THANOS
Created By: Jim Starlin
First Appearance: Iron Man #55 (Feb. 1973)
Role: Epic Villain, Cosmic Destroyer
PL 16 (347)
STRENGTH 15
STAMINA 16
AGILITY 1
FIGHTING 11
DEXTERITY 4
INTELLIGENCE 13
AWARENESS 5
PRESENCE 4
Skills:
Deception 11 (+15)
Expertise (Arcane Lore) 4 (+17)
Expertise (Cosmic Lore) 8 (+21)
Expertise (History) 2 (+15)
Expertise (Science) 12 (+25)
Expertise (Military) 3 (+16)
Insight 10 (+15)
Intimidation 11 (+15)
Investigation 4 (+9)
Perception 8 (+13)
Stealth 3 (+4)
Technology 12 (+25)
Treatment 3 (+16)
Vehicles 5 (+9)
Advantages:
Accurate Attack, All-Out Attack, Assessment, Beginner's Luck, Benefit (Super-Dictator) 2, Diehard, Equipment 20 (Personal Teleporter, Time Travel, Flight Chair, Helicopter With "Thanos" Written on the Side, etc), Fearless, Great Endurance, Improved Aim, Improved Critical (Blasts) 2, Inventor, Jack-of-All-Trades, Power Attack, Ranged Attack 8, Ritualist, Startle, Taunt, Takedown, Trance, Ultimate Technology Skill, Ultimate Will Save, Well-Informed, Withstand Damage
Powers:
Regeneration 8 (Feats: Regrow Limbs) [9]
Impervious Toughness 9 [9]
Immunity 10 (Life Support) [10]
Power-Lifting 5 (25,000 tons) [5]
Cosmic Blasts 20 (Feats: Split, Penetrating 10) (51) -- [56]
- AE: "Cosmic Wave" Damage 16 (Extras: Area- 120ft. Cone +2) (48)
- AE: "Cosmic Stream" Damage 16 (Extras: Area- 60ft. Line +2) (48)
- AE: "Telekinesis" Move Object 16 (32)
- AE: "Telepathy" Mind-Reading 8 Linked to Communication (Mental) 2 (24)
- AE: Force Field 4 (4)
Offense:
Unarmed +11 (+15 Damage, DC 30)
Cosmic Blasts +12 (+20 Ranged Damage, DC 35)
Cosmic Area Attacks +16 (+16 Damage, DC 31)
Initiative +1
Defenses:
Dodge +10 (DC 20), Parry +11 (DC 21), Toughness +16 (+20 Force Field), Fortitude +16, Will +16
Complications:
Relationship (Death)- Thanos is in love with Mistress Death, the embodiment of the ending of life. As such, he wants to kill as many beings as possible in order to win her favour. He never quite gets it, to his eternal moping sadness. In recent years, it's been implied they finally hooked up, after he offered something OTHER than death (he helped save the Universe from The Annihilation Wave).
Enemy (Captain Mar-Vell, The Silver Surfer, Adam Warlock)- Thanos has three key foes in most of his schemes. When Mar-Vell died, Thanos refused to let his greatest foe meet his end due to mere cancer, and fought him one last time.
Enemy (Drax the Destroyer)- Drax was killed by Thanos years ago and reborn into a powerful green form whose only goal is to murder The Mad Titan.
Responsibility (Unworthy)- Thanos knows, deep-down, that he is unworthy of ultimate power, and often finds himself losing Omnipotence- The Cosmic Cube, Infinity Gems and more have all fallen out of his grasp.
Total: Abilities: 138 / Skills: 96--48 / Advantages: 52 / Powers: 89 / Defenses: 20 (347)
Thanos- Marvel's Mega-Villain:
-Where to start with Thanos? The guy went from a random New Gods knock-off to become the biggest villain at Marvel, and eventually the biggest villain in MOVIES, owing to the tremendous success of him at the peak of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Translating Jim Starlin's best arc and best villain into the movies came us one of the most iconic movie scenes in history, as the "Thanos Snap" spreads across the cosmos and wipes out countless people. The villain WINS, and the heroes have to spend the next movie all trying to undo it. Along the way, he has become somewhat notorious for how defensive Starlin was of him, often re-writing old losses to be clones or "Thanos-bots" or whatever, while writing endless stories that feature Thanos winning and winning and can only be defeated by either Adam Warlock or another version of himself. You'd get the impression these days that most comics fans don't even LIKE Thanos, especially as his name value diminished and diminished ever since
Infinity Gauntlet came out... but then out comes the
Avengers: Infinity War series as he's the biggest name possible.
