Basically, the project did what I wanted it to do, but it was inherently limited in how far I could reasonaby take it.
Well, I've finally rectified that by tackling the project again, but this time doing the whole thing as a digital comic. I technically could've done this back in 1996 when I did my original but it wouldn't have been practical from a computer memory perspective back then and it would've taken forever given the processing power I had available at the time. But today, in 2026, it's much more do-able. So I've done what I wanted to do back then: take the entire storyline with all the crossovers and turn it into a cohesive single narrative. No repetitive scenes, no extraneous subplots, no omissions.
I started the same way, taking the original series and slotting in where the crossover pages fit in. As I explained last time, much of the dialogue in the crossovers is identical, so it's easy to find reference points. I discarded identical scenes, giving deference to whichever provided the most detail, as well as any subplot material that was specific to those crossover titles. In reading every crossover this time, I also discovered that several of them were actually pretty useless. They offered a story of the heroes battling some evil dopplegangers but didn't connect to the main story in any way. So I set aside Captain America, Guardians of the Galaxy, Nomad, Deathlok, and Daredevil.
After getting all the pages in order, I found that I had to make a number of adjustments on the artwork to get everything to tie together as a single narrative...
- "Meanwhile..." -- As is traditional in comics, some of the pages begin with a caption box that identifies the time and/or place of the current scene. Since the pages are mixed and matched from several different sources, though, some of these become redundant. I've removed/hidden any that are unnecessary because it's simply continuing an existing scene.
- "Next issue..." -- As these were originally designed for serial publication, many of the final pages of each issue ended with a blurb or caption announcing what would be coming up in the next installment. I've removed/hidden these since the entire story is presented here.
- "See Infinity War #1..." -- Character dialogue often references previous story and character elements. In cases where an extended explanation might be necessary for new readers, an asterik is sometimes included pointing to an editorial caption noting where the reference took place. Again, since the entire story is presented here, I've removed/hidden any of these that refer to other parts of this same story. I have left in any, however, that refer to comics outside the Infinity War storyline.
- Title page summary -- At the time these were originally published, Marvel would include a few sentences on the title page of each issue providing a high-level summary of who the main character/s was/were. I have removed all of these. These title pages also included the issue's indicia, but those had already been removed by Marvel itself on the files I'm using.
- Minor coloring corrections-- There are a handful of instances of coloring errors that I've corrected. Pip's hair was green in one panel, Hercules' bracers were colored red in another, etc. Mostly pretty inconsequential stuff, but I've adjusted any obvious errors I've happened to notice. Thanos' armor does shift from yellow to orange to even red at one point, but I've left these differences in place, mainly because it would take a lot of time to make this consistent throughout the entire story.
- Reed's warning -- Shortly after Mr. Fantastic encounters his doppleganger, he is seen calling several superhero groups to invite them to Four Freedoms Plaza. The original comic depicted these as a series of one-panel shots, but some of the tie-in comics depicted these calls in more detail. I've shifted the specific order of these calls to accomodate the extended ones we see, but doing so created a minor continuity error where Reed says that he still needs to call the New Warriors after contacting the X-Men. I've adjusted Reed's dialogue to say he still needs to contact the West Coast Avengers instead of the New Warriors. There was also a duplication of some of Reed's other dialogue in the X-Men call specifically, which I've swapped with another sentence from the request he made to another team. (There was already a clear indication that he repeated literally the exact same, word-for-word invitation to each of the teams he contacted.)
- "New" page builds -- Because the overall story was woven in through several already ongoing titles, the issues often feature completely unrelated subplots. Individual issue pacing, however, meant that sometimes half of a page would focus on the Infinity War and the other half on the subplot. In stripping out those unrelated sub-plots, some pages were left half-empty. A similar effect can be seen in pages whose content overlaps multiple issues, and I removed the duplicated scenes. In both cases, I have tried combining the half-pages into single whole pages. These mostly work well, although there are a few instances where the resulting page layout isn't as elegant as I would like.
- "Filler" panels -- Related to the previous item, there were a couple instances where I didn't have any additional story to flesh out a half-page that resulted from moving panels around. In these cases, I've filled the empty space with 'generic' filler panels. They do tie in well-enough that they make sense but they don't offer any additional character insights or advance the story at all.
- Individual character chronology -- The page order of some of the characters' storylines has been shuffled slightly. Notably Dr. Doom, Kang, the Living Tribunal, and Uatu. While the continuity of the larger story around them aligns smoothly, by keeping their story pages in order relative to the original comics they're presented in, it introduces some continuity problems overall. Since their personal storylines effectively have no direct connection with anyone else's throughout much of the story, I've opted to shift a few of their pages around to maintain their personal continuities.
- Spidey & Hawkeye's recovery -- Spider-Man and Hawkeye are injured early on. In the primary story, Wonder Man tells Captain America once they've been found and notes that Thor and the Hulk were taking them to the hospital. The Wonder Man story showing this, however, depicts Thor and Hercules finding them and taking them to the hospital. I've adjusted the dialogue to reference Hercules instead of Hulk. Elsewhere, the Hulk is shown on a television screen seemingly carrying Spider-Man into a hospital, but the image is vague enough that it can be more easily explained away as file footage or perhaps Hulk carrying Spider-Man's doppleganger or something.
- The Earth stops -- Towards the end of the story, everyone on Earth freezes in place. In the original story, both the precise timing of this as well as what causes it are a little ambiguous. This isn't helped by it occurring almost immediately after Galactus wipes out all the dopplegangers. Because the precise timing is a little nebulous, each of the crossovers place it in a slightly different place in the overall story, however it made sense for the particular narrative they were telling. I'm opting to include the earliest instance because that seems to offer the least number of potential continuity issues; however, it does imply the freeze is directly connected to Galactus wiping out the dopplegangers. Later dialogue does make explicit that the freeze was caused by Magus though.
- Astral Dr. Strange -- After Magus obtains the Infinity Gauntlet, Captain America is tricked into leading a final assault against the doppelganger army. I've included an extended version of Cap's rallying speech to the heroes but the art erroneously includes Dr. Strange in attendance, despite having been already sent away on another mission explicitly by Captain America himself. There is simply no way to make the continuity work so he can appear at this meeting in person, so I've opted to re-color Dr. Strange in that one panel to suggest he's only attending in his astral form.
Not every detail is picked up on and not every connection works perfectly. But again, considering how many creators were involved and for how long, I think it works remarkably, remarkably well. The story itself is good but not all that spectacular, but the line-wide editing is the best I've ever seen.
If you're interested, I've made a copy available for download in CBZ format here (approximately 1.5 GB).
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