By the magic of my community library’s digital loaning platform, I was able to borrow a comic book. Crazy wild, I know.

Not even Death realized what limitless might the mad titan was striving for. Through cunning, sheer strength, and murder, Thanos wrested the infinity gems from those that possessed them and with each acquisition he gained mastery over the soul, the mind, power, time, reality, space.

The Infinity Gauntlet by Jim Starlin and artists George Perez and Ron Lim starts on an interesting note. Unlike Avengers: Infinity War, Thanos starts the book with all the infinity gems. The story skips neatly over all the nobodies Thanos had to dispatch in order to obtain the six gems, which is fair. How could they have told engaging stories about unknown aliens guarding unknown powers? The threat to human and all sentient life builds nicely over the first two issues.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, Thanos has just about infinite power with these gems and eliminates half of the sentient beings in the universe. The Avengers won’t roll over for that and neither will the Avenger-friends. That much is in the movies. In the comic books, The Silver Surfer rushes to Earth to tell Doctor Strange everything he knows, Strange receives word from a metaphysical being who is also in the know, and other heroes hear from their sources as well. In short, everyone soon knows who they oppose but not how they can oppose him.

Fault one with The Infinity Gauntlet: The Hulk doesn’t say, “There’s trouble brewing!”

Fault two comes in the big fight. Sure, someone must devise a clever plan. Sure, many heroes will be overwhelmed by this nigh omnipotent villain. Sure, many words will be spilled by B-string supers who speak of themselves in the third person and are supposed to be super-duper defenders except this time. All of this can be done well enough, but they tried to take it to the next level by bringing in a menagerie of gods to challenge the one with godlike power. And what do you think happens to them?

Odin has a counsel meeting with The Sky-Fathers, a collection of mythological deities, and they all agree to fight just before the Bifröst is shredded, stranding everyone in Asgard. No celestial Uber could take them to the fight. Not to fear, we have other gods here. They assemble two giant robotons called Celestials, the planet destroyer Galactus, the embodiment of time, the embodiment of eternity, the floating heads of Order and Chaos, a bewhiskered Stranger, and a bystander called The Watcher. This troupe wants to fight (except that last one who must only watch (Duty, Always Duty)), and they come in with a ton of fireworks, but of course, they get nowhere. Where were they while Thanos was collecting the gems? Did no one see anything?

And how much of Rockem-Sockem deities can a reader take?

1: “I have unbelievable cosmic power! BezZaaa!!”

Thanos: “But I’ve got more, punk! Boom!!”

2: “You’ve seen nothing before you’ve seen the might of my great …”

Thanos: “Nope!”

3-4-5: “Team up!”

Thanos: “Stop it! I need to monologue a bit.”

Still worse will befall the reader of this series, because after the plan comes to together and the universe has been saved, we witness a scene or two that could provoke us to ask for a point to all of this. In short, The Infinity Gauntlet was forgettable.