Back before Infinity launched, Jonathan Hickman said that you could either read Infinity with just the regular series issues or combine them with the tie-ins, but that readers who chose to disregard the tie-ins would still be able to follow the story. This was definitely a good thing as who has the time or money to buy and read every comic Marvel puts out for their Events, especially as the comics themselves tend to be average to terrible in terms of quality. Except I can't help but feel that if I were reading the tie-ins, I'd get a better sense of the story because if, like me, you're just reading the Infinity issues, you're going to feel like you missed out on a lot of stuff that happened. The "epic" galactic war that makes up half of this Event has been sketchy as hell up to this point. The threat of the Builders has been barely touched upon in this series and regular readers of Hickman's Avengers titles will better understand the danger they represent. In Infinity, these Builders are your generic villains - aliens who're unstoppable until they're not. Up until now we've been told that in their war against the Avengers and their allies, they've been winning, until in the last issue when Thor killed one with Mjolnir and gave everyone the courage to fight back(!). This "epic" war that's been going on for the last 5 issues is then wrapped up in 5 pages! A montage of scenes where some Avengers alongside some aliens are fighting other aliens, then a weird parody of the Raising of the Flag on Iwo Jima follows with the flag being the Avengers "A", and then Thor and Cap are drinking brewskies - a drink well earned, I guess. My biggest complaint in this series has been how uninvolving it is for the reader when the story that happens seems to fly by as if we're reading a series of the one-page summaries that are at the start of each of the Infinity issues. Maybe these storylines were explored in more depth in the tie-ins? Probably. But in the Infinity issues they've felt very rushed. This war's conclusion has no effect on the reader because we were never that invested anyway - it was a foregone conclusion that the Avengers would win and they did, in the least memorable way possible and in such a quick fashion that it makes you question whether there was a viable threat in the first place. That's it for this storyline by the way - over and done with. On the one hand I'm annoyed because it was so predictable and dull but on the other I'm glad that I don't have to read any more of that rubbish in the final issue. Meanwhile, Thanos and his crew have made it into the Wakanda Necropolis where the Illuminati have hidden a bomb destructive enough to wipe out Earth, and are now attempting to set it off. Black Bolt, the King of the Inhumans, is tied up to a very specifically designed restraining device and Thane, son of Thanos, is captured in the Inhuman city Orollan by Thanos' tool, Ebony Maw. The Illuminati stage an attack when Thanos leaves and Thanos and Thane's first meeting is fairly uninteresting. Spaceships carrying the Avengers show up to Earth.
Most of Infinity has been quite uninteresting though generally the Thanos/Inhuman/Thane stuff has been good but those scenes in this issue are very lacklustre and boring. Infinity #5 does a lot of things efficiently - it polishes off one storyline while setting up things for a big finale - but doesn't do it in a way that's either interesting to read or particularly imaginative. If you've read this far you're more or less resigned to picking up the final issue next month but Infinity is unfortunately the latest in a long line of Marvel Events that's failed to live up to its hype or even tell a compelling story. Hickman remains a great ideas man but a very poor storyteller and writer.
Published by Marvel, Infinity #5 by Jonathan Hickman, Jerome Opena and Dustin Weaver is out now