The philosophy of Thanos and my issues with Thuggish Thanos

[Mr MajestiK]

I think the big reason Marvel tends to ignore a lot of Starlin's work is that Starlin took away the motive of the character, his goal, his drive, and replaced it with ... nothing.

Thanos tends to just stand around monologuist about how deep and intellectual he is and then the universe bends over backwards to prove how he's the greatest thing in it.

If you're not into pseudo intellectual speeches, Thanos has become a really boring character under Starlin. One who can beat anyone and gets away with everything.

You mean like Dr Doom. (for the most part)

[CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree]

You mean like Dr Doom. (for the most part)

Yeah, i think Doom should have stopped appearing after Hickman's Secret Wars

[Alan2099]

You mean like Dr Doom. (for the most part)

Like Dr. Doom under a bad writer, yes.

Although on average Dr. Doom shows much more personality and is far more likely to have weaknesses and lose.

[CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree]

Like Dr. Doom under a bad writer, yes.

Although on average Dr. Doom shows much more personality and is far more likely to have weaknesses and lose.

Haven't you read my long post? Thanos has emotional weakness and he is own worst enemy. And he was defeated quite a few times in Starlin stories.

[Alan2099]

Haven't you read my long post? Thanos has emotional weakness and he is own worst enemy. And he was defeated quite a few times in Starlin stories.

I read it. I just happened to disagree with most of it and feel you're cherry picking. I didn't care to reply to it directly at the time since I knew I wasn't going to change your mind and you're not going to change mine.

[GrandEleven]

So I have a couple takes on this post.

First off: awesome video. It summarizes Thanos succinctly, and is a core reason I get frustrated when people claim he's a Darkseid knockoff. It's also worth pointing out that the character of Thanos is one that Starlin said he was toying around with while still in college and was really one of his pet projects which is why the character is so deep and not "just another villain".

That said I completely disagree that only Starlin should write him. Jim told his story, it was great. But if the character inspires other stories, why not? If other writers want to explore and push Thanos even further ... let them. Yes, he's an overused cash cow at this point, that happens anytime a hero/villian gets popular, but that doesn't mean "Bar him from use ever again".

Cate's Thanos Wins story, for example. Was it deeply reflective? No. It was a romp in the far future where he beat the snot out of everyone and everything. But it still explored something. What would Thanos think of himself if he found out he was in love with death? If he was far beyond the concept of accepting it's finality and literally in love with the being? Well we found out he'd got pissed enough that he called himself weak, and changed time to prevent it. Was it a pure Starlin take? Nope. But it felt like the physical result of an otherwise emotional struggle ... and yeah fun.

Not every Thanos story will be a winner. I completely agree with Bendis' take being awful, for example (a Thanos busting missile ... what?), but we have to let writers explore the character if we want to see another Infinity Gauntlet story. That's something I wouldn't mind.

[MichaelC]

Was it ever confirmed that it was a Thanos-busting missile? I always assumed it was designed for a more traditional Iron Man foe, like Namor, and as such was also powerful enough to take out She-Hulk.

[CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree]

So I have a couple takes on this post.

First off: awesome video. It summarizes Thanos succinctly, and is a core reason I get frustrated when people claim he's a Darkseid knockoff. It's also worth pointing out that the character of Thanos is one that Starlin said he was toying around with while still in college and was really one of his pet projects which is why the character is so deep and not "just another villain".

That said I completely disagree that only Starlin should write him. Jim told his story, it was great. But if the character inspires other stories, why not? If other writers want to explore and push Thanos even further ... let them. Yes, he's an overused cash cow at this point, that happens anytime a hero/villian gets popular, but that doesn't mean "Bar him from use ever again".

Cate's Thanos Wins story, for example. Was it deeply reflective? No. It was a romp in the far future where he beat the snot out of everyone and everything. But it still explored something. What would Thanos think of himself if he found out he was in love with death? If he was far beyond the concept of accepting it's finality and literally in love with the being? Well we found out he'd got pissed enough that he called himself weak, and changed time to prevent it. Was it a pure Starlin take? Nope. But it felt like the physical result of an otherwise emotional struggle ... and yeah fun.

