Thanos
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- Thanos is also a historic name for the Arizona Tewa.
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Thanos is a fictional character created by Jim Starlin and published by Marvel Comics. He is a Titanian Eternal and is often referred to as The Mad Titan. His name comes from the Greek language word thanatos, who was the personification of death in greek mythology.
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[edit] Fictional character biography
Thanos was born on Saturn's moon, Titan and subjected to the Deviant gene by one of the celestials. Although treated fairly by his people, Thanos grew distant and obsessive. By means of bionic implants and long hours of strength and ability-augmenting meditation, Thanos became the most powerful of the Titanian-born Eternals. (Note that the demonic Dragon of the Moon has claimed to be the influence of Thanos' evil tendencies.) Eros (his brother) and Thanos have a custom whereby each year they bury the hatchet and convene at a neutral place, usually bearing gifts. Thanos, since childhood, has been obsessed with the occult and, more specifically, Death. Mistress Death is Marvel's personification of the universal death force. Thanos' obsession developed into a twisted love and devotion. As a boy Thanos was obsessed with knowing why he was different. On one occasion he started nuclear fires as a distraction and kidnapped his mother. He then brutally dissected her. [1] Thanos took hundreds-of-millions of lives in mass killings throughout the cosmos to appease his love, attempting to become her male companion. One nuclear strike by Thanos on the Titan Eternals resulted in millions of deaths, leaving Thanos as Titan's absolute dictator, with Eros and Mentor (his father) forming an underground resistance. Later, Thanos arrived on Earth, killing a family that accidentally saw him land. Thanos sought dominion of Earth as a stepping stone to his plans of conquering the rest of the galaxy. To this end, Thanos stole the power of Earth's Cosmic Cube, eventually absorbing all its energy to become a god on the level of Kronos, but was defeated by Captain Marvel, the Avengers, and the Titanian Eternals. Thanos later came to the conclusion that the Magus was a menace to his plans, raising the female assassin, Gamora, after escuing her from an alternate reality, to destroy him. He joined forces with Adam Warlock to defeat Magus, but secretly drained some energy from Warlock's Soul Gem in the process.
After this, Thanos gathered energies all of the other Infinity Gems to power a machine to destroy all the stars in the universe as a gift to Death. Warlock attempted to prevent this but Thanos killed Gamora, and Pip the Troll, and mortally wounded Warlock. The Avengers, Captain Marvel, the Thing, Spider-Man, and Warlock's spirit (rising up from the Soul Gem) killed Thanos by turning him into stone.
[edit] Infinity Gauntlet
Years later, Thanos was revived by Death, who wanted him to reduce the overpopulation of the universe to one half. Lacking the power to do so on his own, Thanos found the true meaning of the Soul Gems by gazing into Death's Infinity Well. Thanos created the Infinity Gauntlet by stealing the Infinity gems from the Elders of the Universe, making him omnipotent. Once again he carelessly lost it, this time to the space pirate Nebula, who claimed to be his granddaughter. Warlock (having raised himself, Pip, and Gamora from the dead) recognized that Thanos was thwarted not only by intervention of superheroes, but by Thanos' own self-doubt.
After Thanos was told this, he helped Warlock take the Gauntlet from Nebula and, when cornered at the conclusion of the Infinity Gauntlet storyline, then professed to activate a nuclear self-destruct mechanism in his costume to deny the heroes a chance to imprison him. However, this was yet another ruse on his part; as he had apparently predicted, the gathered heroes flung him from the shrine to Death he had created, at which point he both teleported away to a distant, uncharted planet and detonated the nuclear device, thereby successfully faking his own death. (Adam Warlock, as "God," was fully aware of the situation the entire time but decided to leave Thanos alive and uncaptured as an integral part of the Universe.) Now immortal, Thanos began to reform and, as a test of his vow, was given the reality infinity gem to protect. Thanos would make good on his promise, helping Earth's heroes to save the world from a new incarnation of the Magus and from the Goddess, which was Warlock's "benevolent" side given physical form. He also aided in saving Thor from a bout of madness.
Ultimately, the Infinity Watch disbanded and Thanos returned to villainy. He also made a bid to kill the Celestial Madonna Mantis and her son, but was forced to team up with her to save the universe. However, Thanos later made statements that implied this was a clone, but due to Death itself willing to embrace Thanos again thus revoking his absolute immortality makes the clone claim dubious. The sudden regression of Thanos's character was controversial and ultimately was dismissed as not being the real Thanos. In the Infinity Abyss arc, it was revealed that after curing Thor of madness, Thanos began research on cloning with his own DNA as the foundation of his research. The result was a series of clones that were, to Thanos's horror, pure evil and had not undergone the necessary emotional and spiritual growth the real Thanos had undergone since losing the Infinity Gauntlet.
[edit] Epiphany
Thanos, reflecting on recent events where he had to give up great power to save the universe and coming to terms with himself as being a monster sets out to become a benevolent being and make up for his actions. On New Rigel-3, to the surprise of everybody he began to use his power for good. When a great evil called Hunger (Marvel Comics) arose that threatened to destroy all of existence, Thanos along with Adam Warlock and Pip the Troll set out to first kill Galactus. It was believed that if Hunger could control Galactus that all would be lost. In the final battle Thanos forced two planets to collide and also detonated a large nuclear arsenal at the point of impact. Caught in the resulting explosion were Hunger and Galactus. Galactus survives and while Hunger is believed to be dead a tiny remnant of Hunger is seen flying through space.
[edit] Samaritan
Thanos enters the Kyln finding The Beyonder inside and is now in the company of Skreet. He also takes the Fallen One as his own herald of sorts.
