MUTE
Jim Stalin’s The End – Yet another incredible cosmic make-over from Jim Starlin, narrated by Thanos, who recounts the story of his crushing defeat. The tale brings into play lots of chaos and destruction, and the heroes of our universe are destroyed and re-created several times. Thano goes up against the Living Tribunal, Eternity, and all sorts of Celestials and develops all sorts of god-like powers (or maybe that should be “God-like” powers). Absolutely nutty. The story jumps all over the place, and rapidly at that, before settling on some kind of weird tranquility at the end of all space and time. Wow… deep.
Not sure if this story thrills me, chills me, or just perplexes me. But it’s nice to see Thanos mellowing in his old age and appearing nearly… contrite. After all, he’s been tricked by God into re-creating the world in spite of himself, when he discovers that nothingness just won’t do. Weird…
The story has lots of red herrings – it shows Amunhotep, back after thousands of years and dripping with raw power (even though he looks like a jack-o-lantern) to lay claim to the Earth (“Odin, Zeus, you can’t have it, it’s mine!!”); we see Adam Warlock and Gamora baby-sitting the arcane child Atleza, we see the X-men, we see Doctor Doom, the Asgardians and Olympians, and all the other power mongers of the day. None of them know what to do with Amunhotep… except for Thanos and Doctor Doom – they knows what to do with Amunhotep. There’s a weird interlude where Spider-man sort of… is he making fun of Daredevil for being blind? The council of the deities (South American, Greek, Nordic, Indian, Japanese, Chinese, Mesopotamian, etc) is pretty darn cool too.
One of the fun things of the book is how these supremely powerful deities push around Earth leaders like George Bush Jr (we get to see a bit more of Saddam Hussein, Condaleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and that whole jolly 2003 faces, as that was the year The End was published).
For someone like me who’s been away for a few years, it’s interesting to see that the Marvel Universe has added a few new grotesque embodiments of universal concepts, like Infinity (a sort of lava woman, who is perhaps a companion to Eternity), Eon (a sort of leafy green blob), and Master Hate and Mistress Love (???!!!). Nice. I also love the great two double-spreads showing Thanos taking on every single superhero in the Marvel Universe (even I can’t name them all). They are all destroyed with a wave of a hand, as is everything else, and the series is really no longer about anyone other than… Thanos. Great – way to be irrelevant, Marvel Universe.
But sir, what are we going to do about this new threat?
World leaders meet world leader