Not every Thanos story will be a winner. I completely agree with Bendis' take being awful, for example (a Thanos busting missile ... what?), but we have to let writers explore the character if we want to see another Infinity Gauntlet story. That's something I wouldn't mind.

Like i said, you can make a good Thanos story without regressing the character into a barbaric thug with edgy gore and power levels all over the place. Keith Giffen's Samaritan is probably the best non-Starlin Thanos story (could have done without the annoying Skreet though), as it stayed true to Thanos' post-Gauntlet characterisation. Thanos Imperative was good until Dan Abnett decided to have Thanos go nuts after getting rejected by Death in the end.



And no, we don't need another Infinity Gauntlet. That story was the climax of Thanos' character, it's not his entire shtick. The point of that story is Thanos Learning that mystical macguffins and over the top powers won't convince Death to love him. Bane syndrome I call that. You could be a great character with believable growth and a resolution to your character arc.

But you do one thing that people remember you for and it sticks to you like glue.

Nowadays people know Bane as "that Spanishy dude that broke Batmans back and takes venom all the time."

Despite the fact that there is so much more to Bane than that (and during Knightfall I don't believe he used the venom THAT much) he has now near exclusively become known as Back Breaker Mc Venom guy.


Been here done that. I want to go forward.

[JKtheMac]

Personal pet-peeve: worshipping Death is NOT nihilism. Nihilism is believing that nothing has an objective meaning. Morty Smith saying "everyone's an accident, no one belongs anywhere, come watch TV?" is nihilism. Thanos screaming that "death is sacred!" is the antithesis of nihilism. Thanos is a death-cultist, not a nihilist.

Yes. We all know this. Including Starlin. That's how the character has been constructed. He is a self aggrandising contradiction. He can't possibly be a nihilist and yet he thinks of himself as one. He isn't being honest with himself. He has a journey from contradiction to clarity. Indeed he has many such journeys because the contradiction is itself a meaty one that can be used in different stories in different ways.

Starlin's method is not really intellectual (or rather it wasn't because like many writers he began to be enamoured with his own hype) he creates grand philosophical contradictions in both single characters and across different characters as foils, and he causes them to clash with each other to see what happens.

To the original post and the thread, I think we should be on our guard to not over-intellectualise Thanos, but instead remember he is a cool excuse for crazy cosmic mind bending fun. Starlin is not the only person that can do this, and this becomes very apparent when Thanos is used as a way of bashing Hickman. A writer that does very much the same thing as Starlin by using grand intellectual ideas as starting points to create interesting story. Playing off one writer against another says more about personal taste than anything profound about these characters. A trap that even writers like Starlin sometimes fall into.

[CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree]

Yes. We all know this. Including Starlin. That's how the character has been constructed. He is a self aggrandising contradiction. He can't possibly be a nihilist and yet he thinks of himself as one. He isn't being honest with himself. He has a journey from contradiction to clarity. Indeed he has many such journeys because the contradiction is itself a meaty one that can be used in different stories in different ways.

Starlin's method is not really intellectual (or rather it wasn't because like many writers he began to be enamoured with his own hype) he creates grand philosophical contradictions in both single characters and across different characters as foils, and he causes them to clash with each other to see what happens.

To the original post and the thread, I think we should be on our guard to not over-intellectualise Thanos, but instead remember he is a cool excuse for crazy cosmic mind bending fun. Starlin is not the only person that can do this, and this becomes very apparent when Thanos is used as a way of bashing Hickman. A writer that does very much the same thing as Starlin by using grand intellectual ideas as starting points to create interesting story. Playing off one writer against another says more about personal taste than anything profound about these characters. A trap that even writers like Starlin sometimes fall into.

I don't really blame Hickman for Thanos regression since the character's subplot in Infinity was an editorial mandate to promote the Inhumans. Hickman is a very good cosmic author, but he clearly doesn't care much about Thanos.

The problem with Thanos is that, in the Marvel NOW era, he has been turned into a palette swap version of Blastaar and Mongul. Not the same character at all.

[JKtheMac]

I don't really blame Hickman for Thanos regression since the character's subplot in Infinity was an editorial mandate to promote the Inhumans. Hickman is a very good cosmic author, but he clearly doesn't care much about Thanos.

