If you only know Thanos from his role as the MCU's biggest bad guy, you're missing out
on a few big puzzle pieces from the Mad Titan's long comics history. But don't worry! We're
here to bring you the things about Thanos that didn't make it to the MCU.
In the MCU, Thanos is motivated in his mission of galactic genocide by an obsession with
balance. It's the cause that makes him believe that for all of the horrors he's perpetrating,
he's actually doing something noble and good, preventing the misery he experienced on his
own home planet that came from overpopulation and strained resources. It's a pretty flawed
belief, but he believes it to the very core of his being. Believe it or not, that's a
pretty big departure from his comic book counterpart, who believes in ... nothing.
In several comics, including those written by his creator, Jim Starlin, Thanos is frequently
referred to as "the ultimate nihilist." For those of you who slept through your early
morning philosophy class or missed it in The Big Lebowski, nihilism is
a philosophical movement that picked up steam in the mid-19th century. In its most basic
form, nihilism states that nothing really exists or matters. It can be applied to different
branches of philosophy, but it most commonly refers to existential nihilism (the belief
that there's no intrinsic meaning or significance to life) or moral nihilism (the belief that
one's actions are completely devoid of ethical value). In that view, doing something like,
say, interplanetary mass murder is neither good nor evil. It simply is, with no more
moral weight than eating a peanut butter sandwich or petting a dog.
That's what makes the Thanos of the comics such a compelling and frightening villain,
especially when he's pitted against characters who almost universally represent the idea
that one's abilities and actions do have meaning and consequence. Or, to put it another way,
they have great power and, because of it, great responsibility. For Thanos, that responsibility
just doesn't exist. He's not fighting the heroes because he hates them, he's fighting
them because there's no reason not to. He's not trying to complete the Infinity Gauntlet
because he wants to control the universe, but because attaining absolute control over
reality is the only way to do literally anything that matters at all.
For all of our cheerful talk of nihilism and the futility of existence, it's worth noting
that the Thanos of the comics page isn't entirely without motivation. It's not a dedication
to balance, though, or a twisted attempt to correct the suffering of his past. It's that
Thanos just straight-up wants to get his bone on, in a very literal sense.
In the comics, Thanos is in love with Death — not the concept, per se, but the lady-shaped
embodiment thereof. See, in the Marvel Universe, most fundamental concepts — stuff like Order,
Chaos, Love, Hate, Eternity, and so on — exist both as abstract ideas and as beings with
physical forms. Death is one of those, and apparently, her physical form is very appealing
to Thanos, despite the fact that she's usually represented as an upsettingly shapely skeleton
and only occasionally has things that most of us would find attractive, like skin or
eyeballs.
After meeting Death as a thirsty teen, Thanos decided that the best way to impress her would
be to kill as many living beings as possible, giving countless souls to her in the nihilistic
cosmic equivalent of subscribing to her OnlyFans. Unsurprisingly, this didn't really work that
well because, you know, she's Death, and giving her dead people is sort of like giving a heart-shaped
box of chocolates to Willy Wonka. Despite taking a keen interest in Thanos and his exploits,
Death remains distant, and she's actually way more into Deadpool, with whom she shacks
up during his brief periods of being dead while his healing factor stitches his body
back together. No joke. The Thanos/Deadpool/Death love triangle is 100% canon.
If you're in the roughly 100% of people living on the planet Earth who saw Avengers: Infinity
War, you know the Mad Titan's ultimate goal after assembling all six of the Infinity Stones
is to wipe out half of the sentient life in the universe with a single snap of his fingers.
This actually is something that was brought to the screen directly from the comics. What
didn't make it was the context.
On the screen, the end of billions of billions of lives across the galaxy is what Thanos
has been working towards for ten years. It's the culmination of his plan, the end that
has justified all his horrendous means. But in the comics, it's just his opening act.
Halfway through 1991's The Infinity Gauntlet #1 — not even the climax of the first issue
— Thanos attempts to prove both his incredible power and his devotion to Death by killing
half the universe with a snap of his fingers. It's meant to be a chilling depiction of how
powerful he's become, that such a massive act can happen just like that. Of course,
it also has the benefit of keeping the cast at a manageable size and getting rid of problematic
characters like Daredevil (who wouldn't fit with the cosmic action) and the Fantastic
Four (who have too much experience with cosmic battles).
It's definitely one of the most memorable moments of the story, although removing it
from that context gives the movies' Infinity Saga one of its weirdest little quirks. In
the comics, the snapping of fingers is meant to illustrate how effortless it is. In the
movie, it's apparently something you have to do in order to use the Stones, something
that has the biggest ratio of inherent silliness to serious presentation in the entire franchise.
Forget about the head, Thor should've aimed for the thumbs.
Stop us if you've heard this one. There's a comic book about this kid who's a child
of a prominent family, but he feels like an outcast due to the fears and doubts he has
about himself. One day, he falls into a cave, and while the experience is frightening for
him, it also comes to define him, forcing him to confront and embrace a darker side
of himself and shaping his future. You know about that, right? Of course you do.
