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phil_caron's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
manuelte's review against another edition
4.0
I finally got my hands on this big compilation volume and I really enjoyed the story. Before reading this book I had read the New Avengers and the Avengers books separately and they were a complete mess of gibberish since you need to read all the 40+ comics that comprise this event in order, otherwise you get completely lost on what is happening.
The volume is good, not great, and it has some unanswered questions and kind of paints itself into a corner trying to juggle with beings that rival the celestials in their scope and power scale; as well as with the plot of having the multiverse collapsing with earth as a focal point.
I can see how many storylines will come out of this event, and I hope Marvel does a good job of letting readers pick up on any of them without the need to follow every single one from now on.
The volume is good, not great, and it has some unanswered questions and kind of paints itself into a corner trying to juggle with beings that rival the celestials in their scope and power scale; as well as with the plot of having the multiverse collapsing with earth as a focal point.
I can see how many storylines will come out of this event, and I hope Marvel does a good job of letting readers pick up on any of them without the need to follow every single one from now on.
readerreborn's review against another edition
5.0
I read all of Infinity, including the tie-ins, and I'm in awe. With the exception of a couple issues that I can't for the life of me understand why they were included under the Infinity banner, I enjoyed every title. I loved how the main titles had two parallel story lines going on, but even more I loved seeing the people on the ground like the Mighty Avengers, Thunderbolts, etc, and how the events of Infinity affected everybody and led into the next event, Inhumanity. The tie-ins aren't going to be included in this hardcover, but they are definitely worth checking out. Captain Marvel and Spider Woman are hilarious together. I want to read more of them teaming up. Such great story telling! I also like that, opening up the Inhumans like they do, it offers the MCU some new options.
crookedtreehouse's review against another edition
3.0
This omnibus collection of the Infinity mini-series, the Avengers run from the Infinity storyline, and the New Avengers storyline that takes place during Infinity, is a far superior method of reading the story than getting the three separate trades. You get a much better feel for how the events are unfolding and in what order. So, from an editing perspective, this is a top of the line collection, which isn't something Marvel usually manages to pull off.
From a story perspective, I wasn't a huge fan. I don't care about the Builders as threats, villains, netural parties, Avengers, heroes, etc. This particular part of Hickman's run is just the blockbuster franchise film with familiar characters, each of whom get one scene that highlights what their fans like about them before the camera cuts to another character. The dialog is forgettable, and the plot is So Earth Shattering that it's hard to care about it. Thanos was more nuanced in Infinity War, and I wouldn't really use the word "nuanced" to describe Thanos in that movie if I didn't have comics like this to compare it to.
It's not terrible, it's just a specific type of Crossover event that Marvel and DC do every year. This one was inoffensive, and at least feels like a piece of a larger story, but the pace of the book doesn't allow you to really care about what's happening. It's all special effects. Except it's a comic, so the special effects are just pictures. And it's not game-changing or boundary pushing art, it's just high quality Marvel style that servicably represents an epic in scale but not epic in quality story.
If you love Marvel's galactic stories like Guardians Of The Galaxy, and Annihilation, you might love this series, as it does check in with some characters that we don't see too often.
From a story perspective, I wasn't a huge fan. I don't care about the Builders as threats, villains, netural parties, Avengers, heroes, etc. This particular part of Hickman's run is just the blockbuster franchise film with familiar characters, each of whom get one scene that highlights what their fans like about them before the camera cuts to another character. The dialog is forgettable, and the plot is So Earth Shattering that it's hard to care about it. Thanos was more nuanced in Infinity War, and I wouldn't really use the word "nuanced" to describe Thanos in that movie if I didn't have comics like this to compare it to.
It's not terrible, it's just a specific type of Crossover event that Marvel and DC do every year. This one was inoffensive, and at least feels like a piece of a larger story, but the pace of the book doesn't allow you to really care about what's happening. It's all special effects. Except it's a comic, so the special effects are just pictures. And it's not game-changing or boundary pushing art, it's just high quality Marvel style that servicably represents an epic in scale but not epic in quality story.
If you love Marvel's galactic stories like Guardians Of The Galaxy, and Annihilation, you might love this series, as it does check in with some characters that we don't see too often.
mjfmjfmjf's review against another edition
4.0
I read 4 other Infinity related collections, all of which were awful, so I had low expectations for this one. And those expectations were far exceeded. It's like this volume had all the good bits and decent writing tying everything together. And yet it wasn't full of reprints. It lost its fifth star mostly due to not coming to an actual ending. But actually it was kind of awesome otherwise - broad sweeping somewhat believable galactic scale space opera.
spidertache's review against another edition
4.0
It's fair to say that there is a hell of a lot going on in this storyline and it can get very easy to get lost if you aren't giving it your full attention. Otherwise I would say the storyline is epic in scalez and brings together a great cast of races, people and villains into a multi layered landscape that you can easily see inspired the eventual movies, albeit vastly watered down. Theres a lot to get stuck into here and I really enjoyed the amount of action and sense of scale, whilst not taking vast amounts of tune to get to the point. Awesome art, great story, rated at a 4 simply on the basis that there's just a lot going on, so bear that in mind!
gohawks's review against another edition
4.0
So I have finally found that it is true. Hickman is better in larger doses. He has usually disappointed me in the past. Almost everything after The Nightly News, with the exception of the fascinating East of West, has been mind-numbingly incomprehensible. Fortunately, this collection is a weighty tome clocking in at over 20 issues of individual comics. Hickman finally has enough time to steer his story in a coherent direction and develop some of his immense ideas.
