Thanos has done A LOT of terrible things in the comics since he was created by Jim Starlin
in 1973.
While he wouldn’t get his big purple mitts on all of the infinity gems until 1991, back
then, he was causing all, sorts of trouble, initially debuting in The Invincible Iron
Man issue 55.
But some of his nefarious actions stand out more so than others – which is saying a
lot.
So today, we’re taking a look at the devastation he’s caused in both the panels and on the
big screen with our list of the top 10 worst things Thanos has ever done.
10 Murdered his Mother Nothing like parricide to start off a list,
amiright?!
That’s one of the many awful things Thanos has done over the years – he straight up
murdered his own mother.
We got to see this in the Thanos Rising story arc in 2013, where we get to see a flashbacks
of Thanos’ life when he was young.
In one scene, he decides to rationalize why he has such a bloodlust, and assumes it may
be genetic, since his mother, upon seeing him when he was born, attempted to murder
him.
Thanos was born with Deviant Syndrome.
The deviants are the long time enemies of his race, the Titans.
So naturally, his mother despised him because of this, pretty much rejecting him altogether.
She is sent to a mental institution of sorts because of it.
So Thanos approaches her, and she’s strapped down to a table.
And he begins to dissect her alive, his reasoning being that he must remove the insanity from
her, all while apologizing that she didn’t succeed in trying to kill him when he was
born.
Luckily his father and brother weren’t as cruel, but growing up, Thanos didn’t get
a whole lot of love from his fellow people, that’s for sure.
Wonder why.
9 God Instead of something morally deviant, for
this number, we’re going with something SUPER tacky that the mad titan pulled at the
beginning of the 1991 Jim Starlin George Perez comic, the Infinity Gauntlet – the comic
that the mcu infinity war was loosely based on.
In it, Thanos declares himself a god and then builds this ridiculous structure out of stone
in order to give himself an unnecessary ego boost and show off to Mephisto, whose really
just going along with being Thanos’ humble servant as a means of figuring out how he
can take advantage of the situation, since thanos is so clearly mentally unstable and
full of insecurities his new found powers are over compensating for.
Gotta love mephisto.
Anywho, he pulls a Kanye West, becoming a self proclaimed god, and everyone is just
like, ugh Thanos, go away.
8 Cursed Deadpool As we mentioned in our previous number, Thanos
has it BAD for Death.
To the point where he’ll pretty much do anything to get with her.
This includes taking out any competition for her heart.
Does Death even have a heart?
Anywho, during the Deadpool versus Thanos comics, we learn that Death has the hots for
Deadpool.
That doesn’t go over well with Thanos, who decides rather than killing Deadpool and therefore
letting him be with Death, he curses Deadpool, making him immortal so that he’ll never
truly be able to be with Death.
Talk about some major jealously issues.
That’s not the only childish behaviour he’s exhibited in the comics though-
7 Temper Tantrum In the Infinity Gauntlet comic, towards the
beginning of the story, Thanos gets really peeved that Death isn’t giving him the attention
or admiration he thinks he deserves after wiping out half of all living things in her
name, as well as torturing his brother Eros and granddaughter Nebula.
More on that later though.
After Death doesn’t seem to care, thanos throws a bit of a temper tantrum that really
shakes up the whole universe.
Literally.
His rage manifests into a massive wave of energy that travels through spaces, destroys
planets, manages to irritate Galactus, cuts Asgard off from the rest of the universe,
and hits earth, hard.
It wipes out all of the West Coast.
This even throws the planet out of orbit.
Yeah, talk about a nasty little hissy fit.
6 Murdered the Gardener Throughout the years in the comics, Thanos
has exhibited a particular creativity when it comes to murdering his foes.
While we could literally go through a list of all the terrible deaths he causes in the
big battle that takes place in Infinity Gauntlet, or literally most of the other murders from
his past in Thanos Rising, one murder, aside from his mother’s, really stands out for
how cruel and sadistic it was.
We’re talking about the Gardener, one of the Elders of the Universe who was in possession
of the Time Gem.
He had used the gem to create a beautiful lush garden in the Blue Area of the Moon.
But when Thanos came a knocking, he used the Gardener’s plants against him, literally
murdering him with vines that ripped into his body and came out of his orifices.
He even admits that he feels a certain amount of shame for doing this, turning the Gardener’s
greatest gift into the instrument of his destruction.
But clearly, he didn’t feel THAT bad about it.
5 Terraxia In the original 1991 Infinity gauntlet comic,
Thanos’ actions are all motivated out of a desire to be worthy of the entity Death,
whom he is madly in love with and obsessed with.
