4. Who Are You And Why Should I Care?
Most readers coming to Infinity will know many of the characters - Captain America, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, whom we all know them from the movies. Captain Marvel, Black Panther, the Inhumans, you probably know from the comics, and everyone knows Thanos. But this book has a number of characters that are either introduced for the first time or if you're not a reader of Hickman's Avengers books, you won't recognise. For example, Thanos' Nordic Death Metal Band-esque group of lieutenants, alternately known as the Dreadlords, the Cull Obsidian, Midnight Slaughter or Black Order (all great metal band names, right?). Even their names are metal as hell: Proxima Midnight, Black Dwarf (who's a giant orange creature), Ebony Maw, Supergiant, and Corvus Glaive. Who are they? They're powerful bad guys. That's all you're told and that's all they basically are. Those are just some of the new characters. The cast of Infinity is massive. I know this is a story told on a massive scale but my goodness, it's like you need a flow chart of characters to keep track of the cast - oh, wait, he does include one! Yeah, it's like a Powerpoint presentation rather than a superhero comic. Also, many of the cast have nothing to say or do. I mean, what is Spider-Woman there for? Is her presence going to turn the tide on massive spaceships with the capability to literally blow up worlds, or gods who created the universe? Plus she has no lines anyway. Hickman's greatest failing as a writer is that he can't write character (or maybe he's not concerned with character?), and when the story is bursting with characters, it becomes a major problem. If the reader doesn't know know who anyone is, they don't care about them or what they do. Nothing the new characters do can surprise you because you don't know what they're capable of, therefore you have less of a firm grip of, or much investment in, the story. There are too many two-dimensional characters with nothing for them to do or say and a whole new group of characters who're ciphers and utterly uninteresting.