'Avengers: Infinity War' Screenwriters Share The Comics That Inspired The Film

Wondering how much comic book influence is in Avengers: Infinity War? Wonder no more! Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus spill the beans on which comics inspired the maga-Marvel-movie hitting theaters next month.

The films of the MCU are not slavish to the comics that inspired them. Yes, they take inspiration and story elements from many, but they also forge their own path. Allegiances are changed, character origins differ, and destinies are altered. Unless you're extremely obsessive about these sort of things, the differences are acceptable. But differences aside, the MCU still owes a debt to the comics that inspired it.

The upcoming Avengers: Infinity War is the biggest MCU film yet, and it goes without saying that some comic book runs were consulted in bringing the film to the screen. During an Infinity War set visit, /Film's Peter Sciretta and a group of assembled journalists spoke with Infinity War writers Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus about the Infinity War comic inspirations.

How much of the Infinity Gauntlet story is going to be in this?Christopher Markus: I can no longer keep track of which thing that's called infinity is what. [...] That's why we're so conversived in it. It has elements of everything that had the word "Infinity" in front of it.Stephen McFeely: That's right. We steal all the things that are helpful to us and we're not slavish to anything that doesn't.Christopher Markus: Well it's also because a lot of those things then, you know, then you get into things like characters we don't have the rights to. Silver Surfer is flying all over those things but it's like, "You're in [Defenders]." [laughter] Unfortunately, he flew to Century City and never came back.

The MCU is getting stranger and stranger, adding more cosmic elements left and right. The MCU of now feels worlds removed from the (mostly) grounded world of Iron Man. Yet grounded elements still matter. McFeely and Markus discuss that mix of the cosmic and the grounded, while still referencing comic inspirations.

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Were these films getting to the more weird, other-wordly characters and the personification of death [a character in Infinity Gauntlet] or is it more motivated by family?Stephen McFeely: It's cosmic and crazy but in a way tha we always try to ground stuff. Particularly in Winter Soldier and Civil War we took stories that everyone was familiar with, [Ed] Brubaker's [Captain America] run and [Mark Millar's Civil War], but make a different soup out of the ingredients. So we'll do something similar here because we owe it to the characters and these 18 movies were the characters.Speaking of the comics, when you guys were cracking the story, can you list any comics that you read?Stephen McFeely: Oh geez, almost all of them. That cheeser piece had some close ups of that omnibus that we had sort of over-posted it.Which comic?Stephen McFeely: It's like an octopus.Christopher Markus: It's a giant bound Infinity Gauntlet, but we read anything that had Thanos in it. Anything that had the [Infinity] Stones in it. A lot of Archie. [laughter]

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Avengers: Infinity War opens on April 27, 2018.