Set Description:
“To see a world in a grain of sand, And heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.”
 Avengers Infinity was a surprising release for me at the time. I was at the LCS and one of the covers with Quasar on it caught my eye –books prominently featuring Wendell Vaughn were few and far between back then. I was just glad for the content, although the Sean Chen artwork was icing on the cake, and I was all-in right away.
During this era of publishing, I wasn’t pre-ordering books, opting instead to just grab my regular titles as I came across them on the racks every few weeks or so at the shops. As a result, I didn’t know that this mini-series was being released and ultimately didn’t catch on to the book until issue #4 had been shipped. I picked up issues #4, 3, and 1 on the spot. Issue 2 took me a few weeks to track down and it was somewhat after the fact that I found the Dynamic Forces variant as a back-issue as well. I tied the set together with the trade when that was released several years later under the banner, “Avengers: Infinity Classic”, which completed the collection of raw books from the run…
The “Avengers: Infinity” story is a top-notch effort at the sort of cosmic existentialism that Marvel is known for – going as far back as Jack Kirby’s other-worldly sensationalism to Jim Starlin’s introspective Captain Marvel and Adam Warlock where the protagonists are always figuring out their place in a Universe that has opened up to them. Roger Stern and Sean Chen do a terrific job at presenting a non-A-Lister Avengers roster as compelling, fun and under the grandest of cosmic circumstances. It’s quite a feat to put a character like Tygra into a cosmic-situation and have her express relevance, which Stern does masterfully here. The story reads like the best of any cosmic story from Gruenwald’s Quasar run, and in many ways takes a nod from the Busiek-approach to team books in all of the ways that are good.
The continuity nods to Quasar’s volume 1 title are subtle but very enjoyable and run the gamut from Moondragon’s relationship with Wendell (Quasar), to Quasar’s past experiences with Eternity and using the realm of Manifestations to communicate with cosmic entities. The Infinities are truly multiverse-scale beings and although they are the antagonists, their noble nature becomes a welcome revelation as the story concludes. There’s also something incredibly cool about seeing Quasar, Thor, Photon (the always likeable Monica Rambeau), Eros and the rest of the team literally borrow Eternity’s manifested form to address the Infinities at their scale. The series is an incredibly fun and thoughtful window into the deeper workings of Marvel’s cosmic multiverse.
“Avengers: Infinity” was only a 4-issue mini-series that included a Dynamic Forces variant as well. And although it’s a short story, I look at it as what could have easily been a continuation of Quasar volume one. These books share the same sensibilities and scale of cosmic discourse as Gruenwald’s passion-projects on Quasar. Roger Stern really does these characters justice, and although some of the dialog-beats might feel dated here and there, the real successes come from the team responding to the increasing scale of the situation across each issue. Stern also does a great job at writing-in the varying power levels of the team across each situation, and then deploying the power balance of the team in relevant ways. And as the story turns to its grandest of scales, Stern gives each character a distinct voice from a diverse backdrop of belief systems when the story-driven-philosophy becomes a necessity.
Sean Chen’s art is masterful here as well. His pencils tell the story with emoting characters and powerful moments, and in incredible scale when it comes to illustrating the pan-galactic sized Infinities and their various acolytes across the four issues.
This run is simply being built for high grade and quality wraps so as to present nicely as a set of near-perfect archetypes of the work done here by Stern and Chen. I hope anyone who stumbles upon this set enjoys taking a look at these books. And if this presentation strums an internal cosmic string, then I also hope it is encouraging enough to give this series a read if you come upon it in the bins or on a bookshelf in trade somewhere.
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