Becoming a pirate? Battling low self-esteem? Losing to a skateboarder with a handful of
grass? Thanos is one of the most fearsome villains the Marvel Cinematic Universe has
ever seen, but you won’t believe how different he is in the comics.
A great villain needs to start with a great name — Darth Vader wouldn't be nearly as scary
if his name had been "Doug" instead. On that front, Thanos establishes himself quite well
with a moniker that sounds otherworldly and fearsome when you hear it for the first time.
But just like Darth Vader used to be called "Anakin" and even "Ani," Thanos did not start
out with such an awesome and terrifying name. In the comics, the creature the universe would one
day come to know as the Mad Titan was born with the name "Dione," given to him by his mother.
That's right: the guy who would someday make the Avengers quake in their boots was born
with a name that sounds more suitable for a barista than a supervillain. Fortunately,
the mother of "Dione" took one look at his monstrous little mug after he was born and
realized he needed an appropriately fearsome name. Thus, Dione's mom felt compelled to change
her son's name to something more befitting of the supervillain audiences love to hate.
"You're much more of a Thanos."
The MCU has given us some pretty incredible entrances, from Tony Stark emerging from
the cave in "Iron Man" to the iconic portal scene of "Avengers: Endgame."
But no entry scene is more badass than Thanos' arrival in 2018's "Avengers: Infinity War," in
which he makes Thor his hostage, manhandles the Hulk, and effortlessly subdues Loki.
"Infinity War's" opening makes it utterly clear that Thanos is not only equal to the Avengers, but
far above them in terms of strength, intelligence, and resources. And yet, this cool and collected
warlord doesn't quite match up to the way Thanos was depicted in his earlier appearances. In fact,
he started out in a much sillier state that can be best summed up with the word "Thanos-Copter."
When Thanos shows up in 1978's "Spidey Super Stories" #39, he uses a regular-looking helicopter
with his name plastered on it during his search for the Cosmic Cube.
Later on in the story, Thanos is defeated by a young skateboarder who attacks him with grass.
Thanos attempts to recruit the tween to assist him in his evil deeds, but he's
rejected and hauled off to jail in\ handcuffs by the police. Not so inevitable now, huh?
The biggest trick that the MCU played on fans of Marvel Comics was completely
changing the motivation that drives Thanos the Mad Titan. In the movies,
Thanos is essentially an eco-terrorist who thinks killing off half of all life is the
only way to save the rest of civilization from collapsing due to depleted resources.
The plan has a deeply twisted, but theoretically magnanimous logic. Thanos comes across as someone
who thinks of himself as saving the universe, even if he wants to do so through horrific means.
However, Thanos has a far more selfish and bizarre motivation in the comics: he wants to impress the
physical embodiment of Death, with whom he is in love, by destroying life on a cosmic scale.
This motivation is actually referenced by a servant of Thanos in the mid-credits' scene of
2012's "The Avengers," as he advises his master that taking on humanity may prove difficult.
"To challenge them is to court death."
It seems Thanos likes the sound of that.
Thanos' motivation was changed by the time "Avengers: Infinity War" came around,
as the writers felt that his relationship with
Death would prove too complex for the already sprawling MCU.
If you were to ask someone who the greatest villain the MCU has ever known is,
chances are the reply is going to be Thanos. The man is so powerful, so single-minded in his goals,
and so completely impervious to most of the attacks by Earth's Mightiest Heroes,
that it is difficult to imagine him as anything other than the ultimate bad guy.
The truth is, Thanos is far too intelligent to remain firmly rooted in evil after so many
adventures and experiences in the comics. On occasion, the Mad Titan works on the
side of good and even teams up with heroes in pursuit of a common goal now and again.
For instance, at the conclusion of 1991's "The Infinity Gauntlet," the Avengers team
up with Thanos to stop Nebula when she takes the gems for herself.
During the mid-'90s crossover event "Blood and Thunder," Thor
embarks upon a maddened path of destruction. After all the heroes fail to stop his rampage,
Thanos is called in to stall Thor long enough for the others to cure the God of Thunder's madness.
