Marvel has many great villains but there’s one that everyone thinks about nowadays when they think of Marvel villains: Thanos. The Mad Titan has reached a level of popularity in the 21st century that is honestly kind of insane. The Marvel Cinematic Universe made the character the big bad of the first decade of their films, building and building up to the blockbuster one-two punch of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. These films took ideas from the character’s past and used them to show audiences what was so great about Thanos as a villain and a character, showing off him as the complicated monster that comic fans fell in love with.
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As the character’s stature grew in the films, Thanos became a big deal in the comics again. We’ve gotten numerous Thanos stories over the last 14 years since Avengers, but if we’re being honest, these new stories can’t stand with the greats of old. Many believe that Thanos is Marvel’s greatest villain, but there’s something they don’t want to admit: the Mad Titan’s nowhere near as interesting or compelling as he used to be. As much popularity as the character gained in the 21st century, he actually regressed completely and is nowhere near what he was even 30 years ago.
Marvel Has Forgotten What Made Thanos Great
Thanos first appeared in the ’70s and he soon become a big deal in cosmic Marvel, which at the time was under the control of Jim Starlin. Starlin built his cosmic Marvel saga around four characters: Captain Marvel I, Adam Warlock, the Magus, and Thanos. The Mad Titan was nihilism given form, a character who fell in love with the concept of death because of his belief in the emptiness of existence. Starlin used the villain wonderfully, and while he didn’t reach the level he’s at now, he was still a fan favorite and eventually was killed off in the early ’80s trying to get a Cosmic Cube to kill half the universe for Mistress Death. Then, along came Marvel’s most important event comic Infinity Gauntlet and a whole new generation of fans were introduced to the villain.
Infinity Gauntlet is as much a character study about what happens when a nihilist became god as it is a universe-shaking event. Starlin laid Thanos bare, showing us how his life on Titan, looking like the did, birthed a monster whose main problem was his low sense of self-worth. Thanos wanted to become god to prove he could and then he sabotaged himself because he knew he didn’t deserve it. It was the beginning of a new kind of Mad Titan, one who actually started to become a hero, especially in the criminally underrated Infinity War ( and to a less successful extent in Infinity Crusade). This new Thanos was still very much the old one, but one who had grown as a person. He wasn’t a hero, but he wasn’t a monster anymore either.
Thanos was a character who had a chracter arc over the ’90s, one that took him to new places. Every time we saw him, he was different and he had grown. I don’t think ’90s Thanos was so great because he became a hero, I think that he’s great because it showed the capacity for change that has always been a part of the character. One of the problems with superhero comics, especially in the 21st century, has been the tendency to not allow characters to change; they keep things at a static level so that they can retell the same stories over and over again.
This is the problem with Thanos in recent years. Instead of showing him as Starlin’s compelling monster, they just made him into a monster. There have been some cool stories featuring the villain in the 21st century (“Thanos Wins” immediately springs to mind, as does The Unworthy Thor, and Hickman’s Avengers run leading into Secret War), but the House of Ideas abandoned using the character for anything else but him being the big bad. They’re keeping the character in one place, the place where the majority of readers and potential readers would recognize him. It’s led to static storytelling and has hurt the character.
Marvel Needs to Allow Thanos to Change
Once upon a time, Thanos became the greatest villain in the Marvel Universe and then immediately became something more, a complicated character that went in new directions. It was a gamble that paid off; Thanos was part of numerous great stories in the ’90s, both those by Starlin (Infinity Gauntlet, Infinity War, Warlock and the Infinity Watch, Silver Surfer (Vol. 3), Thanos Quest, and the Thor story “Blood and Thunder”) and by others like Dan Jurgens in The Mighty Thor, success that continued into the ’00s (Marvel: The End is especially good, as it sued Thanos as a big bad while taking his character growth into the mix), but the 2010s saw the publisher basically ignore everything about the character that made him interesting and just use him as the all-powerful bad guy.
Thanos is an amazing villain, but the best villains are the kind that have the capacity for change. It’s why Doctor Doom, Magneto, Doctor Octopus, Norman Osborn, Sabretooth, and many more are all great characters; they have changed over the years in many ways, and it’s allowed new stories to be told with him. Marvel has basically handcuffed Thanos in the 21st century — keeping him static for MCU fans, honestly — and it’s led to the least-intriguing version of the character since the ’70s and early ’80s. The villain fans fell in love with 35 years ago is nowhere to be found.
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