-But the character really fits as a "Big Image" kind of guy- most super-villains want to take over the world, or the galaxy. Thanos? He wants to KILL EVERYTHING. And not for his own power... he just wants to impress a girl. And THAT'S where true uniqueness lies- Thanos is essentially some Cosmic Incel, desperately trying to get the attention of a woman. It gives a sense of pathos and inner tragedy to the character- that all this crazy stuff is to impress someone else, so all of his Grand Cosmic Ambitions are kind of reduced to a fairly "human" origin- a desire to be loved. It just so happens that the object of his affection is FRIGGIN' DEATH.
Thanos Debuts:
-So Thanos incongruously debuted in the pages of
Iron Man in a short arc done by Jim Starlin. He was a bad-ass, grim-looking space dude, a lot skinnier than he'd later be depicted as being... and he was essentially Darkseid in a Metron suit- the story goes that Starlin was making a Metron rip-off, and another guy at Marvel said "if we're gonna rip off a New God, we may as well rip off the good one". Starlin had used some "Philosophy 101" by making Thanos into a personification of Death- "Thanatos" was said to be the Freudian desire of many people to die (the origin of self-destructive behaviors). He was the son of Mentor, leader of the Eternals of Titan, a weird offshoot of Kirby's Earth Eternals who are slightly less powerful. Thanos was the brother of handsome, charming Eros ("Eros" was the opposite of "Thanatos" in said philosophy), but carried "Deviant" genes, which made him gnarled and ugly.
-Thanos's backstory was that his own mother feared what he would become, and Thanos grew up as a pacifist, only caring for Eros and their pets. But he'd grown obsessed with nihilism and entropy, eventually worshipping and FALLING IN LOVE with the feminine-presenting personification of Death, who typically appeared as a skull-faced woman with a nice body. Thanos learned both magic AND science in order to shift his body into a powerful form, and eventually became a "Space Pirate". Then, when Death actually appeared before him, Thanos slaughtered his own offspring and set off a nuclear bombardment of Titan that killed millions- he also grabs the Cosmic Cube on Earth, injuring an Earth family in the process (two- the dead father and living daughter- are transformed into Drax the Destroyer and Moondragon, respectively). Thanos uses the Cube to make himself omnipotent, but Captain Mar-Vell and the Avengers destroy the Cube, stopping him. This, notably, features Iron Man not at all in the summation, so it's pretty clear that Starlin just sorta latched Thanos onto whatever book he was writing- now I wonder what it'd have been like if he was writing
Daredevil at the time?
-Thanos returns during the
Warlock series, actually helping Warlock fight the Magus and his Universal Church of Truth. It turns out that the assassin Gamora was Thanos's adopted daughter. Ultimately, Thanos is in it for himself- Gamora was initially supposed to execute Warlock to avoid the rise of the Magus, and Thanos later siphoned off the Soul Gem and its associated Gems (initially called "Soul Gems") to gain more power- ultimately, Warlock, who sacrifices himself, uses the Soul Gem to turn Thanos to stone. The dead Titan's spirit later appears before Mar-Vell to take him to the afterlife following a great battle, despising that such a powerful enemy would die in bed, of a disease. Eventually, Thanos went from "kinda big" to "Friggin' HUGE", gaining in size until he was borderline Hulk-like in mass.
The Infinity Gauntlet:
-Several years later, Jim Starlin writes his Magnum Opus: during
Thanos Quest, Thanos is revived by Death for the sole purpose of killing half of all life in the universe. Realizing the Soul Gems are more powerful than initially thought after gazing through Death's magical well, he gathers each one, defeating the Elders of the Universe in the process, usually by outwitting them. Starlin's mania towards Thanos is such that billion-year-old beings are one-upped by his genius- the Champion blows up an entire planet in his fury and has to give up his Power Gem to Thanos. The Gardener has his garden sped up by the Power Gem overloading it, and is killed by it- Thanos takes the Time Gem. The Time Gem lets Thanos defeat The Runner, aging him to childhood- this only "infant Elder in existence" is thus traded to The Controller, who gives up his Reality Gem, especially after learning what it was really capable of ("All this time, I had no idea- GET IT OUT OF MY SIGHT!"). Finally, Thanos defeats The Grandmaster in a space battle, taking the Soul Gem. Combining all the Gems together into the "Infinity Gauntlet", he becomes master of all reality... but Death STILL won't speak to him directly- before, she was his superior. Now, he is HER superior. And so Thanos sheds a tear, finding his victory hollow.