There's even the time Thanos actually saves Deadpool's life by granting him immortality.
Thanos doesn't do this out of a sense of niceness, though. No, he's just jealous of the fact that
Death has fallen in love with Deadpool, and he wants to prevent them from ever being together.
One of the biggest factors that makes Thanos in the MCU a debatably sympathetic figure
is his apparent love for his daughter Gamora. Even though he ends up killing her to obtain
the Soul Stone, it's made entirely clear that she was the most important person in
the world to him. His decision continues to tear him up inside for the rest of his life.
"What did it cost?"
"Everything."
In the comics, Thanos has many more children than Nebula and Gamora — and
unlike his adopted assassin daughters from the MCU, he sires a lot of them personally. Thane,
the secret son of the Mad Titan and an Inhuman, is probably the most well-known of Thanos' numerous
offspring. But Thane's secret history pales in comparison to the sordid story of Thanos
and the rest of his children, as detailed in the 2013 miniseries "Thanos Rising."
The series shows Thanos attempting to turn away from his violent path by becoming a navigator
on a pirate ship. As he does, he meets and beds women from several planets, many of
whom have his biological children. At first, Thanos does not harm any of his intergalactic
descendants — but after becoming infatuated with Death yet again, he vows to prove his devotion to
her by tracking down every one of his children and their mothers and slaughtering them all.
The first thing "Avengers: Infinity War" establishes about Thanos is that he's
pretty much unbeatable. The Mad Titan defeats not just Loki, not just Thor,
not just Hulk, but all three of them in a single scene.
The trend of Thanos taking on multiple Avengers at the same time continues all the way through
to the end of "Avengers: Endgame." If you're familiar with the MCU movies and haven't gotten
around to reading a ton of comics, you could be forgiven for thinking that Thanos is far
and away the most powerful, virtually unbeatable character in the Marvel Universe — at least,
outside of "What If." But Thanos in the comics has actually been defeated handily
many times by much lesser threats than the combined might of all the Avengers.
Jim the skater boy subdued Thanos with the Cosmic Cube in "Spidey Super Stories" #39.
Thor took Thanos down on his own in Dan Jurgens' "Thor" #25,
and Kang the Conqueror reduced him to a skeleton in "Avengers: Mech Strike" #4.
Most infamously, though, Thanos lost a one-on-one battle against Squirrel Girl,
a hero with the power to talk to squirrels. The Mad Titan's worst enemy, though? Himself.
Thanos has been beaten multiple times by his own subconscious thanks to his inferiority complex.
One of the most shocking MCU moments is when Thanos faces the Hulk for the first time in
"Avengers: Infinity War." At first, what appears to be a fair fight is merely Thanos having fun
with the green behemoth before putting him down in a most brutal fashion. The beating
that Thanos delivers to the Hulk is so resounding that he's essentially knocked into the next movie.
Clearly, "Infinity War" does not depict the Hulk as the strongest there is,
which is a bit of a departure from how he's traditionally represented. In the comics,
Thanos and Hulk have clashed a number of times with varying outcomes — but the
Mad Titan has admitted that he is wary of engaging the Hulk in direct combat.
The comic book version of Hulk is famously able to grow his strength in proportion to his anger.
Thanos knows that while he may be able to match Hulk's power at the start of a fight,
he is in danger of losing the longer the fight goes on. Thanos' thoughts on the
matter become clear in "The Thanos Quest" #1 when the Mad Titan muses about an opponent,
"His strength seems to grow in direct proportion to his anger. In many ways,
I assume this is what it would be like battling the Terran behemoth, the Hulk.
A conflict I've sought to avoid over the years."
Perhaps no other character in the MCU associated with Thanos got shafted during the transition
to live-action as much as Drax the Destroyer. In the first "Guardians of the Galaxy" movie,
Drax reveals that Thanos killed his wife and daughter. As a result,
he has dedicated his life to a singular mission.
