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The Infinity Stones are a core concept in the Marvel Universe, and have been for decades at this point, thanks to comic book stories like The Infinity Gauntlet and Marvel Studios’ on-screen Infinity Saga, leading up to 2018’s Avengers: Infinity War and 2019’s Avengers: Endgame. According to comic creator Jim Starlin, all of this can be traced back to grade school religion and his own curious mind.

“Gil Kane and Roy Thomas created the Soul Gem and I created the rest of them,” Starlin told Popverse about the origin of the Infinity Stones. While official Marvel canon appears to dispute this, suggesting that the Time, Mind, and Power Gems appeared before Starlin’s work, each of them was merely a generic “Soul Gem” before Starlin started identifying them as having different properties in 1977’s Avengers Annual #7… and later, it was Starlin again who gave them their individual names — and created the Infinity Gauntlet at the same time — in 1990’s Silver Surfer #44.

But where did he get the idea for doing so? Turns out, we have organized religion and education to thank for that.

“I went to a parochial school in grade school and had religion pounded into me on a regular basis,” Starlin explained. “And so, I started questioning as to what a god who is not benevolence, but malevolence would be like. The Stones are basically my way of breaking reality down into six different working categories. I understand they're trying to expand it out now, but I basically thought that this is the universe.”

And if you’re wondering why a glove to hold them all together, well, that was Plan B, as it turns out.

 “Originally, the idea was to put it on his head,” Starlin admitted. “I had actually done some sketches of the Stones across Thanos' head. He looked like [Superman villain] Brainiac, so let's put them on the gauntlet. It worked much better.”

The moral of this story? Inspiration can come from anywhere — and maybe bad guys shouldn’t wear impossibly powerful artifacts on their head, just in case. Read our full interview with Jim Starlin here.

Keep up to date on Popverse's Marvel coverage, with these highlights:

• The MCU needs Anya Taylor-Joy's Magik in it (and not just for the X-Men connection)
• How Disney+'s What If...? is the moonshot for the next 50 years of Marvel Studios & the MCU
• Marvel Studios has accidentally created a new Phase that predates Phases 1 - 6: the MCU Phase Zero
• Overgrown children of the atom: Marvel's X-Men can't evolve past their '90s commercial peak
• The biggest outstanding questions of the Marvel Studios' movies & TV shows
• Donald Trump is the landlord for Marvel's House of Ideas
• Marvel Studios swapping out Doctor Doom for Kang offers the chance to jettison the Multiverse Saga
• What Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige is saying (and not saying) about the MCU X-Men franchise says a lot about the future of the Mutant Saga
• If Marvel is going to bring Loki back for Secret Wars, it's time to give him an upgrade
• In 2021, Sony's boss said people won't miss Spider-Man in its Spider-adjacent movie. Turns out, they do.