The problem with Thanos is that, in the Marvel NOW era, he has been turned into a palette swap version of Blastaar and Mongul. Not the same character at all.

I disagree with all of that. Thanos was clearly chosen partly because Marvel chose to increase his profile but Hickman’s hands were not tied and he used him in interesting ways. The only difference here was Thanos wasn’t the main protagonist or even the primary antagonist, so he had to serve the wider story instead of being the story.

[Nevets]

I am firmly in the Starlin camp as well (Giffen did fine). For the most part, nobody can get Thanos correct. Not Hickman, not whoever wrote that awful Thanos Rising rising, not his current series, not Thanos Imperative...nothing ever gets him correct.

[Zero Hunter]

The main problem is just overuse. The more Thanos got used the more his character was hurt. Thanos has always worked better when he gets a little breather space between apperances, and that is just not what Marvel does anymore. Marvel with their "if a little is good then a lot is better" approach has tarnished the character. It is the smae with Doom and Galactus. They use them so much that they have to come up with "new" angles to take to keep it fresh, and 9 times out of 10 those "new" angles go against the past characterazation and start to make the characters a confusing mess of contridictions because sooner or latter those characters get slapped back to their original characterzation which renders all the "new" angles moot.

Marvel just needs to give villains a little time to breath now and then.

[JKtheMac]

I am firmly in the Starlin camp as well (Giffen did fine). For the most part, nobody can get Thanos correct. Not Hickman, not whoever wrote that awful Thanos Rising rising, not his current series, not Thanos Imperative...nothing ever gets him correct.

So effectively you are saying nobody should ever use him unless they use him in stories about him and in ways that are directly compatible with the old stories. That is an unrealistic expectation upon a company whose primary purpose is to exploit old intellectual properties for an ongoing readership.

[CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree]

I am firmly in the Starlin camp as well (Giffen did fine). For the most part, nobody can get Thanos correct. Not Hickman, not whoever wrote that awful Thanos Rising rising, not his current series, not Thanos Imperative...nothing ever gets him correct.

Plenty of people praise the Thanos Rising story by Jason Aaron, thinking he did something profound with Thanos, when in reality, he badly streamlined both Thanos and the society of the Titanian Eternals as estabilished by Jim Starlin and really, it served more as a prologue to Hickman's Infinity event.

1) For starters Lady Death goes from a silent companion whose Silence frustrated Thanos in his quest to earn her favor to constantly nagging him to do stuff. The way Thanos mother died went from a consequence of Thanos invasion of Titan (as officially stated in The Annihilation Sourcebook and all other times after by Jim Starlin himself) to butchering her on a table (to be fair this was how Mentor said she died in an old Silver Surfer issue by Jim Starlin).


2) Death went from a real cosmic entity (An important plot point in Infinity Gauntlet Thanos most famous story proving that Aaron didn't bother to do a basic background check is her doing something that could not have been done by Thanos) to a figment of Thanos imagination. Thanos changed from being spurned and ostrcized as a child for his deviant genes and deformity to being just an avarage peter parker level geek.

3) Thanos went from a epic demigod and Student of both Magic and Science (on par with Doctor Doom in both fields) who was exiled from Titan for building a gun (Titan is a moon of peace that had banned all weaponry) to just an above average school student and serial killer who gets bored and joins a group of pirates. Thanos also goes aound having kids left and right where in the Silver Surfer issues leading up to Infinity Gauntlet (again his most noteworthy story) the very idea that he could have sired offspring drives him to kill Nebula and turn her into a zombie for claiming to be his grand daughter while mocking the idea that a worshiper of death would create life.

4) Tegan O' Neil was right. http://whenwillthehurtingstop.blogsp...e-mistake.html

5) It felft like a checklist of evil ******* clichès: Mom thinks he's pure evil at birth? Check. Killed a person at an early age? Check. Fantasized about dying things? Check. etc.

6) The Eternals of Titan are so mundane and dull to the point that you wouldn't tell they are supposed to be a extraterrestrial society of enlightened demigods created by the Celestials with ties to greek mythology if it wasn't for their clothes. Can you imagine the outrage if someone makes a Gandalf origin Story where he was a former Drug addict in a mundane setting? Or if It turns out the Force from Star Wars is supplied by a bunch of micro-org....uh, nevermind.