I read this to prepare for the upcoming movie. I know the movie will end up being completely different, but one thing they absolutely, positively have to keep the same is Dr. Strange’s mustache. If Dr. Strange doesn’t have a mustache in Avengers: Infinity War that automatically makes the movie worse than the book. If they let Thor keep his beard too, that would be icing on the cake.

So, I know this comic is much beloved, but… I just didn’t like it that much. There are some cool things about it, though. It starts out with Thanos killing half the life in the universe, including many superheros, with a simple snap of his fingers. They just disappear. What a way to start things off! I was disappointed nobody thought the Rapture had just happened, though. That was a bit of a missed opportunity.

I was also disappointed that the surviving characters weren’t that devastated by the loss. They were sad, yeah, but they kind of acted like half the life in the universe being snuffed out was just another day in the office. It was like they knew they were characters in a comic book and that in comic books, everybody always ends up coming back from the dead. So even with the large scale destruction that’s wrought upon the earth, the stakes are low indeed because we all know going into this that the deaths are just going to be temporary at best. There’s lots of big battle scenes and death scenes, but since there are no lasting consequences to any of it, it’s hard to get yourself to care too much about any of it.

Also, they try to squeeze so many characters in, that we don’t get to spend too much time with most of them. Many of the heroes appear for a brief one or two page cameo and that’s it. If you weren’t familiar with them before, you’d have no reason to care about them based on their brief time in the spotlight. In a way, this make Thanos the true hero of the story since we spend more time with him than anyone else. Which kind of makes this a tragedy. Thanos desperately wants Death to love him, but she spurns his advances. So he keeps going to greater and greater lengths to prove his love. As with all tragedies, the downfall of the protagonist ends up being caused by a fundamental flaw to his own character. Thanos is his own worst enemy.