Comic Book Questions Answered – where I answer whatever questions you folks might have about comic books (feel free to e-mail questions to me at brianc@cbr.com).

My pal, Lauren Galloway, passed along a question from Joshua Yehl, namely when did we learn who Warlock had entrusted the reality stone to back in the days of the Infinity Watch? Joshua knew who eventually WAS revealed to have the stone, he just wanted to know WHEN it was revealed (by the way, while I was writing this, John Ernenputsch answered the question, but he, it's still a good question, so I'll still answer it here).

Okay, so let's set the scene. Infinity Gauntlet was about Thanos collecting the Infinity Stones (they were called Infinity Gems back then, but I'll use the current term of art, which is Infinity Stones) and using them to create the Infinity Gauntlet. At the end of the storyline, Adam Warlock successfully recovers the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos. Warlock fixes all of the damage that Thanos did (including killing off half of the people in the universe) but with Warlock and the Infinity Watch #1 (by Jim Starlin, Angel Medina and Terry Austin), the Living Tribunal ruled that the Infinity Stones could never be used in concert again.

However, to make sure that that never happened, in the next issue (by Starlin, Medina and Austin), Warlock split the Stones up among the various members of a newly formed team called the Infinity Watch (basically just various acquaintances of Warlock over the years). However, the guardian of the Reality Stone is a mystery!

The first time that the Reality Stone was needed was during Infinity War, where Warlock seemingly decides to put the Infinity Stones back together to try to create the Infinity Gauntlet again in Infinity War #4 (by Jim Starlin, Ron Lim and Al Milgrom). The Infinity Watch was surrounded by the Infinity Watch, Thanos and a bunch of heroes from Earth at the time and suddenly, the Reality Stone was there!

However, they still needed to get the Living Tribunal to let them work together, so Gamora and Galactus went to petition the cosmic being. However, in the meantime, the Magus (Adam Warlock's sort of evil twin) had stolen the Infinity Gauntlet...

So now it seemed like everyone was screwed. However, in the final issue, Thanos and Adam Warlock were surprisingly able to withstand the Infinity Gauntlet...

As it turned out, the Reality Stone had been fabricated and thus, the Infinity Gauntlet never REALLY worked. So thus the Reality Stone was still being guarded and only Warlock knew who guarded it!

Of course, Warlock recovered and soon the answer was uncovered.

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So 1991 was Infinity Gauntlet, then 1992 was Infinity War. 1993, then, was Infinity Crusade, which showed Warlock at war with his "good" twin, known as the Goddess (of course, Starlin investigated whether "good" or "evil" are particularly meaningful terms).

During that story, Warlock heads off to meet the Reality Stone's guardian in Warlock Chronicles #2 (by Jim Starlin, Tom Raney and Keith Williams) and, sure enough, it was Thanos all along!

So there ya go!

Thanks for the question, Lauren (and Joshua)!

If anyone else has a comic book question, just drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com!