There's no supervillain quite like Thanos, the Mad Titan.
He's been a menace to the Marvel Universe since 1973, when he made his debut in Iron
Man #55 — and few villains have proven as formidable.
Despite his long history in Marvel Comics, Thanos has never been as high-profile as he
is now.
You probably already know that he's a nihilistic cosmic warlord who's set on assembling the
Infinity Gauntlet, allowing him to wipe out life as we know it.
Set that aside, though, and you'll find a ton of fascinating components to the character
that are slightly lesser known.
This is the untold truth of Thanos.
"Tell me his name again."
Aesthetic inspiration
Thanos is far from the most unique creation in the history of comics.
Created by writer and artist Jim Starlin, Thanos shares many similarities with characters
created by another comics luminary, Jack Kirby — specifically Kirby's work on DC's New
Gods series.
Starlin initially based Thanos on the New Gods character Metron, a genius celestial
observer to the events of the DC universe.
Many have thought Thanos' inspiration to be the DC character Darkseid, but according to
Starlin, that wasn't initially the case.
Speaking in a 1998 interview with Comic Book Artist, Starlin said,
"You’d think that Thanos was inspired by Darkseid, but that was not the case when I
showed up.
In my first Thanos drawings, if he looked like anybody, it was Metron.
[...] Roy took one look at the guy in the Metron-like chair and said: 'Beef him up!
If you’re going to steal one of the New Gods, at least rip off Darkseid, the really
good one!'"
Fortunately, the resemblance is only skin deep.
The two characters have vastly different motivations and levels of empathy, and Thanos has fleetingly
fought alongside heroes before.
We think it's safe to say that's not really Darkseid's style.
"I grant you a quick death."
My name is...
This may come as a shock from the looks of him, but Thanos descends from a race of aliens
that actually look more or less human.
Thanos is a carrier of the Deviant gene, sort of the equivalent of a mutant in his race.
His mother, father, and the rest of his family are members of a superpowered alien race called
the Eternals, living on Titan, one of Saturn's moons.
They look human, and when his mother Sui-San became pregnant, they expected him to look
the same.
When Thanos was born, however, one look at him sent all expectations went out the window
— including the name his mother intended to give him.
Before she realized Thanos was a Deviant, his mother intended to name him Dione.
However, when her child was born, she was horrified by his mutation — and upon looking
into his eyes, she realized he was the harbinger of the universe's ultimate destruction.
"I've made a huge mistake."
There's a lot more messing up this mother-son relationship than just unfulfilled expectations
and a gross chin — Sui-San tried to execute Thanos as a child, and Thanos successfully
returned the favor later in life.
Their complex, tumultuous relationship began with a simple name change.
"The short-hand is the the butterfly effect.
A butterfly can flap its wings in Peking and in central park you get rain instead of sunshine."
Collecting the gems
The Marvel Cinematic Universe spent more than ten years building up Thanos' search for the
powerful six Infinity Stones — or Gems, as they used to be known.
But it only took him two comic books to accomplish a goal that's taken a decade to get done on
screen, with the Mad Titan snatching up the gems one-by-one in a 1990 comic called The
Thanos Quest.
The two-part story saw Thanos travelling the universe and liberating the six gems from
their owners, and they were all in very different hands compared to their cinematic counterparts.
First, Thanos attacked the imprisoned In-Betweener, stealing the green soul gem from his head.
Next, he liberated the red power gem from the Champion in a physical contest, and stole
the time gem from the Gardener, an ageless Elder of the Universe.
The yellow reality gem he pilfered from the Collector, who you may remember from Guardians
of the Galaxy.
The purple space gem was taken from the Runner, and the blue mind gem was nabbed from the
Grandmaster — yes, that Grandmaster, from Thor: Ragnarok.
"it's my birthday!
It's my birthday!"
All of these foes fell with a surprising quickness when challenged, clearing the way for Thanos
to assume the powers of a god in the titanic 1991 event series The Infinity Gauntlet.
Courting Death
Many of Thanos' stories chronicle the titan's obsessive passion for the living personification
of Death.
It's a relationship that was foreshadowed by his very name.
Jim Starlin originally came up with the character of Thanos while taking a college psychology
class.