-
The Infinity Gauntlet leads to a dramatic series of events. Seeking to impress Death, he takes on Mephisto as an advisor. He forces Eros to be a witness to everything, robbing him of his mouth (he thus narrates the story), while his "granddaughter", Nebula, is left in a torturous half-dead state. A temperamental moment creates a shockwave that kills millions on Earth (as Japan and California sink into the ocean), and the heroes unite against him. A resurrected Adam Warlock becomes key to beating the Titan, even as Thanos lashes out at Death for continuously ignoring him. Thanos finally snaps his fingers in an iconic moment, erasing half the people in the universe from existence (the movie would later one-up this by having people fade into "Dust" rather than just pop away, and then keep them this way for FIVE YEARS). Along the way, he creates "Terraxia" to shame Death with "the perfect woman" (notably a female version of Thanos that rarely speaks). He kills most of Marvel's remaining heroes when they attack- Terraxia kills Iron Man & Spider-Man, showing just how little Starlin thought of some characters. Namor & She-Hulk are beaten by some random fuzzy things. Cyclops suffocates with a cube around his head. Cloak explodes trying to contain Thanos, and Quasar is just humiliated when his Quantum Bands explode. There are only a few survivors, but Captain America gets an all-time bad-ass moment taking a last stand against Thanos that nearly saves everything- the Silver Surfer nearly takes the Gauntlet and Thanos realizes how he nearly lost everything.
The Tale Concludes:
-Ultimately, Thanos takes full power, and a follow-up issue sees him defeat Marvel's Cosmic Beings one by one- Celestials, Galactus, Kronos, Love & Hate, Order & Chaos, and even ETERNITY are defeated! Thanos boasts as he "becomes the universe" by taking Eternity's "star-field" form... but right then, his empty mortal frame is spotted by Nebula, who swipes the Gauntlet from his hand and takes the power for herself. Nebula herself then undoes everything Thanos did, and defeats the Cosmic Beings anew, but Adam Warlock ends up with the Gauntlet in the end. His theory: That Thanos ends up self-sabotaging because he himself knows that he is unworthy of the universal powers he craves. A defeated, humbled Thanos decides to become a simple farmer.
-This story was EPIC. Giving us a universally-powerful villain who nonetheless had "human" elements in the Marvel style, Thanos's heartbreak as Death just didn't want anything to do with him helped make him more than just some generic Dark Lord. That he actually succeeded in gaining his power, then reveled in it, killing trillions and wiping out all of Marvel's Cosmic Beings. I mean, there's Power Geeking and then there's THAT. And since it was done through cleverness, and notably had never really been done before, it didn't come off as silly or like he was just whipping his dick out and measuring it. Later writers, including Starlin... fail to get a lot of that.
The Follow-Ups:
-So Thanos is now the biggest villain star in Marvel, but the story just ENDED, so what do you do? Well, Warlock entrusts Thanos with the Reality Gem once he's forced to split the Gems up- since Thanos won't try to refashion the Gauntlet, it's "safe" with him. Thanos helps out during both the Infinity War & Infinity Crusade,
Gauntlet follow-ups with diminishing returns. Starlin eventually quits Marvel, leaving Thanos without his "daddy" for the first time... and later writers just kind of mess around with him. The stories sometimes kinda diminish Thanos (Mark Waid uses him in
KA-ZAR of all books, where a mission fails against a Tarzan knock-off), though he does a good "Generic Super-Villain" run in
Thor, where Thor defeats him and Mangog after a huge battle. Later, he & Death fight the "Rot"- a cosmic abberation created by his life for her. And then Starlin gets in an immediately rewrites some past defeats, explaining that the versions that lost to Ka-Zar & Thor were actually CLONES and thus those "don't count". This kind of think later helped hurt Thanos & Doom's reputation as "Villain Sues" when protective creators kept doing shit like this.
