Infinity Watch: Universal Destruction

by Derek Landy, Ruairi Coleman (Illustrator)

Collecting Infinity Watch #1-5.

The seven most powerful people in the Marvel Universe! Each of them wields one of the embodiments of all power in the Infinity Stones! Some of the Stone Bearers are villains, and the other half certainly aren't hall-of-fame heroes - so what does this mean for the Marvel Universe? If Star has anything to say about it, we can start calling it the Star Universe. Can Colleen Wing or Phil Coulson possibly tilt the balance toward good? It might not matter when a mysterious antagonist manages to run the table on them, placing everything in existence in deep trouble! When the awesome power of the Infinity Gauntlet is used and reality is rewritten, only the Infinity Watch can make things right. But first, they'll have to remember who they are - or die trying! But if they succeed, is the universe any safer with these loose cannons in possession of the Infinity Stones?!

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels

120 pages, Paperback

Published August 26, 2025

About the author

Derek Landy is an Irish writer and screenwriter. In addition to the bestselling children's/YA series of Skulduggery Pleasant books, a supernatural mystery series starring Skulduggery Pleasant, a skeleton detective, and Valkyrie Cain, a young female magician, he has written two screenplays that have been made into films: the IFTA award winning "Dead Bodies" and the IFTA nominated "Boy Eats Girl". Landy himself was nominated for an IFTA for Best Script.

He doesn’t like to brag about all the awards he’s won, such as the Irish Book of the Decade, or the Red House in the UK, or all the other awards that he humbly displays on his mantelpiece. He is also far too modest to mention things like the first book being a Publisher’s Weekly Best Book of the Year, but would like to extend an invitation to Oprah to pop around one day for tea, in thanks for selecting his book for the Oprah’s Book Club Kids Reading List.

Derek plays too many video games, reads too many comics, and watches too many movies. He lives in Ireland with too many cats. Occasionally he talks to real people, but only when he absolutely has to.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.3 stars

This was a reasonably fun book with really nice art but, yet again, it’s all timey-wimey multiverse nonsense that’s all been done to death at this point.

[Chris Lemmerman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picking up from the end of Infinity Watch: Power Corrupts, the new Infinity Stonebearers come across a multiversal threat, and their attempts to thwart it result in a rewrite of reality that threatens all of existence. Nice one, guys.

Most of this is fairly straight forward. The Stonebearers bicker, Coulson plays Tired Dad, bad guy turns up to deal with. But around the fourth issue, things start getting more interesting. We get introspective, about the nature of being human and what makes a universe a universe, and the characters start hitting each other with the dialogue bubbles. Things don't settle until the last few pages, which throw in one last twist of the knife that actually hurts given how far the characters have come across just these five issues. Well done Derek Landy for keeping me guessing the entire way through.

The art is split - our usual universe is drawn by Ruari Coleman, so he gets parts of issues 1-2 and 4-5, while Enid Balam gets the majority of 2-4. They're not a great fit stylistically, but that works in the book's favour since the universes are meant to feel different. Initially I was annoyed that we got extra artists on a five issue mini, but it's used to good effect, so I can't complain.

What starts out as simple enough soon becomes much more, to give an unexpected story hidden within one that you think you've seen before.

[Joey Nardinelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now I can’t unsee how often Larocca uses his face as the basis for like…90% of his male characters. Gah!!!

Were the characters in this introduced prior to the previous Infinity Watch collection? Landy writes about them like they were, but other than Coulson, I’m not terribly familiar with any of them (maybe Colleen?). And that feels like a problem when you’re trying to get the reader to buy into the gelling of a new super group — without those richer backstories and more deft characterizations, you’re mostly reliant on their quippy dialogue and action chops to convey anything. Could you tell this story and make it interesting? Possibly. I think you’d need to lean way harder into the individuals and then work towards establishing paired relationships, maybe? Almost like where we go with Ward and Hector. I just worry this will all be so forgettable…especially the stuff with Zavala and the Apeiron. Like…why were there more of them at the end? Because they represent six stones? I guess? Who are those new guys anyways?!

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Strange mix of goofy and serious, with a segment where the characters are hitting each other with dialogue balloons and breaking out of or deforming their page panels (if you're going to do that, really go all-in). The stone bearers come together to defeat a couple of cosmic threats and then come to the realization that it is probably best for them to stay away from each other, lest they become a threat, too. The artwork is kind of sketchy. I hope if this series continues occasionally that it gets better...