Today’s Guardians of the Galaxy #147 saw the start of the “Infinity Quest” storyline where the Guardians are trying to collect the Infinity Stones. At the end, we got a big shocker that calls everything we know about the stones into question, so we hopped on the phone with writer Gerry Duggan to learn more about what the heck is going on.

Art by Aaron Kuder and Ive Svorcina. (Marvel Comics)

Warning: this article contains full spoilers for Guardians of the Galaxy #147!

Art by Marcus to and Ian Herring. (Marvel Comics)

Loading

Art by Esad Ribic. (Marvel Comics)

Art by Alex Ross. (Marvel Comics)

Star-Lord and Nova (Richard Rider) spend most of the issue investigating why a squad of Nova Corps members went missing. After finding them at a formerly-abandoned outpost, we learn that Nova squad leader Eve Bakian and her team happened upon the red Infinity Stone and decided to stay put to protect it. But instead of being the size of a golf ball, the Power Stone is now as big as a building.In the lead-up to 2015’s Secret Wars event, the superhero Illuminati tried to use the Infinity Gems to save the world, only for them to fail and shatter, except for the Time Gem which inexplicably disappearedThe end of Secret Wars essentially reset the Marvel universe, and Duggan is using that to explain why the Infinity Stones are back in such a different form. They’ve been reset, too.“The universe has been reordered after Secret Wars. There’s no reason that we would see the Stones as they once were. So the Power Stone is uncompressed information right now, and whether or not it could be compressed into something more manageable, is something we’ll have to wait and see,” he teased.You’ll also notice that the Infinity Gems are being referred to as Infinity Stones now, just like they are in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. They match the same colors as the MCU, too (for example, the Power Stone was orange but now it's red). But this isn't the first time the rainbow rocks have received a name change - they were called Soul Gems at one point. Duggan is using this latest name change as an opportunity to tell a new story about the Stones. He explained that the Stones have been restored to their “original factory settings” after Secret Wars, meaning they haven’t been cut into gems yet (aside from the Soul Gem). A stone has to be cut and polished into a gem, so he’s exploring what a raw Infinity Stone looks like and the unique challenges they present in this form.You can expect to see the other Infinity Stones to show up in new and interesting ways.“The Power Stone is the first example of the high shelf that these stones have been put on, seemingly out of reach of even Cosmic Elder hands. The Reality Stone might not be in this reality, and the Time Stone may be not in our particular timeline right now. And so, there is a real sense that, in order to gather them, you would have to do some really heavy lifting. That is, in and of itself, gonna be a blast to be able to show everyone, to reveal where that stuff is. I don’t necessarily want to go too into where they are, but in the next year, all will be revealed pretty quickly,” Duggan said.It's worth noting that Marvel Legacy #1 saw Loki using his minions to steal the blue Space Stone, only for a resurrected Wolverine to stop the thief and claim the stone for himself. It's anyone's guess how Logan might come to cross paths with the Guardians.Of course, where there are Infinity Stones, Thanos usually isn’t far behind. But Duggan isn’t in a hurry to introduce the Mad Titan.“It’s not a Thanos story yet,” Duggan said. “But, if the Stones are being gathered, I would think that he would have something to say about that. At the moment, [Thanos ongoing series writer Donny Cates] is collaborating on a really great story of Thanos and the Chitauri. And how that all will get together remains to be seen. But I haven’t forgotten about Thanos. But right now I’m interested in telling some Stone stories before I get to Thanos.”Another character forever linked to the Infinity Stones is Adam Warlock, who will be making his big return in the landmark Guardians of the Galaxy #150.“He’s returning from the Soul Stone, and with having had a great vision of a calamitous future, that he’s going to hope to prevent. Adam Warlock represents the pinnacle of human achievement. For a long time, he was a messiah figure, especially almost Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat inspired, when he was on Counter-Earth. So, I’m looking at him a little bit like our greatest scientific achievement. He’s born of science, and we’re going to ask, well, where did he get a soul, and whose soul is it? It’s his soul, it belongs to him, but what are the costs of that? And he’s going to be coming to save the day, but he may be opposed by people that would think that this is not the way that we need to save the future,” Duggan said.And before we hung up with Duggan, he left us with one more tease for the terrible things to come for our heroes, saying, “By the time you get to #150, you will have heard, in the comics, the phrase ‘Infinity’s End.’ And that will be what Warlock is trying to prevent. Infinity’s End. And we’ll see whether or not he’s successful. And who might oppose him in that is a very fun thing to contemplate.”

Loading

Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN