>>91889994Starlin wrote one page in his 90s return that established the origin of the Infinity Gems. There was an omnipotent godbeing. It got sad and killed itself, resulting in reality. The Gems are remnants of its aimless will.
As the 90s push on the industry goes crazy. Debuts, events, crossovers, media deals, money money & more money. A literally-who comic company called Malibu shoots up, gets exposure, flounders, and IIRC makes a deal with Marvel to stay afloat. They do a big multi-title universe crossover, and to make it grand & epic enough they base it around Malibu's Rune the Vampire sauntering into 616 and stealing the Infinity Gems.
Stakes steadily rise and dontcha know, someone eventually remembers that one page Starlin wrote about the Gems' origin and decides it'd make a great plot twist. A 7th Gem is discovered: Ego. The godbeing's concentrated sense of self. When joined with the others she is reborn and starts fucking shit up. A young wide-eyed Warren Ellis hackneys together a 22-page resolution, everything goes back to normal, and the Gems don't get mentioned for a few years.
At some point legal shit happens. I don't know the details,my vague understanding goes something like this: Malibu goes under & its IP rights revert to someone other than Marvel. Marvel are never allowed to reference any of their content under threat of lawsuit, even though that content's now established Marvel Universe continuity. Anything introduced in the crossover is grey area that neither can use. When Starlin next writes for Marvel, he wants to use the Infinity Gems. He wants to address where they've been this whole time in case people ask, so writes Galactus recovering Rune's corpse into the script. Editorial shits itself at the 11th hour and demands that it be redrawn to look less like who it's supposed to be, so that they can claim plausible deniability. Notice how the figure we're all calling Nemesis ITT looks slightly different from Nemesis?