"Why bats, Master Wayne?"
"Bats frighten me. It's time my enemies shared my dread."
Everyone knows about the secret origin of Thanos. Wait, who were you thinking of?
Okay, yes. The broad strokes of the origin have a few notable similarities to a certain
Dark Knight published by Marvel's Distinguished Competition, but the details are very different.
See, when he was a kid back on Titan, Thanos was quiet and reserved, and thought of himself
as an outcast until he finally made a few friends at Immortal Space God Elementary School.
In an effort to impress his new pals, Little Thanos led them into a cave in search of gems
— the same activity that would come to define his adult life. Unfortunately, it wasn't a
great field trip. The floor gave way beneath him, and he was separated from his buddies,
buried under rubble. He was down there for three days, and despite the fact that he was
surrounded by lizard creatures that he could have easily eaten for sustenance, he chose
to remain hungry rather than take another life as he tried to dig his way out before
he finally lost his strength.
Then came the ironic twist: when he did finally dig himself out, he found that those same
creatures that he wouldn't eat even to save his own life had no such compunctions of their
own, and they'd eaten his friends, leaving only a pair of skeletons. Li'l T was horrified,
and after he escaped the cave, he later returned to exact some lethal revenge, giving him his
first taste of what it was like to take a life. The movies don't really get into Thanos'
history, preferring to show him as more of a force of nature than someone who's suffered
childhood trauma, but unless Marvel Studios wanted Bruce Wayne's lawyers to come knocking,
they probably would've left this one out anyway.
Most of Thanovs' twisty backstory is left on the page purely for concerns of space and
streamlining. The chunk of the Mad Titan's origin story that we see in Cosmic Ghost Rider,
however, is unlikely to ever make it to the page by virtue of being weird even by Marvel standards.
See if you can keep up with this one. Cosmic Ghost Rider was, well, a cosmically powered
version of Ghost Rider from an alternate future, who rode across space on a flaming motorcycle
as a herald of that future's version of Thanos, who succeeded in eliminating every single
person on Earth. Despite speaking with a goofy, insane patter that made it seem like he might've
been Deadpool underneath his demonically flaming skull, it turned out that CGR was actually
Frank Castle, better known as the Punisher. After being killed in Earth's fight with Thanos
and sent to Hell for, you know, all the murders, Frank made a deal with the Devil to punish
the wicked, only to return to a barren planet that had no life, wicked or otherwise, for
him to punish. The decades of isolation drove him to madness, and then he became the Herald
of Galactus, obtaining the Power Cosmic in an attempt to get revenge on Thanos. But he
then turned on Galactus when Thanos offered to take him to the larger Marvel multiverse,
with endless evil people to punish. Phew. That's his origin story, and since we haven't
even gotten to the part that affects the primary Thanos yet, you likely already know why this
one won't make it onto film any time soon.
After finding his way to the core Marvel Universe, the Cosmic Castle decided to rectify the mistakes
of his past, and after traveling back in time, he abducted Thanos from Titan as a baby in
hopes of raising him to be somewhat less genocidal. Surprise, surprise, being parented by a serial
killer possessed by a vengeance demon didn't create the pacifist Thanos that CGR hoped
it would. In fact, it made him even worse. The Rider tried to undo his error and returned
Baby Thanos to his proper point in the time stream, but he was informed by Death herself
that his actions had imprinted the tendency towards violence on Li'l T that he would display
as an adult. Good job, Frank.
Loki might've been the driving force behind the Avengers' formation, and Ultron's actions
were so devastating that it tore the team apart, but in the big picture, they're small-time.
Thanos is the biggest bad guy in the entire MCU and not just because of his evil schemes.
He's a physical powerhouse, able to hand a truly brutal beat down to the Hulk, survive
being axed by Thor, and go toe-to-toe with Captain Marvel and her nearly infinite cosmic
power. He needs to be that powerful to justify not just a decade of lurking in the background
as a looming threat but two movies that feature him as the primary villain who needs every
single hero in the universe to rally together to defeat him.
"I am... inevitable."
So naturally, the filmmakers left out the time that he got trounced by Doreen Green,
the unbeatable Squirrel Girl.
If you're not familiar with her, the "unbeatable" isn't an exaggeration. Invested with the powers
of both girl and squirrel (including the proportionate strength and agility of the common ground
squirrel and exceptionally sharp front teeth), Squirrel Girl beat Doctor Doom in her first
appearance and has remained undefeated in the years since. It's become something between
a running gag and a fundamental truth of the Marvel Universe that you just can't beat her,
no matter how much you might theoretically outclass squirrel powers. She once handed
Thanos a first-round knockout on Christmas Eve, and the Watcher showed up to confirm
that this one was the real deal. Kind of weird that they didn't call her for backup during
Endgame, huh?
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