We love a good Annual crossover. Generally low-impact excuses to play with minor aspects of the universe, the crossovers that took over each summer’s Annuals peaked in the late 1980s and early 90s with events like the massive Atlantis Attacks. In 1992, the company released six different crossovers over 23 oversized issues.
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They were designed to be low-impact and largely skippable, and Marvel’s recent return to the format – such as 2023’s Contest of Chaos – has stuck to that form; the stories don’t insist you buy extra issues, but they hope you will.
2024’s effort, Infinity Watch – Power Corrupts is suitably disposable, though it does contain larger ramifications for the Infinity Stones and the Marvel Universe, and the events of the story lead into the Infinity Watch miniseries.
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The story follows the new avatars of the Infinity Stones – a group of people physically bonded with the stones and given their powers – as they gather and face Thanos and his new Death Stone. That narrative is not a clean or direct one because it unfolds under the guest star format: taking place in the annuals of Spider-Boy and Moon Knight means that they must necessarily be as focused on those heroes as they are on the unfolding cosmic journey.
Running in backups of each issue is the much more straightforward story of Nick Fury and Agent Coulson, in which the latter has bonded with Thanos’ Death Stone, but even this story starts and stops on the whim of its format.
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Some of these stories are more effective than others; in Ms Marvel, the book looks to do that character justice by playing with her narrative threads and supporting cast; conversely, in Wolverine, the characters are gratingly forced into mundane combat, the epitome of the “heroic misunderstanding” trope.
The largest failing of the book is in the Infinity Watch themselves, characters so flat and interchangeable that one is introduced and instantly murdered by Thanos and replaced by the much more interesting Colleen Wing. These characters don’t seem built to survive – the Infinity Stones are too big a McGuffin to be bound in this way for long.
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Because these characters are so lackluster – Star and Wing aside – the story reduces Thanos from cosmic-level threat to paltry narrative speed bump. At no point in the story – including in his own issue – is Thanos made horrifying; at no point is he insurmountable. If these tepid nobodies can best him, what further use is he?
Largely, The Infinity Watch – Power Corrupts fails to impress. But, then, it was a series of annuals meant to be mostly disposable, a story made of varied parts fans could choose to engage with or not. The book is a fine return to a long tradition of optional storytelling if nothing else.
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