With Avengers: Endgame rapidly approaching, fandom has consistently come up with a variety of intriguing theories as to how the Avengers will ultimately defeat Thanos in the film after the mad Titan finally succeeded in wiping out half of the universe at the end of Avengers: Infinity War.
Some theories have even looked into the obscure past of Marvel Comics, to the mysterious seventh Infinity Stone, that has not been seen in a comic book in almost 25 years! Learn more about how the Ego Stone came to be and why it has mostly been wiped out of continuity.
RELATED: Is the MCU’s Ultron Still Alive... in the Infinity Gauntlet?
Everything started in late 1994 when Marvel Comics purchased a rival comic book company, Malibu Comics, along with Malibu's popular superhero line of comic books known as the Ultraverse. This was right around the time that the comic book speculator boom of earlier in the decade was crashing down to Earth, which led to Malibu having to sell to Marvel. The issue, of course, is that the sales crash affected Marvel, as well, which ultimately led to the company shuttering the Ultraverse. However, they first tried to raise sales by starting a series of crossovers with the Marvel Universe and the Ultraverse.
One of the ways that Marvel tried to get Marvel readers to care about the Ultraverse was through the use of the Infinity Stones (then referred to as the Infinity Gems). They had been the focal point of the hit crossover, Infinity Gauntlet, and had led to an ongoing series, Warlock and the Infinity Watch, where Adam Warlock had a group of his friends and acquaintances each guard one of the Infinity Stones so that they could not be brought together to form a new Infinity Gauntlet.
However, the villainous vampire from the Ultraverse, Rune, managed to steal the Infinity Stones right out from underneath the Infinity Watch. This led to Silver Surfer/Rune (by Glenn Herdlin, John Buscema and Bill Anderson) where the Living Tribunal enlisted the Silver Surfer into getting the Infinity Stones back from Rune...
The Surfer managed to keep the stones from Rune by essentially blasting Rune's hand off...
Then the Infinity Stones were lost in the Ultraverse...
Meanwhile, at the end of Bob Harras and Steve Epting's epic run on Avengers, Black Knight and Sersi had been written out of the series by going off together into an alternate dimension. We did not know it at the time (and it is unlikely that Harras even knew it at the time) but it turned out that the two heroes ended up in the Ultraverse, but they were split apart when they arrived there.
Black Knight showed up in the United States in Ultraforce #8 (by Marv Wolfman, Hank Kanalz, George Perez, Keith Aiken and Mark Morales)...
The Ultraforce was essentially the Avengers of the Ultraverse, a team made up of most of the major heroes of the universe. Black Knight ended up joining the team while looking for Sersi.
As it turned out, some other Marvel character found Sersi first - the Grandmaster!
Page 2: [valnet-url-page page=2 paginated=0 text='What happened next?...']
Both Loki and the Grandmaster had entered the Ultraverse in pursuit of the missing Infinity Stones. Loki secured the Mind Stone. Grandmaster, though, found Sersi in Avengers/Ultraforce #1 (by Glenn Herdling, Angel Median and MC Wayman) with the other Infinity Stones along with the shocking revelation that there was a seventh Infinity Stone!
He and Loki then entered into one of those classic deals where they would force the Avengers and Ultraforce to fight each other on behalf of Loki (the Ultraforce) and Grandmaster (the Avengers)...
RELATED: Avengers 4 Theory Explains Why Doctor Strange Gave Thanos the Time Stone
After they fought to basically a tie (these things always end up in a tie), Loki was "given" Sersi, but it turned out that Sersi was actually possessed by the mystery seventh Infinity Stone!
After she wiped the floor with the other heroes, she then gave up her possession of Sersi and revealed itself as a now sentient combination of the seven Infinity Stones as a being known as Nemesis! Nemesis then seemingly destroyed the Ultraverse!
In reality, she had actually just merged the Ultraverse and the Marvel Universe into one combined reality, with the Avengers and Ultraforce combined together in Ultraforce/Avengers #1 (by Warren Ellis, George Perez, Paul Neary and Art Thibert).
Eventually, the merger was uncovered...
When one of the surviving unchanged members of Ultraforce, Contrary, explained what was going on...
The heroes eventually unmerged and then the two groups teamed up in a massive attack on Nemesis to try to get her to put right what she had put wrong. She was a bit of a heady new god, though, and her instinct was to just destroy this plane of existence period, but Black Knight essentially sacrificed himself to break up the new combined Nemesis into her composite Infinity Stones...
The Infinity Gems were then split up once more and the Ego Stone essentially sort of merged into a piece of four of the other Infinity Stones. This led to a Ultraverse crossover known as Black September, which resulted in a rebooting of the Ultraverse and a restarted numbering for the Ultaverse titles that made it through the mass cancellation that happened to the books following Black September.
However, even with this major revamp, the sales slump of the mid-1990s was too much and the Ultraverse was shuttered for good in 1996. Marvel could barely keep their own titles afloat, they couldn't afford to also keep another company's books around, as well.
The Infinity Stones eventually made their way back into the Marvel Universe, although Jim Starlin found that he was not even allowed to draw the skeleton of Rune in Thanos #3 (where Galactus recovers the missing Infinity Stone that Rune had on him)...
There are various legal reasons why the Ultraverse is not going to be re-visited and apparently that included even Rune's skeleton.
It is possible that that is why the seventh Infinity Stone has not shown up again, as well, but for whatever reason, it has not shown up since Black Knight split Nemesis into the composite Infinity Stones.