"Drax. A.K.A. the Destroyer. Since his wife and family were killed,
he's been on a rampage across the galaxy in a search for vengeance."
After that, Drax's personal vendetta against Thanos is mostly sidelined,
and he never poses any direct threat to Thanos on his own.
In the comics, Drax is very much a big deal for the Mad Titan. According to his origin story,
the Destroyer was created by Thanos' father to be the one
person who could put a stop to his terrible son's universe-wide rampage.
Again and again, Drax fights Thanos and ruins his plans, even managing to personally facilitate the
death of Thanos at one point. It's a shame the MCU never fully realized just how big a
threat Drax posed to Thanos — something that the onscreen Drax, Dave Bautista,
has not been so stoked about. The famously shirtless actor has gone on record saying he's
disappointed by the MCU's very limited amount of interaction between the two characters.
One of the tensest parts of "Avengers: Infinity War" is when Iron Man,
Spider-Man, and Doctor Strange decide to commandeer Thanos' ship in order to fly
to his home planet and confront the Mad Titan on his own turf.
We don't get to see just how far the ship has to fly, but it is implied that it has
to travel a great distance to get to Thanos' home planet of Titan. Titan is far enough from
Earth that Tony Stark almost doesn't survive the trip home at the start of "Avengers:
Endgame" in a ship with limited fuel — but in the comics, Titan is in the same solar system
as Earth. Thanos isn't technically born on a planet at all; instead, he's sired on the moon
of Saturn called "Titan," home to a special species of Eternals known as "Titanians."
When Thanos is born among the Titanians, his deformed appearance makes him an outcast. Thanos'
woes are further compounded by the presence of his instantly popular brother Eros, also known as
Starfox. Thus, Thanos chooses to leave Titan and becomes an intergalactic warlord at an early age.
To understand Thanos' primary motivation in the MCU, we must
understand his home planet of Titan. As Thanos explains to Doctor Strange,
Titan was a paradise that ultimately succumbed to overpopulation. Thanos tried his best to save
his planet and his people, but their society was nevertheless destroyed.
"They called me a madman. And what I predicted came to pass."
Thus, Thanos vows to stop overpopulation
from destroying the other civilizations of the universe.
This backstory makes it clear — or at least implies — that Thanos
once had a great love for Titan and its people.
Nothing could be further from the truth when it comes to Thanos in the comics, though. There,
the citizens of Titan considered the future Mad Titan a deformed mutant, to the extent
that his own mother was convinced she had given birth to evil incarnate and tried to kill him.
The rest of Thanos' peers were just as hostile to him,
prompting his early departure from Titan. Consumed by dreams of death and destruction,
Thanos spends many years honing his mind and body into the most dangerous weapon in the universe.
After he grows in experience and gathers vast resources in his travels across the cosmos,
Thanos returns to Titan to personally lay waste to his people, including his mother.
Perhaps Thanos' most well-defined quality in the MCU — the thing that
makes him the most compelling villain and the most formidable foe — is his complete,
unwavering belief in his own logic and goals. Once Thanos decides that half
of all life needs to be destroyed, there's nothing anyone can say to change his mind.
This overwhelming stubbornness carries Thanos through to killing his beloved daughter Gamora
and battling the combined might of the Avengers — but in the comics, Thanos is not always so
completely sure of himself. Even in the "Infinity Gauntlet" saga — arguably the definitive Thanos
story — the Mad Titan's doubts run so deep that he subconsciously wills himself to lose.
In the miniseries "Thanos Rising," the Mad Titan grows so remorseful
of his actions and the destruction that he's caused that he turns away
from his conquering goals and becomes a navigator on a pirate ship instead.
Finally, in the comic "The Thanos Quest" #2, after Thanos becomes the owner of the
Infinity Stones and seeks to finally get together with his beloved Death,
she informs him that he is now too powerful to be her mate. This moves Thanos to tears of regret,
and he muses that all his efforts have ended in a "hollow victory."