WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Eternals #2, by Kieron Gillen, Esad Ribic, Matthew Wilson, and VC's Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
While the Marvel Cinematic Universe is home to some of the most famous moments in modern pop culture, its most infamous moment might be Thanos wiping out half of all life in the universe with a snap of his fingers while wielding the fully powered Infinity Gauntlet. Coming at the climax of 2018's Avengers: Infinity War, the scene was the culmination of a decade of cinematic storytelling from Marvel Studios and the fruition of Thanos' villainous plot all along.
With its legacy hovering over everything from Avengers: Endgame to WandaVision, the effects of the snap have even reverberated around the comic book Marvel Universe, where a retroactive tweak has just brought Thanos' original snap more in line with its cinematic counterpart. As the Eternals' Ikaris and Thanos fight in Eternals #2, the opening narration from the Great Machine that supports the Eternals says that Thanos' snap reduced half of the universe to "bloody dust," as it was in the MCU. However, that wasn't quite how Thanos' snap was originally depicted.
The snap at the start of 1991's The Infinity Gauntlet, by Jim Starlin, George Perez and Ron Lim, was depicted much differently than it appeared in the films. Instead of being horrifically transformed into ash and blowing away in the wind as the Gauntlet's victims do in Infinity War and Endgame, the victims simply vanished completely without a trace at the end of Infinity Gauntlet #1.
As Captain America saw first-hand at the Avengers' headquarters, Hawkeye and the Eternals' Sersi just disappeared into thin air, seemingly phasing out of existence as soon as Thanos snapped his fingers. And as the heroes reappear and Thanos' victory is undone after the Gauntlet is liberated from his grasp, the restored victims rematerialize just as quickly as they disappeared in the comic book.
While this change is only acknowledged by a passing reference, this moderate tweak to history indicates just how terrifying an adversary the Mad Titan truly is, as the line's mention of "bloody dust" hints at a visceral carnage in Thanos' genocidal actions that was absent in The Infinity Gauntlet and even from the MCU's ash-like aftermath of the snap.
This marks another example of the MCU visibly being felt throughout the Marvel publishing line, with many deviations in the films quietly incorporated into the comics to better synchronize with how the brand was being represented on the big screen. Some of the more notable examples in this include Magneto no longer being the biological father of the Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver, the introduction of Phil Coulson and Nick Fury, Jr. into comic book continuity and Scott Lang once again becoming the main Ant-Man of the Marvel Universe while Hank Pym was unceremoniously sidelined.
Thanos has steadily been built up across the pages of several Marvel comic book series as returning to power to become a threat for the entire superhero community, with Thor receiving a vision of the Mad Titan's dark ascension following his confrontation with the Black Winter. And as the Eternals join the fight against Thanos ahead of their own scheduled MCU debut later this year, the Marvel Universe's race of Celestial offspring may be the cosmos' best hope of turning the tide against Thanos and stopping the villain from reducing half of all life in the universe to "bloody dust" once again.