The Pull List

What? TWO in one week? Well, as I said before I wasn't able to get all the books I had from last week so that became YESTERDAY'S post. Today, I have a whopping ONE title to talk about. But what a book it is:

THE THANOS IMPERATIVE #1 of 6
Words:Dan Abnett & Andy Lanning
Pictures: Miguel Sepulveda

This is it. The return (again) of THANOS! The Mad Titan! Hell yeah! This guy is bad ass!
Okay, geek crap out of the way let's look at the book...

This is an event book in the Cosmic corner of the Marvel Universe. Let's break this down:
The story starts with Annihilation. Annihilus from the Negative Zone decides the 'positive' universe is growing and taking over his 'negative' universe. At the end of that, Drax, a character from the 1970's fulfilled his whole reason for being by finally killing Thanos. A fist through the back and the Mad Titan comes face to face with his heart.
After many decades of trying to be with his beloved Mistress Death, Thanos finally gets what he wants. He gets to die. No one knew at the time how big a deal that really was.
The next event was Annihilation: Conquest. Here we see the return of Adam Warlock, long time enemy and sometime associate to Thanos and the being who eventually became the tyrant Magus in a timeline that was erased years ago when Warlock went to his then future to kill himself thus preventing the Magus from coming to be and creating the Universal Church of Truth which would have gone on to enslave countless planets in the universe.
But was Adam really cured of the Magus? His first costume in this series was similar to that which the Magus wore.
This was followed by the War of Kings in which the Inhumans, leaving earth after the crap they went through during the Secret Invasion, took over the Kree, their creators, and made war with the Shi'ar.
This ended badly when the Inhumans king Black Bolt unleashed his power in an attempt to kill the Shi'ar leader, Vulcan. The result was a rip in time/space, the very fabric of our universe.

During Realm of Kings, the Guardians of the Galaxy discovered the Fault, as it became known, was a gateway of sorts to another reality where Death was destroyed and life runs rampant. It becomes known as the Cancerverse and there are evil doubles, doppelgangers if you will, of our universes finest heroes.
This universe is infested with these Cthulu looking things, tendrils and slime and all kinds of gross. In the Infinity War, the Magus made evil doubles of Earth heroes and villains. They showed him in another reality looking down at tendril and all kinds of slime, much like the ones here. It makes me wonder if this is the same thing. It would be nice to have something to connect to The Infinity War. Infinity Gauntlet has been referenced all over the place.

Anyway, in Guardians and Nova we learn that these things in this Cancerverse are wanting a new universe to continue to grow in. Our universe. But first Death must be destroyed. This is the problem. It seems the Universal Church of Truth was created anyway, who knows how, and they found a cocoon floating in space. Now, anyone with a passing knowledge of these things knows that Adam Warlock goes into such things when he needs to repaid his mind and body. The Church thought this was him and figured if they captured it they would have control over Warlock and would be able to re-create The Magus.
The problem was Adam Warlock had already come back during Annihilation: Conquest but before he was found in the event he was traveling through space and happened upon the lifeless body of Thanos, murdered by Drax. Warlock, understanding the need for Thanos in the grand scheme of things, placed him in a cocoon in hopes of fixing the death.
Warlock would go into his own cocoon after Galactus unleashed a wave of cosmic energy which would destroy the Annihilation Wave and countless innocents as well. The sudden death of so many beings was more than Warlock could handle so he retreated into his cocoon.

Warlock would succumb to the Magus and would join forces with the things of the Cancerverse. He was charged with killing the Avatar of Death: Thanos. He failed and in the Thanos Imperative: Ignition one shot he was seemingly destroyed by the Cancerverse version of Mar-Vel.
So the stage is set: Beings from another reality are here to take over but first they must destroy death. Thanos is living death. He loves it, worships it and delivers it to anyone he wishes. As long as he's around, death is around. In this first issue everything begins to come to a head: They are here and they want to kill death and take over. The Guardians and Nova have to rely on Thanos to defend this universe. Thanos, meanwhile, is having a lot of problems. It seems such a large influx of life in the universe is causing him pain.
In another part of the story, the Inhumans, the Kree and the Shi'ar are running for their lives. Before he was destroyed, the Magus transported entire planets of Church believers and ignited them, this ripped the Fault open completely and created the door the Cancerverse needed to come over.
There is a question as to whether or not the Inhumans and the others survived...but their possible destruction drew the attention to a certain Silver skinned Surfer. Rumor has it he and his boss will be involved.

this has the makings of a massive events on the level of Annihilation and The Infinity Gauntlet. Issue one shows how you set it up, the writers know what they are doing, they actually know how to construct this kind of story and while the War of Kings/Realm of Kings was lacking in my opinion, this more than makes up for it!