Marvel's Infinity #1 Sells Out, Goes Back For Second Print

Marvel Comics confirmed today what retailers already knew; Infinity #1, the first issue in Jonathan Hickman's anticipated event series for the publisher, has sold through its entire first print at Diamond Comics Distributors and will return for a second printing on September 18. The second printing will ship with a variant cover by first-issue artist Jim Cheung, who platoons with a number of other Marvel artists on the project. That's how it worked with Avengers vs. X-Men, as well, but Marvel's Axel Alonso said at San Diego Comic Con International's Marvel Infinity Panel that the next event, already in development, is expected to have just one artist so it's not necessarily the new status quo. Marvel calls the series "the marquee comics event of 2013" and "the cosmos-shattering conflict that will redefine not just the Avengers, but the entire Marvel Universe," and have been promoting it--for some time now--accordingly. The story centers around the Avengers and a destructive alien race in a cosmic tug-of-war for the fate of the Marvel Universe while, back at home, some of the Marvel heroes who don't get the spotlight as often are protecting the planet from yet another threat. With our heroes at the other end of the universe, and even larger threat rises to claim Earth. Enter Thanos, an unparalleled force who only brings order to a chaotic universe through complete and absolute death. As the Mad Titan's machinations come to fruition, civilization's last hope may lie in the hands of a man who can level cities with a faint whisper – Black Bolt, king of the Inhumans. But can the fearsome leader of a race hated and misunderstood by his world lead the battle against Thanos? If they fall, so does the Earth—and the entire universe with it.