Infinity Wars #3 splices Captain America and Doctor Strange into one person

All summer, Marvel has teased a very strange Infinity Wars tie-in: Infinity Warps, featuring strange mashups of Marvel superheroes: Stephen Rogers, the Soldier Supreme; Iron Hammer; Ghost Panther and more. Now, thanks to Infinity Wars #3, we know how they all got mashed up in the first place.

It’s all about the Soul Gem, and balancing the universe.

[This post will contain spoilers for Infinity Wars #3.]

Broadly Marvel’s current summer series, is about Gamora — the daughter of Thanos and the most dangerous woman in the galaxy — seizing all six Infinity Stones and subsequently becoming the most dangerous woman in the universe. But while all the heroes are busy worrying about Gamora, Loki is digging up old records and ancient ruins, and may have found hints of an even bigger threat than an Infinity Stone-wielding Gamora.

In this week’s Infinity Wars #3, Loki obliquely tells Gamora about this potential threat to her power over the universe. She doesn’t really believe him, but she’s curious — and while she investigates his claims she’s going to need to do something with all the heroes who want to stop her.

So she folds the universe in half.

Gerry Duggan, Mike Deodato Jr./Marvel Comics

Gamora creates a new universe inside the Soul Gem (it’s used to that) called Warp World, in which “the strong will be remade,” seeming to imply that we should only expect superheroes and other people of similar power to be mashed up inside it.

Of course, there’s something poetic about Gamora, the daughter of Thanos, doing this. “Your father once cut the number of souls in the universe by half,” Loki points out, “and now you have done the exact same thing. But much more creatively, of course.”

A big splash page in the issue shows us all of the heroes revealed in Marvel’s Infinity Warps tie-in books. Soldier Supreme (Captain America/Doctor Strange), Iron Hammer (Iron Man/Thor), Weapon Hex (X-23/Scarlet Witch), Arachknight (Spider-Man/Moon Knight) and Ghost Panther (Ghost Rider/Black Panther) will each get their own two-issue tie-in miniseries. And a few pages later we’re introduced to two new warps: Doopool, a fusion of Deadpool and the X-Men’s Doop and none other than the combination of Wolverine and Emma Frost.

Gerry Duggan, Mike Deodato Jr./Marvel Comics

While Loki attempts to escape Warp World, everything is going swimmingly for Gamora. She’s trapped the entire universe inside the Soul Gem, and they’ll be so busy untangling themselves from each other that they’ll never catch up with her in time.

Infinity Wars will continue with Infinity Wars: Iron Hammer #1 and Infinity Wars: Soldier Supreme #1 later this month, and Infinity Wars #4 in October.