a big story in terms of scale as anything that's been done in the Marvel Universe.”
Age of Ultron was notable for its accelerated shipping schedule, which saw all ten issues ship between March and June. Infinity won't ship quite as rapidly, but it will have a fairly compressed schedule. Issue #1 ships in August. Both September and October will see the series ship twice, and the final issue will ship in November. Both issues #1 and 6 will be oversized. Brevoort compared the level of ancillary tie-ins to events like Fear Itself and Secret Invasion. “It's not absolutely every single book, but it's a wide swath. Probably a slightly greater concentration on the Avengers/Marvel heroes side of the line, but not exclusively. So there will be X-Men titles that tie in. There will be Spider-Man stuff that ties in.”
Obviously Infinity isn't the first Marvel event to have the word "infinity" in the title. The original Infinity Gauntlet was followed up by a number of sequels including Infinity War, Infinity Crusade, and Infinity Abyss, many of which featured Thanos prominently. Brevoort talked about the connections between those books and this one. “There's typically been something of interest to Thanos in all of these stories, whether it was the Cosmic Cube, the Soul Gems, the Infinity Gems, or what have you. In that regard, Infinity is no different. But it's not the same story. It's not the fourth or fifth part of that Infinity cycle... While there's obviously a thematic resonance in that it's called 'Infinity,' that doesn't have to do so much with the Infinity Gauntlet, per se, so much as it does the scope and scale and other things that will become more apparent when you read the book.” That said, Brevoort hinted that recent events involving the Illuminati's accidental destruction of the Infinity Gems might be touched upon in Infinity.
Finally, Brevoort and Hickman discussed Thanos' presence in upcoming Marvel Studios movies and if the desire was to craft an accessible, cosmically-oriented epic to capitalize on the growing popularity of Marvel's cosmic characters. Brevoort said, “All we really know for certain is what you guys know, that Thanos was in the end of Avengers as the sort of after-credits Easter egg. And certainly the fact that he was there got a lot of people really interested, which is why we've done the stories we have. We did Brian's story in Avengers Assemble that came out around the same time. We've done Thanos Rising. And it's why we're doing a big, huge story that Thanos is at the center of. It's nice, easy, low-hanging fruit. Clearly, a lot of people are interested in him or re-interested in him."
Brevoort continued, "Clearly, it doesn't hurt us that he was on 10 million movie screens and in a billion DVD players recently. I absolutely hope to take advantage of that and get a bunch of people who haven't checked out what we do to give us a gander and become interested in this as advance peek as to what might happen with Thanos in the cinematic world i none way, shape or form. But really, we're doing what we always do. We're doing our thing... We're guided by the stories we want to tell and the things we want to do rather than specifically setting up anything [Marvel Studios] are doing."
Hickman said, "In terms of what we get out of it, specifically relating to the comics, this is the first big kind of pushpin moment that we have in the longer Avengers plan that I originally pitched to Tom. This is the first of three of these that are going to be continually escalating. This is big. Like Tom aid, it's as big as we can go. What we get out of it is something that will project us forward into something even bigger."
Scroll down for a look at more variant covers and interior art from the core Infinity mini-series:
Infinity #1 cover (Arthur Adams variant)
Infinity #1 cover (general variant)
Infinity #2 cover (Steve McNiven variant)
Infinity #2 cover (general variant)
Infinity #3 cover (Simone Bianchi variant)
Infinity #3 cover (general variant)
Infinity #4 cover (Ryan Stegman variant)
Infinity #4 cover (general variant)
Infinity #5 cover (Sara Pichelli variant)
Infinity #5 cover (general variant)
Infinity #1 interior art
Infinity #1 interior art
Infinity #1 interior art
Infinity #1 interior art
Infinity #2 interior art
Infinity #2 interior art
Jesse is a writer for various IGN channels. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter, or Kicksplode on MyIGN.
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