Entry 277: Enifinity Gauntlet #5

The end is here. The final issue of Infinity Gauntlet is out and the story is over.

Since this last issue came out the question I've gotten the most is: "Will these characters continue on in the regular Marvel Universe?" And there are some responses to the series that act as though, if these characters are not continuing then the content of this story, even if they enjoyed it, doesn't matter. I will point out that it would seem that most people are perfectly happy with a self contained stand alone story. So that's cool, but to address the question--



The answer is that I have no idea if these characters will continue into the Marvel Universe. They easily could. So it's really up to what Marvel wants to do or if some writer wants to use them. What i do know is that in the end of this story Anwen has the Infinity Gauntlet, which basically gives her god powers. If anyone could survive the end of the Battleworld universe into the new Marvel universe and bring her family along with her, it's Anwen. You can almost be sure that the Infinity Gauntlet it's self will make it into the new universe. We'll see.

Let's imagine that these characters do turn up in the new Marvel universe, the whole family including the dog. What if they got their own series and the Nova Gauntlet becomes the new Infinity Gauntlet? Well that makes this series an origin story and a first appearance of these characters. If everything else in Battleworld is a jumble up of existing characters that doesn't offer up anything new and everything resets in a slightly new configuration but mostly things are the same, if Infinity Gauntlet is the only story offering anything new, then doesn't that make it the only thing in all this that matters? I don't know.

I'll be honest. I haven't read anything related to this event. So I don't know what is going on in the other books. This is why my story is so disconnected. Maybe all the other tie-in's are doing super great things and are introducing all kinds of new characters.

I'll just say that in the world of corporate comics, the stories and characters that matter are the ones you are buying... Unless the movie rights to those characters are owned by a different movie studio.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaanyyyyyyyyways

I'm mostly very happy with this series. Though Gerry Duggan wrote the final scrip after I had written and drawn the pages, this comic is my story. I only feel the need to point this out because it's my first story of this length. I've written a couple one-shot issues, but this was my first time writing a 5 issue story line. It's a big step for me so I'd like the credit.

I do regret that I wasn't able to script it all myself, but there are many instances of dialogue that are very close to what I had originally written. On the other hand, there were a few times when I was very surprised. Over all, my story stayed intact.

I also regret not being able to do all the coloring myself. I did as much as I could. I even did some coloring on some of Rain's pages when I had the chance. I think Rain Beredo did a great job filling in for me, but it's really not the same. I think ultimately I was able to color very close to half of the series.

I regret that I couldn't dedicate a bit more attention to the resolution of the story. I had a lot in mind for this, but I was ultimately encouraged to keep it more ambiguous. I assume, given the temporary nature of Battleworld, Marvel didn't want to be explicit with the ending and I'm sure they'd like some options with how to proceed with this material. But yeah, I had wanted to show Anwen basically put an end to all the bugs, save the Guardians of the Galaxy characters and the people in that city. I had even thought of having her time travel back to when her grandpa was killed by the bugs to save him and bring him back to the present... I had a lot of ideas. But I suppose if I had gotten to do all that stuff, I might have had to cut the Nova Voltron.

Speaking of the Nova Voltron, I did really regret not getting to color it myself, so afterwords, just for fun, I colored my own version. Here it is.

As with issue 4, I again provided Rain with grey-tone lighting guides for the coloring. Here are some of those.

Aaaaaand I managed to color the last five pages of the series. Here are all five of those pages.

Man, I enjoyed coloring these final pages. I was really happy that I did it.

And that is the end... Except for the collected version will be coming out and I'm trying to make sure it has all of my concept art in it. There are a few concept pieces that I haven't shown online yet. I'll put them up sometime.

Thanks to everyone who picked up this series. I hope it was a fun experience.

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