As always, so many things are going on in this one. A Builder race has decided Earth is a threat to all other planets in the Multiverse and future living beings. Therefore, it is scheduled for extinction. Various super heroes and immortal space beings band together to save Earth and Humanity. Meanwhile, good ol' Thanos figures out that this is the perfect time to attack Earth while a battle is being waged in outer space on multiple fronts. Super hero teams divide and defend, galactic wars ensue. Sound fairly simple? Hickman manages to make it incredibly complicated. Per usual, he makes the reader work very hard to get the gist of the plot. We must keep foraging ahead until halfway through when we start to figure out who some of these characters are; what they want; where they're from.
As for the art, Kubert has a small hand in it - mostly the covers. And I love his kinetic style. Lenil Yu does a good portion of the issues. And while I always appreciate his bone crunching action and layouts, his lines are way to heavy for my liking. Something akin to giving a three year old a black crayon and telling her to press as hard as she can.
Anyway, if I being honest, this probably got four stars just because I was so surprised I liked it. Three and a half would be more accurate.
As always, so many things are going on in this one. A Builder race has decided Earth is a threat to all other planets in the Multiverse and future living beings. Therefore, it is scheduled for extinction. Various super heroes and immortal space beings band together to save Earth and Humanity. Meanwhile, good ol' Thanos figures out that this is the perfect time to attack Earth while a battle is being waged in outer space on multiple fronts. Super hero teams divide and defend, galactic wars ensue. Sound fairly simple? Hickman manages to make it incredibly complicated. Per usual, he makes the reader work very hard to get the gist of the plot. We must keep foraging ahead until halfway through when we start to figure out who some of these characters are; what they want; where they're from.
As for the art, Kubert has a small hand in it - mostly the covers. And I love his kinetic style. Lenil Yu does a good portion of the issues. And while I always appreciate his bone crunching action and layouts, his lines are way to heavy for my liking. Something akin to giving a three year old a black crayon and telling her to press as hard as she can.
Anyway, if I being honest, this probably got four stars just because I was so surprised I liked it. Three and a half would be more accurate.
elisetheninth's review against another edition
4.0
This is definitely my favorite of the more recent Marvel events, and a lot of that is down to Hickman, who captures an "epic" feel without sacrificing fun character moments. I also really loved this particular collection - it was great to have the major tie-in issues collected in the same volume as the main storyline. I hope they continue to put out similar collections for future events.
scriberjack's review against another edition
5.0
I read all of Infinity, including the tie-ins, and I'm in awe. With the exception of a couple issues that I can't for the life of me understand why they were included under the Infinity banner, I enjoyed every title. I loved how the main titles had two parallel story lines going on, but even more I loved seeing the people on the ground like the Mighty Avengers, Thunderbolts, etc, and how the events of Infinity affected everybody and led into the next event, Inhumanity. The tie-ins aren't going to be included in this hardcover, but they are definitely worth checking out. Captain Marvel and Spider Woman are hilarious together. I want to read more of them teaming up. Such great story telling! I also like that, opening up the Inhumans like they do, it offers the MCU some new options.
trike's review against another edition
3.0
This is the best thing I’ve ever read from Hickman. I’m going to stop here, in fact, so he goes out at his personal best. Mostly his stuff makes zero sense to me. It feels like he has an idea but is just not super great about communicating it. However, I read the run-up to this story so I figured I might as well finish it off. (Plus I’ve seen Avengers: Endgame three times already and wanted to revisit the story of Thanos.)
The description said this was Infinity issues 1-6, which meant it’s a maximum of 135 pages. Easy enough to knock out. Turns out it’s 626 pages long. Easy enough to knock me out, more like. It’s a whole slew of issues from various comics complied to tell a single story. Which is a nice change from the usual practice with these crosssovers, frankly. But even then I wasn’t exactly sure what was happening sometimes.
Part of that is Hickman’s style of telling a story with flashbacks, part of it was whoever assembled the book, so it seems like things happen out of order. But all in all it’s a crazy epic story with multiple moving parts. Even though I don’t particularly care for Hickman’s storytelling, there’s no denying he likes to go big. And he certainly does that here. If you’re looking for some widescreen superhero cosmic sci-fi action, this is the tale for you.
The art shifts because it’s so from many different books, and at times the styles don’t gel, but when the final confrontation comes they brought in Jim Cheung, and he crushes the finale. Cheung’s work reminds me of Mark Bagley and John Romita, Jr., and with colors by the late, great Justin Ponsor, the climactic battle really rocks.
The description said this was Infinity issues 1-6, which meant it’s a maximum of 135 pages. Easy enough to knock out. Turns out it’s 626 pages long. Easy enough to knock me out, more like. It’s a whole slew of issues from various comics complied to tell a single story. Which is a nice change from the usual practice with these crosssovers, frankly. But even then I wasn’t exactly sure what was happening sometimes.
Part of that is Hickman’s style of telling a story with flashbacks, part of it was whoever assembled the book, so it seems like things happen out of order. But all in all it’s a crazy epic story with multiple moving parts. Even though I don’t particularly care for Hickman’s storytelling, there’s no denying he likes to go big. And he certainly does that here. If you’re looking for some widescreen superhero cosmic sci-fi action, this is the tale for you.
The art shifts because it’s so from many different books, and at times the styles don’t gel, but when the final confrontation comes they brought in Jim Cheung, and he crushes the finale. Cheung’s work reminds me of Mark Bagley and John Romita, Jr., and with colors by the late, great Justin Ponsor, the climactic battle really rocks.