Today, we look at how Thanos has a secret team-up with the Fantastic Four’s Invisible Woman in the middle of the Infinity War crossover.
In “Our Lives Together,” I spotlight some of the more interesting examples of shared comic book universes. You know, crossovers that aren’t exactly crossovers.
One of the most dramatic fights during the Infinity War crossover in the 1990s involved Thanos fighting his own evil double to the death. However, as it turned out, that one-on-one fight wasn’t such a one-on-one fight as it appeared!
WHAT WAS INFINITY WAR?
In Jim Starlin’s original Warlock stories in the late 1970s, the main foe, someone so powerful that Thanos was willing to team up with Adam Warlock to defeat him, was the Magus. The Magus, it turned out, was a future version of Warlock himself. In defeating him, then, Warlock assured that he, too, would die in the future. Years later, after a resurrected Warlock helped defeat Thanos during the Infinity Gauntlet crossover, Warlock briefly wielded the Gauntlet himself. He then broke up the individual Infinity Stones (back then they were called Infinity Gems) and formed a group called the Infinity Watch, where a number of Warlock’s allies would each guard one of the stones (with Warlock maintaining the Soul Stone).
However, unbeknownst to Warlock at the time, when he was briefly in control of the Infinity Gauntlet, he had sub-consciously used the omnipotent power of the Gauntlet to split off both of the evil and the good side of his soul. The evil side of his soul now took on the form of the Magus. Magus then attacked the Marvel Universe featuring doppelgangers of all of Marvel’s superheroes and even Thanos himself.
HOW DID THE FIGHT BETWEEN THE TWO VERSIONS OF THANOS GO DOWN?
It all went down in In Warlock and the Infinity Watch #10 (by Jim Starlin, Angel Medina and Bob Almond), where Thanos encountered his double, who had been Magus’ sidekick throughout the event to this point. Interestingly, while other doppelgangers were clearly “evil” versions of the superheroes, Thanos’ double is an exact duplicate.
The two verbally joust with each other for a bit until the Magus shows up briefly, seemingly in possession of the Infinity Gauntlet, and lets them know that whoever wins their fight to the death can join him as his second-in-command. The two Thanoses (Thanosi?) then agree to team-up to take down Magus together and settle their differences afterwards, but when they realize that Magus has prepared for this tactic, they realize that their only available route to take down the Magus is for them to follow his invitation. ONE of them would be allowed to pass through the door, so they have to fight to the death to see who that one will be…
Earlier, the Thanos duplicate had been able to cut Thanos to the quick, since it had all of his memories but without his attachment to them, so the duplicate was able to correctly note that Thanos has changed since he had omnipotence through the wielding of the Infinity Gauntlet.
This affected him in the fight, as the pre-Infinity Gauntlet Thanos would have easily destroyed this copy without a second note, but after seeing the purpose (or lack thereof?) of the universe, Thanos views things differently and doesn’t have quite that same hard edge, so the fight was a lot more difficult for Thanos than it should have been, and his duplicate might have gotten the better of him…
However, in the end, Thanos realizes that it is far too important for him to defeat his double and take control of the situation to defeat the Magus, so he buckles down and gives it his all…
Eventually, Thanos’ willingness to concede that his doppelganger (who Magus had intentionally made more powerful than the original Thanos) represented a part of his own self gave him an advantage and he was able to defeat the clone. He then transformed the clone into a butterfly, a symbol of renewal. However, once you concede that Thanos’ doppelganger represents a piece of his soul, then it would make sense that Thanos would want to reunite with that piece, right? After all, since the doppelganger was created by the Magus, he contained some of the insight that the Magus had about Thanos and why Thanos was unable to hold on to the Infinity Gauntlet during that crossover. So Thanos had no other answer but to then eat the transformed version of himself to gain that knowledge, even though the process was quite disturbing (since it involved Thanos, you know, eating a butterfly version of himself!).
Magus was then defeated in large part through Thanos, as it turns out that the Magus never really had the Infinity Gauntlet after all, as Thanos, the person Warlock trusted the Reality Stone to, used the powers of the Stone to make it APPEAR as though Magus had the Reality Stone and thus a complete Infinity Gauntlet, when he did not.
However, reality was also not quite what it appeared for Thanos’ fight, either.
HOW DID THANOS SECRETLY TEAM-UP WITH INVISIBLE WOMAN DURING THAT FIGHT?
In Fantastic Four #370 (by Tom DeFalco, Paul Ryan and Danny Bulanadi), Invisible Woman was part of a group of Earth’s superheroes who traveled alongside Galactus to take the fight to the Magus. While exploring the Magus’ headquarters, Invisible Woman happened upon the fight between Thanos and his duplicate. She decided to help one of them and she luckily picked the “real” Thanos…
Her assist helped keep Thanos in the fight early on as he struggled, and when he came to the aforementioned realization that led him to defeat his double, Sue was right there with him, noticing his new determination…
She walked away before he ate the butterfly, though, as Sue didn’t need to see that stuff…
The fascinating thing at the time is that Sue, herself, had fought her own double and “defeated it,” but in reality, it had possessed her and was subtly affecting her thoughts (hence her being a bit darker here).
What a neat little secret team-up! Well done by DeFalco and Ryan!
Okay, folks, if you have a suggestion for another interesting piece of shared continuity, drop me a line at [email protected]!
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