By the end of The Infinity Gauntlet #4, nearly every major Marvel superhero outside of Adam Warlock and Silver Surfer has been presumably killed by Thanos, and thats coming on the heels of the Mad Titan wiping out half of the universe with a snap of his fingers in the minis opening chapter. It appears that the Marvel Age of Heroes has officially come to an end. Except nobody reading this miniseries actually thought that. Perhaps if only one or two major heroes were killed off during The Infinity Gauntlet, a la Supergirl and the Flash in Crisis on the Infinite Earths, readers would have bought into the drama that a very real shift in Marvels status quo was unfolding. But nobody believed that Marvel was ready to kill off 99 percent of its most popular and recognizable properties and rebuild around the likes of Thanos, Warlock and Silver Surfer. With such a farfetched scenario, the creative team tipped its hand that one way or another, Thanos would lose the gauntlet and be defeated. It was just a question of when and how.
Mark is a professional writer living in Brooklyn and is the founder of the Chasing Amazing Blog, which documents his quest to collect every issue of Amazing Spider-Man, and the Superior Spider-Talk podcast. He also pens the "Gimmick or Good?" column at Comics Should Be Good blog.
