Her thoughts turned back to her most faithful servant, her most powerful worshipper, the mad Titan, Thanos. Thanos had been turned to stone by Adam Warlock, and his threat to the universe’s life was seemingly ended. Death saw Thanos as the perfect instrument, however, and restored him to life.

Thanos was eager to gain Death’s favor, and heartily agreed to kill half the people in the universe. He amused him self by tormenting the Silver Surfer and by killing Nebula, his alleged grand-daughter, while he considered how he would achieve his goal. Gazing into the depths of Death’s Infinity Well, Thanos developed his plan.

He learned the true power of the six soul-gems—the Infinity Gems—and persuaded Death to help him gain them. Using cunning, naked strength, and his unique might, Thanos gathered the six gems from their keepers, the In-Betweener and various members of the Elders of the Universe. Each gem controlled one fundamental facet of existence: The Soul, The Mind, Power, Time, Space, and Reality. He forged these six gems into one instrument, the Infinity Gauntlet. This device gave mad Thanos absolute power over every aspect of reality.

Creating the Infinity Gauntlet instantly made Thanos a lot of enemies. The first was Mephisto, who used cunning to gain Thanos’s ear; he became a sycophant who stood at Thanos’s side, whispering suggestions. Then, Chronos resurrected Thanos’s old enemy, Drax the Destroyer, now a nearly mindless brute. Then Thanos’s deadliest foe, Adam Warlock, was awakened from the soul-gem in which he lived along with Gamora and Pip the Troll. Along with Dr. Strange and the Silver Surfer, Warlock put together a plan to defeat Thanos.

Meanwhile, Thanos tried, unsuccessfully, to woo Death. To win her hand, Thanos turned the corpse of Nebula into a half-living abomination. When this did not succeed in attracting Death, Thanos killed half of the population of the universe. Death, horrified by the monster that she had created, still spurned Thanos. The would-be romance was disrupted by an attack by Earth’s superheroes, which Thanos easily withstood. Then Eternity and the cosmic powers of the universe attacked. Thanos bested them as well. All seemed hopeless for the universe.

However, following the battle against the cosmic powers, Thanos transformed himself into an astral form, rejecting his flesh—the flesh that wore the Infinity Gauntlet. Seeing her opportunity, Nebula grabbed the Gauntlet and took it as her own. To thwart Thanos, Nebula restored to life everyone that Thanos had killed. Thanos was forced to join forces with Warlock and the Earth’s superheroes who were capable of battle in an attempt to defeat Nebula. Nebula battled the cosmic heroes and defeated them, but Warlock reentered the soul-gem and caused it to react against her. Nebula dropped the gauntlet, and after a mad scramble to stop Nebula and Thanos from getting the gauntlet, Warlock emerged as its new wearer.

Thanos fled, while Nebula was taken to Titan for judgment. Adam Warlock was now the supreme being of this entire dimension. After visiting Thanos, who was now living as a farmer on an unnamed world, Warlock turned himself over to the Living Tribunal to determine his worthiness to be a god. The Living Tribunal ruled against him, and Warlock was ordered to separate the Infinity Gauntlet into its component gems and give them to those who would help defend reality from assault.

Keeping the soul-gem for himself, Adam gave the power-gem to Drax the Destroyer, the mind-gem to Moondragon, the time-gem to Gamora, and the space-gem to Pip the Troll. The keeper of the reality-gem is as yet a mystery (Thanos). Warlock named them the Infinity Watch, and then left them to seek solace in the company of the High Evolutionary. In the meantime, cosmic beings were already plotting to wrest the gems from their guardians and reproduce Thanos’s feat of dimensional conquest.