[edit] Annihilation
Thanos currently has a role within Marvel's Annihilation event, specifically within the Silver Surfer limited series, in which he has allied himself with Annihilus, for the singular purpose of being "curious as to what would happen". Upon learning Annihilus' true goal, (the destruction of the Universe and Negative Zone with Annihilus as the sole survivor) however, he decided to turn against Annihilus. Before Thanos could deactivate Annihilus' Power Cosmic bomb, however, he was killed by Drax the Destroyer (once again) in issue #4
[edit] Powers and abilities
Thanos possesses immense superhuman power. The most powerful of the Titanian Eternals, Thanos is an Eternal mutant whose massive thick-hide body grants him the ability to synthesize cosmic energy for his personal use. (This is a trait that Thanos shares with his father, Alars, and the Earth-born Eternals, but not with most Titan-born Eternals.)
Through meditation, certain mystical techniques, and the aid of Death itself, Thanos has augmented his power in still other ways — enabling him to tap, transform, and direct quantities of cosmic energy for destructive force. Thanos has also demonstrated psionic abilities (e.g. telepathy, astral projection, mental domination). Thanos possesses an array of highly advanced technology; examples include his flagship capable of devastating worlds, protective shielding and a compact device (always concealed on him) enabling him to teleport.
In addition, according to Thanos himself, he is somehow invisible to Lord Chaos and Master Order; he taunted the In-Betweener with this revelation after wresting one of the Infinity Gems from him in battle within the pages of the Thanos Quest. Indeed, when both Lord Chaos and Master Order themselves came to the battle site (where they had imprisoned the In-Betweener some time before), they dealt with the In-Betweener as if he had somehow broken out of his dimensional prison on his own; in fact, it was Thanos himself who breached the confines of the In-Betweener's prison with the help of the In-Betweener from within in Thanos Quest #1.
In this, he seems to share a similar ability to Adam Warlock, about whom the Great Powers of the Universe themselves said that his future is unknown even to them. However, it has also sometimes been stated that the Infinity Gems make their users outside of the inlfuence of the Great Powers and since Thanos had one at the moment and the support of the abstract Death the reason Chaos and Order couldn't sense him may have been due to these reasons.
Aside from his great power, Thanos is a superb tactician and is well-versed in many areas of arcane lore. He possesses technology that allows him to travel through time and between alternate dimensions. He possesses vast superhuman strength that equals or may exceed the likes of the Hulk, Thor, and Hercules. He is also a highly formidable hand-to-hand combatant, having fought the likes of Odin, Lord of Asgard, and the Galactus-Spawned Tyrant (with the aid of one of Tyrant's power-enhancing orbs) to near stand-stills. Thanos also trained his adopted daughter Gamora to become one of the universe's most adept and feared female assassins.
[edit] Ultimate Thanos
Ultimate Thanos makes his Ultimate Marvel Universe debut in Ultimate Fantastic Four #35. Father of the villain Gallowglass, Thanos is, at the beginning of the issue, dead for 49 days, apparently in a process that increases his strength substantially. Leader of the alien forces that attack Earth, not much else is currently known of Thanos' Ultimate incarnation.
[edit] Appearances
- Iron Man #55 (Marvel Comics) Thanos' first appearance
- Captain Marvel (#25-33, March 1973 - July 1974)
- Warlock concluding in Avengers Annual #7 (1977) and Marvel Two-in-One Annual #2
- Marvel Graphic Novel #1: The Death of Captain Marvel, 1982
- The Thanos Quest #1 (Marvel Comics, 1990, ISBN 0-87135-681-3)
- The Thanos Quest #2 (Marvel Comics, 1990, ISBN 0-87135-682-1)
- The Infinity Gauntlet #1-6 (Marvel Comics, 1991)
- The Infinity War #1-6 (Marvel Comics, 1992)
- The Infinity Crusade #1-6 (Marvel Comics, 1993)
- Avengers: Celestial Quest (Marvel Comics)
- Quasar #59 (Marvel Comics, 1994)
- Infinity Abyss #1-6 (Marvel Comics, 2002)
- Marvel Universe: The End #1-6 (Marvel Comics, 2003)
- Thanos #1-12 (Marvel Comics, 2003-2004)
- Annihilation: Silver Surfer #1-4(Marvel Comics, 2006)
- Annihilation #1-6 (Marvel Comics, 2006)
- She-Hulk vol.2 #12-13 (Marvel Comics, 2006)
In 2003, Thanos received his own series; it was originally written and illustrated by Jim Starlin, but as of #7 Keith Giffen took over until its ending with #12.
[edit] Thanos in other media
[edit] Television
Thanos appeared in various episodes of the The Silver Surfer Animated Series on the FOX Network." In this version, Thanos worships the female personification of Chaos, due to Fox's refusal to allow any use of the word "death" in their children's programming. Mentor appears in a 2 part episode "Learning Curve." Due to a creative decision, he is Thanos' brother instead of his father.
- In the unproduced, but scripted Season 2, The Silver Surfer would restore the universe which was destroyed in the 1st part of, "The End Of Eternity." As a result some people, places and things would be altered. An example would be Thanos being a peace seeking individual. Though his evil persona briefly re-emerges, the good Thanos regains control. As such, he is left as the master of Zenn-La [1] .
[edit] Video games
Thanos also appeared as the final boss in the Capcom games War of the Gems for SNES and Marvel Super Heroes, both stories adapted from the Infinity Gauntlet mini-series. He re-appeared in Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes without the Infinity Gems (although he inexplicably uses four of the same Gem-related super moves from his last incarnation - Power, Reality, Space, and Soul; losing Time and Mind - albeit greatly reduced in effectiveness and power).
[edit] References
- ^ Silver Surfer (Vol 3) #67. Mentor stated that very few knew the true story of his wife's death, not even Eros.
[edit] External links
- Creator Jim Starlin on Thanos [2]
