Originally Posted by
CaptainMar-Vell92 of the Kree
I believe that the Thanos subplot of Infinity was a Marvel mandate as it does absolutely nothing for Hickman's storyline. The part about the war with the builders makes sense as part of his overall narrative, but I don't think that was supposed to be an event. I may be wrong (and I probably am) but as a reader looking in, it almost feels Marvel went to him, said "We need an event to bring the Inhumans to the forefront as a middle finger to Fox and include Thanos!" Thus, he needed a kid to 'search for' which was setup with the awful Rising. But after the Terrigen bomb exploded, you'll notice the Inhumans aren't really used in Hickman's story again except for Blackbolt and Thanos might be present, but there's nothing exactly Thanos about him, he could have easily been replaced by any other powerful space bad guy like Blastaar or Tyrant. Even in Secret Wars, Thanos wasn't there for any reason other than to get killed off by Doom to show how powerful Doom was... like we didn't get that already from everything else?
Hopefully the Infinity Ending, or whatever it's called, the third chapter of Starlin and Davis' new OGN trilogy, gives his Thanos a nice and definitive ending, because we're not going to get it with Marvel turning him into a goth tinged purple rage monster. The only thing that matters to them is he was the villain in Infinity Gauntlet, and that's it. I'm really curious how Thanos is going to be handled in the comics now. Since Avengers post credits scene, he's been in at least a comic book of some sort each month, whether he was the antagonist in the story, or his own title, or a bunch of cameos or both. Now that Thanos' story is done, I wonder if after some current arcs we'll see him fade away somewhat. Once upon a time, Thanos was a well respected villain/antihero among niche circles of fans who fell under the spell of Starlin stories, and he was used sparingly, when Thanos showed up, you knew shit was going to hit the fan (well, except Ka-Zar, Thor and Celestial Quest). He wasn't brought out that often, but when he was, whooboy! But now, shit, he's been in so many books and is constantly beaten, at this point J. Jonah Jameson could probably beat him just by sneezing on him. It's a huge disservice to who the character was. Here's to hoping they don't do the same thing to whoever the next big bad in the MCU is.
Starlin remains somewhat short-tempered when interviewers ask him about Thanos and Marvel editorial, but if he truly means to give a proper ending to Thanos, I'm all for it. Keith Giffen and Ron Marz aside, I haven't found that Marvel has any authors willing to grant Thanos the wit, intellect, pragmatism and trippy sense of wonder that Starlin imbues his creation with. Thanos is best left in Starlin's hands, as other creators tend to simply retread either his cosmic cube phase from the seventies or The Infinity Gauntlet (and only the first 4 issues of the series at that while glossing over the character development).