Death had commanded Thanos to help her balance the universe, and after a few other failed
attempts, he set his sights on collecting all of the infinity gems to do so.
But when he wipes out half of all living things (which, in the comic happens before the big
showdown between him and all of our heroes), Death still shows disinterest in him, which
severely pisses the mad titan off.
So what does he do?
He attempts to make Death jealous by creating a female companion, named Terraxia, who basically
just looks like a female version of himself.
I mean, he does have narcissistic personality disorder, so can you blame him?
Anywho, she becomes disposable of sorts- when Nebula gets her hands on the gauntlet and
teleports thanos and his carbon copy lady somewhere in deep space.
Thanos, when creating Terraxia, forgot to give her the ability to not require oxygen,
so she dies.
But it’s like no big deal for the Mad Titan – he doesn’t seem to grieve her all that
much in the long run.
4 Bartered with a Baby Thanos deploys other tactics from time to
time when getting what he wants.
It ain’t just entirely murder and genocide, friends!
In this instance, when trying to get the space and reality gems in the comics.
At that time, the Collector and the Runner were the ones who possessed these stones.
So Thanos heads over to the Collector, and promises he can trade him something amazing
for his collection if he can have the stone.
When the Collector considers it, Thanos seeks out the Runner, then uses the time stone he
acquired from the Gardener to age him.
The Runner, whose whole schtick is running throughout the universe using the space gem’s
abilities, is aged, but then shrunken down into a baby.
Thanos then takes this baby Runner, and offers to trade him to the Collector for the reality
gem.
But this isn’t just a case of some sneaky bartering.
Thanos reveals that the spell he cast on the Runner to make him a baby is just temporary,
meaning he basically scammed the Collector to get the stone.
3 Conquering Planets Perhaps one of the most jarring scenes in
Avengers Infinity War took place on Gamora’s home planet, when we got to see her origins
with her adoptive father play out.
In the scene, Gamora is forcibly separated from her mother as Thanos and his army take
over the planet.
Before getting the infinity stones, Thanos attempted to achieve his goal of balancing
out the universe by invading planets, lining up all of their inhabitants, and then having
his army literally shoot them point blank.
By eliminating half the population of a planet, he ‘helped’ prevent the resources on that
planet from being depleted too quickly by removing half of the people who would use
them to, you know, live.
It’s something he admitted to doing on his home planet Titan in the MCU as well (what
he does to Titan in the comics is a different story though, and also just as terrible).
It’s a scene that, despite Thanos’ connection with the young Gamora, looks like it was pulled
right out of a history book – the similarities to the Holocaust are a little nerve wracking,
and make it a crime that hits a little too close to home for some.
2 Nebula’s Torture Sure, if you thought the torture Thanos put
his daughter Nebula through in the MCU was rough, wait till you see what he did to her
in the comics.
In the comics, Nebula is his granddaughter, and the two of them don’t have the nicest
of histories together.
So in an act to impress Mistress Death, Thanos traps Nebula in what can only be described
as a living hell – she’s kept withered, in a constant state of absolute pain, to the
point of death – but can never die.
It’s incredibly sadistic.
She’s present at his floating fortress when Adam Warlock and all of his rallied superhero
and celestial forces attack the Mad Titan.
She’s been floating there, seething with a desire for vengeance, and manages to take
advantage of the situation – when Thanos thinks he’s won, having defeated these enemies
forces, she acts, grabbing the Gauntlet from his hand and claiming it as her own.
She then reverses all of the deaths Thanos has caused and banishes him to deep space.
The story doesn’t end there, but it is satisfying as hell to see her come back from that awful
state to take revenge on the mad titan.
1 The Snap Obviously eliminating half of all living things
is pretty darn bad.
That’s genocide on a mass scale, people.
While the visuals in the comics may not be as gruesome or volatile as some of the other
things we’ve seen Thanos do in the panels, it’s still the most damage he’s ever caused.
We get a better sense of the crippling pain the snap led to more so in the MCU as we witnessed
some of our favourite superheroes dusted in front of our eyes.
I don’t think any of us have gotten over Peter Parker falling into Tony Stark’s arms
saying Mr Stark I don’t feel so good.
It made the ending of Infinity War that much more tragic and traumatizing to movie goers
who expected to see the good guys win at the end of the film.
But hey, I guess we’re hoping we’ll get that relief from End Game.
But who knows.
Alright there we have it friends!
What other terrible actions has Thanos done that really shook you up, in both the comics
and the MCU?
Give us a shout in those comments below and let us know!
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