He based Thanos' personality off of the Freudian concept of the death drive — in other words,
the psychological impulse to end one's own existence.
His name is reminiscent of Thanatos, the Greek mythological figure who was said to represent
death.
In Marvel Comics canon, Death is an actual person, a skeletal female entity who is sometimes
referred to as Lady or Mistress Death.
While Thanos is completely in love with her, Death often refuses to entertain his advances,
or even acknowledge his existence, leading Thanos to lash out and seek attention through
his universe-destroying scheme.
While Death does eventually entertain a romance with Thanos, to say "it's complicated" would
be putting it lightly.
It certainly wasn't worth all of the destruction.
In the end, Thanos' battle against the universe's strongest heroes was all done for the sake
of impressing a girl.
She's not even all that good-looking.
My own worst enemy
All of Thanos' bluster covers up a lot of insecurity.
As both The Infinity Gauntlet and the characters' solo outings have shown, Thanos is surprisingly
something of a self-defeating sad-sack.
On the surface, his goals would seem to be the same as any other supervillain: world
domination and destruction.
However, Thanos' motivations transcend typical villainy.
He believes in oblivion like a religion, and all-but-worships Death itself.
In his own twisted way, he believes he's doing the right thing.
The universe is unworthy of existence, therefore it falls on him to give it what it deserves.
The nihilism doesn't stop with his view towards all other life — it applies to him as well.
Not even Thanos is worthy.
This is why Thanos, despite his power, never manages to stay on top for too long.
It's firmly established in Infinity Gauntlet that he ultimately fails because he allows
himself to.
He will always subconsciously leave a hole in his plans that the heroes can exploit to
bring about his defeat.
As much as he believes that the universe deserves to die, he doesn't believe himself worthy
of the task at hand.
For such a formidable, otherworldly figure, that's a pretty human flaw.
Thanoseid
Amalgam Comics is a pretty interesting corner of comics lore.
A joint venture between Marvel and DC, it featured characters that were, you guessed
it, amalgamations of Marvel and DC characters.
The world of Amalgam is populated by heroes like Bruce Wayne: Agent of SHIELD and Doctor
StrangeFate, and it didn't stop with heroes.
The universe also featured amalgamations of villains from both publishers — and you
can probably guess who Thanos was paired with.
Thanos and Darkseid combined to form Thanoseid.
Like Darkseid, Thanoseid rules the planet of Apokalips, and like Thanos, he has an ambition
to wipe out the universe.
In the events that led to their combining in the Amalgam universe, Darkseid actually
insulted Thanos, calling Thanos just a pale imitation of him — a funny nod to Thanos'
origins.
Amalgam's comics weren't exactly classics, but they were a whole lot of fun.
Kicking it with the boys
One might reasonably assume the Marvel Universe only had room for one nihilistic death titan.
That would be incorrect.
One of the more interesting corners of Thanos' history involves a personal army of clones
he made of himself.
These clones are known as the Thanosi, and are formed by Thanos splicing his DNA with
that of other Marvel heroes and villains.
There's Omega, a cross between Thanos and Galactus, for instance.
Thanos creates the Thanosi to test the abilities of enemies and allies alike.
Eventually he considers them failures and abandons them.
Shockingly, the Thanosi don't take this betrayal particularly well.
They band together and, being an army of Thanos clones, attempt to bring about the ultimate
end of the universe.
Luckily, they fail.
Given Thanos' general tendencies, an army of Thanos clones ending up trying to destroy
the universe isn't any kind of surprise.
My brother, the lover
No matter how many times he impressively destroys the universe or allies himself with the good
guys, Thanos will never be as loved as his brother Starfox.
No, not that Starfox.
The Starfox of the Marvel Universe, also called Eros, is a carefree, easygoing flirt.
His charming personality is only amplified by his superpowers, which include a sort of
pheromone effect.
He can make people within 25 feet of him feel joy, effectively drawing them to him.
When cranked up, it can provoke romantic feelings — he's basically a sentient Marvin Gaye
record, which is pretty tough to compete with when you're a lumpy, purple death titan.
Starfox couldn't be any more different from his brother Thanos, and that's probably a
good thing — can you imagine if those parents had to put up with not just one, but two lousy
kids?
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