-Thanos becomes central to a great number of stories nobody reads- he defeats Akhenaten when he attempts to use the Heart of the Universe to take over Earth- Death speaks to him for the first time, kissing him, and he gives up conquest. Aaaaaaaaand then he appears in
Annihilation, defeating the Fallen One and using him as a minion, and joins Annihilus's forces. But once he realizes that Annihilus plans to destroy everything other than himself, Thanos decides to switch sides... only to be executed by Drax, the being created to destroy him. Along the way, he is defeated in a quick story by Squirrel Girl. He quickly returns in
The Thanos Imperative, and he kills the avatar of the Cancerverse, Mar-Vell, but is trapped within its collapse by Richard "Nova" Rider. He of course pops up quickly, and is oddly used as a generic bad guy in the
Infinity stuff- we learn that an Inhuman-born son of his is on Earth, and this leads to the release of the Terrigen Mists that set off the whole "NuHumans" thing. Then he joins The Cabal, an evil group formed by Namor that destroys worlds to prevent the incursions that are slowly destroying the Multiverse. This is all very "Small Time" for a guy who tends to dominate every story- like, sometimes he's just this big dude punching people to death, and he's not even the group leader! Ultimately, he is killed by a newly-divine God Emperor Doom. A very ignominious end.
Jim Starlin Returns- Thanos Gets Some Filler Comics:
-OKAY, so right around this point, Thanos's visage appears at the end of the first
Avengers film. Jim Starlin, being a clever sort, was like "OH HEY Y'ALL, here's the first pic I ever drew of Thanos!" and shared it on social media. The point was clear: "Hey, I created this guy who's about to be a big star". Marvel/Disney, not being idiots, was like "Oh hey, want a job, Creator of Thanos who we now don't want to piss off?" "Oh hey, sure!". And so Starlin was now writing for Marvel again, more or less doing whatever he wanted because nobody wanted him raising a fuss or wanting more money now that the character was gonna be famous.
-In
The Infinity Conflict Thanos is merged with his future self and engages in some wank-y stuff as he defeats all of the Cosmic Beings, including Eternity & Infinity, on his way to fight the Living Tribunal & the One Above All (the mythical being said to be even stronger than the Tribunal)- it requires Eros going into the past, something with Kang, and more, and finally Past Thanos frees himself and takes control of Future Thanos and re-sets everything. So the only one who can beat Thanos is Thanos. In
Civil War II, Thanos is again a random baddie, who defeats and kills War Machine, and cripples She-Hulk before being beaten. This sets off the whole "We need to start PREDICTING crimes" thing that started that whole dumb event. He later finds out he's dying, and kills Mentor when his father proves unable to cure him. In another story, Thane (his Inhuman son) gains the Phoenix Force and Death's favor, and strips Thanos of all his might. Thanos sees a future in which he becomes a great hero and leader of the Avengers, living a life of peace... but he laughs maniacally and goes back to evil because Good Is Dumb. Most of the other
Infinity stories focus on Adam Warlock instead, but the two occasionally did a weird "Buddy Cop" thing.
Thanos Overall:
-The Mad Titan is a strange one. He's a guy who's been in like... zero good stories since the 1990s, and was having diminishing returns even by then. Part of the issue is he got "too big"- he has the kind of credibility Darkseid can only dream of (he WON! He became omnipotent like seven times!), but that carries with it some responsibilities, and the stories now have to be either incredibly "big" to count, or it looks weirdly small-time (even the
Thor story featuring Mangog looked weird to be because like... since when does a SINGLE HERO fight and beat Thanos?). His reputation was also marred by Starlin's fascination with him- a few defeats being rewritten to be "Thanos Clones" made Starlin look pathetic about his Pet Villain, and this damaged Thanos's rep to the point where it's almost always brought up any time Thanos is mentioned. Even
The Infinity Gauntlet, a classic tale that's almost never been properly replicated ("The Villain Won" mixed with "Everyone Dies" with so much Cosmic stuff being at the core of it), kind of petered out by the end- the whole "Nebula grabs the Gauntlet and we restart everything" bit really puts a hurting on the story and stops its momentum, in my opinion.
