10 Marvel Graphic Novels You Must Read Before You Die

2. The Infinity Gauntlet

You don't have to be a comic book reader to understand the gravity of Jim Starlin and George Perez's Infinity Gauntlet.

Released in 1991 to instant acclaim, the storyline centred around Thanos who, having recently requisitioned the Infinity Gems into one golden gauntlet, wiped out half the sentient life in the galaxy at the snap of his fingers. Obviously the surviving members of the Marvel Universe weren't all too pleased with the intergalactic titan, so a coalition - led by a newly resurrected Adam Warlock - set out to face him.

Things don't end quite the way the heroes might've hoped, with Thanos' omnipotence affording them little chance of survival, but that's sort of the point. The book was envisioned as a means of fundamentally altering the status quo, and the mad titan - then a relatively unknown villain - was the character do it.

Starlin's text is suitably terrifying, and Thanos, now on the cusp of making his full cinematic debut in next year's Infinity War, has been a Marvel mainstay ever since. There's not a book in Marvel's library that possesses the same scope (or quality) as Infinity Gauntlet, and while it might look a tad intimidating on the surface, you really don't need to know much before hopping in, particularly if you've been keeping up with the MCU for the last decade.