Hickman, Avengers, and the Infinity Gems

Spoilers for Jonathan Hickman's Avengers and New Avengers. You have been warned.

Today over on twitter, David Uzumeri suggested an interesting theory concerning the future of Jonathan Hickman’s run on Avengers and New Avengers today and I felt like I should run with it. For the purpose of context, here is the original tweet.

yo since they both bend space but not time and both are useless outside of their native universe whats the chance the space gem = manifold
— David Uzumeri (@DavidUzumeri) February 14, 2013

Manifold is a character which Hickman himself created during his run on Secret Warriors back in 2009. The character has the ability teleport. As the current writer on Avengers, Hickman has put the character as a member of his expanded roster for the team.

Hickman is well known among readers for planning his runs of any given book pretty extensively to the point that he makes use of complex charts for mapping out what plot points play out in what issues. One thing that has always struck me about his work at Marvel that no one ever seems to bring up is how interconnected it all is. Aspects of his work on S.H.I.E.L.D. play into both the tail end of his run on Secret Warriors as well as an early issue of his Fantastic Four, a two issue story arc in Fantastic Four (#607-608) foreshadows the fate of Wakanda during Avengers vs. X-Men as well as Black Panther’s role in the events of Hickman’s New Avengers series. I bring up his past work because to better flesh out this theory the first thing we need to put on the table is established in Hickman’s previous Marvel work (well, first two things if you count the introduction of Manifold in Secret Warriors). I’m talking about when Hickman establishes in Fantastic Four #571 that an Infinity Gauntlet and its respective Gems are only functional in their native universe.

Fast forward to Hickman’s New Avengers #1, in which a new villain named Black Swan arrives in Wakanda, claiming to be from a parallel earth that has suddenly appeared in the sky (I'm not going to bother explaining what's actually going on here, it's far too complicated, just read Hickman's New Avengers because he spends a good chunk of #2 explaining it). She arrives on Earth 616 through the teleportation powers of her own universe's Manifold only to kill him shortly after. Later, in the following issue, Reed Richards, interrogating Black Swan, asks her about her motivations in doing this and she says this...

At the end of the issue, Steve Rogers realizes the Illuminati are considering compromising their principles to stop the impending threat and convinces the team to use the Infinity Gauntlet instead. When Reed tells this to Black Swan in New Avengers #3 she reminds us that the gems, don't work outside of their native universe.

In that same issue the Illuminati assemble the Gauntlet and Steve uses it to prevent impending disaster, but at a cost; the Gauntlet is lost.

With the Gauntlet gone the Illuminati realize Steve is going to stand in the way of them doing what they feel must be done and mind wipe him. The scene mirrors the out of context dream/flashback panel Steve has as he is waking up in Avengers #1 and seems establishing that everything in New Avengers thus far has taken place before Avengers #1

So building off of this train of thought David got me going down today, here is my theory where all this is heading. Steve did not break the Gauntlet in New Avengers #3. When Steve says he gave it one last push, he unconsciously transferred the powers of the Gems to 6 characters that would eventually become part of Steve's expanded Avengers team. In other words Steve has effectively made the Avengers into Infinity Gauntlet and doesn't realize it yet. After all, this team will likely go on to stop the threat the Illuminati are planning to sacrifice their principles to prevent, which would ultimately prove Steve's original stance of using the Infinity Gems to prevail right.

As one last piece of evidence for all of this, I'll point out something I just noticed about that Avengers team graphic in the front of every issue of Avengers.

Notice anything interesting? Each circle represents one member of the team, with the inner circle representing the "movie Avengers" and the offshoots representing the newer recruits. What strikes me as odd is that 6 of the circles are larger than the others. Sure, 2 of them are empty at the moment, but the other 4 represent Captain America, Iron Man, Captain Universe and (going back to David's original tweet that spawned all of this.) Manifold. Six is also the number of the Infinity Gems.

I know I'm probably not 100% right, but considering we know that Marvel's Free Comic Book Day offering is the opening shots of a big, Hickman penned event called Infinity, the Infinity gems have to be out there somewhere and I think the clues all point towards something akin to this.