-But Thanos succeeds in most things a villain should succeed in- most importantly, he LOOKS COOL. He's this giant purple-skinned muscular dude with a Skrull's ribbed chin, which shouldn't work, but just DOES- his color scheme is otherworldly and distinctive as hell, he's friggin' huge, and his black eyes just come off as empty and cosmic. He also has a legacy of victory. Say what you will about Starlin's obsession, but he had Thanos beat, outsmart, and outplay a ridiculous assortment of high-end threats, and even though Marvel kinda overdoes the "character beats a Cosmic Being" trope a few too many times... Thanos INVENTED that bit. Like, you didn't see guys beating Galactus or Master Order down every other year back in 1992- this counted, and it was BIG. It was sufficiently huge for the era, was importantly WRITTEN as if it was a big deal (the importance of this can't be understated- if you just have the Cosmics get blown down in a row it looks like it means nothing and carries zero weight), and more. And then Thanos was "humanized" because it was all done for love- this was a great character hook that in no way diminished his evil (since he was in love WITH DEATH), yet made him more than just another grand conquering Dark Lord who sat there smirking with his hands clenched behind his back- Thanos had a plan but a different motivation than everyone.
-Hell, this guy's so awesome that the villain generally considered his basis, Darkseid, is now LOWER on the Totem Pole of Villain Awesome! And at least he doesn't wear hooker-boots. What's interesting that his Pop Culture Cache is immense thanks to the movies, but in the comics his rep has never been poorer, thanks to a lot of very forgettable Starlin tales and mis-use of him in major events. Thanos as a "Generic Space Baddie" is just not a good look for him, but writers can't always make up the big grand plans a guy like this needs to have, so it's a mess.
MCU Thanos:
-Thanos was used PERFECTLY in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Very quick hints here and there about him... and then he finally debuts in a fight by wiping out an Asgardian ship, then EASILY BEATS THE HULK, physically overpowering him on camera and winning through sheer might. And then he gathers the "Infinity Stones" (as they've been renamed), winning them by a mix of power and guile, then gets the same level of humanity as in the comics (made less "Weird" by being less about Death and more about Malthusian "we need to have fewer people so the resources can go further" stuff), via his relationship with Gamora, where you can see the pain in his face as he is "forced" to kill her to get what he wants- he's gone too far to go back, and kills the only person he loves, and you can see how this hurts him, evil as he is.
-And then, just like in
Infinity Gauntlet... HE WON. He gets what he wants. But even more horribly, he wins for five solid years, changing the world forever- beloved heroes die on-camera ("I don't wanna go-- I'm sorry...! I'm sorry...!"), the universe is screwed, etc. What's funny is in the next movie he's practically nothing to the story- the heroes easily kill him out of vengeance right at the beginning, and then there's some weird time-travel stuff as Past Thanos heads to our time and that's the big battle- by this point, here's little more than a speed bump as the heroes pick up win after win against him. Like, nobody really "remembers" Thanos from the second movie, because it's put almost entirely in the heroes' hands this time. And yet it still "works" because they made him a megastar in the first
Infinity War, then sacrificed the biggest star in the MCU to get rid of him, as Iron Man dies erasing Thanos and his armies from history- the implication here is that Thanos would simply crush them all through sheer attrition, no matter how big a group of heroes they had.
"I Am Inevitable"- The Might of Thanos:
-Thanos is overwhelmingly dangerous, but with stats that can be tricky because they vary here and there, and his quest usually involves some kind of Gear. He's mean because he was not only the equivalent of every powerhouse in Marvel Comics, but he was also depicted as a Doom-level genius and planner. The fact that Jim Starlin is a pro at creating insane super-plans helps make Thanos a God of Planning not just in "Informed Ability", but it's SHOWCASED over and over again. Witness
Thanos Quest, where he collected all the Infinity Gems from beings far in excess of his own power (many of whom were really easy to fool, but still). Thanos' stats are difficult, mainly because you could make him anywhere from PL 13 to 18 and be satisfied. I'll settle for this monstrously bad-ass version, with super-powerful energy blasts, but not enough to be unsurpassable- overall, he's enough to beat Thor or The Hulk in a straight-up fight, and handle the entire Avengers at once, but could still theoretically lose. He's a lethal Powerhouse, a dangerous Blaster, AND a Tech guy, so much so that his "Equipment" contains things that are normally under Devices for most people- just in case he wants to use a Time Travel Machine, or a Teleporter. He doesn't always have them, though, but at 347 points, the GM is certainly able to just handwave him as having these things 'just because'.