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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.

Want more? Make sure you've read our list of all the best Marvel Comics stories of all time, and get ready for all the free Marvel comics coming as part of this year's Free Comic Book Day / Comics Giveaway Day events.