The Silver Surfer: Rebirth of Thanos

I bought The Silver Surfer: Rebirth of Thanos last year at an outlet store somewhere in South Carolina, remembering that I had once owned the first 50 or so issues of the 90s incarnation of The Silver Surfer. (I still have many of them bagged and boarded.) I've always liked the Surfer, but never really cared that much for his comic's first run in the late 60's, probably due to the fact that he was confined to Earth and couldn't really get involved much into all the cosmic stuff that I thought was so cool. Yet in the 90s, all that changed.

It was fun to revisit several of those issues with The Silver Surfer: Rebirth of Thanos, but the graphic novel collection could more aptly be called Rebirth of Thanos, featuring The Silver Surfer. Thanos is in all of the stories, yet the Surfer appears only in the first half of the collection. (The second half collects the Thanos Quest for the six soul-gems.)

I know that all of this leads to the Infinity Gauntlet and beyond, I can't comment on how these stories prepare you for that event, only on how the story stands on its own. I thought the concept of Thanos wanting to kill half the population of the universe quite silly (at least in the way it was presented early on in the story), but I decided to play along, mainly because Ron Lim's artwork is so compelling. The only other artist (in my very limited experience) that has that quirky weirdness is Steve Ditko when he was drawing Dr. Strange. I could look at Lim's work for hours (and did).

The storyline of Thanos searching out and collecting the six soul gems reminded me too much of the Avengers/Defenders War over the Evil Eye, which I believe was also in six pieces. Still, the artwork carried me through, making Rebirth of Thanos a keeper. At least for now...