**** (four of five stars)
Summary
Thanos has been resurrected, and he struggles with memories of his past self as he begins to come to consciousness. He reveals that his resurrection came at the hands of Magus, who recognized Thanos' importance to the cosmic pattern. Magus had found Thanos' drifting corpse and placed it a cocoon, which the Universal Church of Truth discovered and mistook to contain Magus himself. Its members took the cocoon to their throne world, resurrecting Thanos, who destroyed said world in revenge. Thanos awakens at Knowhere, the headquarters of the Guardians of the Galaxy, whose telepaths have been trying to soothe Thanos' mind as he returns to consciousness. Moondragon advocates to Star-Lord that they should kill him, as does (shocker) Drax. Rocket Raccoon disagrees, saying that Thanos is too cosmically important for them to kill, noting that Drax may have set in motion the whole range of interstellar events of the past few years as a result of killing Thanos. At the Fault, Nova is joined in his chase of Evil Quasar by "our" Quasar as the Kree and Shi'Ar prepare to attack the Universal Church of Truth, which has been amassing warships (called "templeships") in the Fault zone. Worldmind warns Richard that the templeships are full of believers generating belief energy, hypothesizing that the Church is planning something big. Nova crashes into one of the ships with Evil Quasar, only to be confronted by Magus, who's working with Evil Quasar. Quasar arrives to fight Magus, who reveals that he's transported not just templeships of believers, but entire planets of believers. Magus then detonates the planets, killing trillions of people and using the released belief energy to bring the leader of the Many-Angled Ones' army, Lord Mar-Vell, into "our" Universe. Mar-Vell kills Magus for his failure to eliminate the Avatar of Death, and says that his first priority is cleansing the Universe of death.
The Review
Holy flarking crap, people! This issue is quite a ride.
OK, first, the most obvious thing I'll note is how well DnA tie in the various cosmic series and mini-series into just this one book. I've read most of those series and mini-series, so I was familiar with a lot of the past events we see in this issue, such as Drax killing Thanos ("Annihilation"), Quasar discovering the Cancerverse ("Realm of Kings"), and Nova chasing Evil Quasar ("Nova"). However, I was unfamiliar with some events, such as Moondragon and Thanos being resurrected, the Guardians coming into possession of Thanos, Adam Warlock becoming Magus (and aligning himself with Evil Quasar), and Phyla-Vell being dead. But, even if I wasn't 100 percent clear on when and where the unfamiliar events happened, DnA do a pretty great job of introducing them and placing them within the context of the events that happen in this book. I mean, I don't really need to know the full back story to know that Magus destroying several planets full of Universal Church of Truth believers so that he can bring the Cancerverse's Many-Angled Ones to our reality isn't a good thing.
In addition to doing an excellent job getting the reader current on all the various cosmic series' events and setting up the upcoming cross-over event, DnA actually also deliver a good story. You can feel Nova and Quasar's desperation in trying to stop Evil Quasar from making it to the Fault. You also get the sense that the Guardians of the Galaxy are really scrambling to figure out something to do with Thanos before he regains his strength. By the end of the issue, when Magus detonates the planets, you realized just how grand of a story DnA are planning here. (I mean, you don't just kill a few trillion people for the heck of it.) I'm exciting to see the band back together again, if you will, even if it doesn't promise to be the smoothest gig they've ever played.
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