Rating: 2.5/5 – Another event with a less than satisfying wrap-up.
INFINITY! Quite an ambitious title for this event/mini-series. In the end, I really didn’t think it lived up to it’s name. So many of the threads built up in the series were left with an unsatisfying end, which ultimately came down to a deus ex machina ending.
For those unfamiliar with the term, it is latin for “god from the machine” and refers to an author using a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem is suddenly and abruptly resolved by the contrived and unexpected intervention of some new event, character, ability, or object. I defy someone to read the ending with Thane/Thanos and tell me this was NOT a deus ex machina ending. This, to me, is NOT a hallmark of good writing.
I read a lot of events from Marvel/DC that start out as a great concept and then either go astray in the telling or have a truncated/unsatisfying conclusion. Infinity had a great build-up with the heroes of Earth fighting Thanos’ forces both on Earth and across the galaxy. A lot of the telling seemed somewhat unsatisfying as we we often told something had happened instead of being shown it happening (a lot of the Wakanda/Atlantis action fell into this category). I can see why this was done, there was so much story, though not an infinite amount, that needed to be packed into this series and it’s tie-in issues. I read them all.
But then we get this ending. Not satisfying for me at all (although that’s my subjective opinion and your mileage may vary). The other thing that gets on my nerves about these events is when the author devotes time that could be spent making this story more satisfying instead spends that story real estate in setting up the next event. In this case, we got a decent number of pages spent setting up the Inhumanity event. Tell that story after you finish this story, please.
I think the current marketing atmosphere at Marvel (and DC, I’m not singling out just Marvel here) is that you can’t tell a story with a satisfying conclusion because it won’t drive the bulk of the readership to follow-on to the next storyline. I’d prefer you tell a great story that makes me want to read more because I want to read another great story, not because you left a lot of dangling plot threads that need to be wrapped up somewhere else.
Looking at the infographic in the issue that shows all the story parts and what order to read them in, I see that I read a total of 16 comics to get this story (including the epilogue in New Avengers #12). This ending did not leave me feeling like I got 16 comics worth of story value, with a cover price of somewhere around $66.
In summary, this story could have been a lot more satisfying for me if it had concentrated on telling the story at hand, shown more of the drama, and had a resolution that didn’t feel like an ‘out of left field’ cheat. In the end, it encapsulated almost all of the elements of event comics that I don’t like. It wasn’t a terrible story it just wasn’t a particularly great one either.
Reviewed by: Bob Bretall – bob@comicspectrum.com
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