Why Is Thanos Being So Very Cruel?

[superfangirl1]

I heard this is from a Thanos annual comic.


Even Darkseid would be like. Dude, Really?














Did Thanos ever explain why?

Comments

[deh_tommy]

Just to be cruel for cruelty’s sake. I don’t remember who said it, but one quote that sticks in my head went something along the lines of how Darkseid sees death as cold logic and mathematics, Thanos sees death as an art form.

[iamrman]

Anything to get his waifu to notice him.

[super_fly]

Nah, none of this would do that, I think this is more of a personal hobby

[thanekos]

Darkseid wouldn't directly do this - he'd probably have Desaad doing it, or Simyan and Mokkari.

And it wouldn't just be for making somebody's life Sisyphean - there'd be multiple people subjected to this, and the turmoil of their lives would be psychically tapped and fed into some Parademons or robots or whatever. Said Apokoliptian grunts would be supercharged, motivated by the consolation that as crap a life as being a goon on Apokolips is, there's somebody out there who has it worse - there's somebody they can look down on.

(This would go on until the scheme was inevitably foiled.)

[cyberghostface]

Yeah this doesn’t really make any sense. This was one of those anthology issues so how canon it is up to you.

[deh_tommy]

Well, Dave here has a smartphone at age 16 and the story goes up until he’s 45. This means part of it takes place in the future.

[nyadnar17]

Thanos is cruel becuase he is insane.

The real question is how over 30+ years no one has helped this man.

[bradygirl_12]

Can't this poor soul contact the Avengers or the Fantastic Four or somebody?

[tcampbell1000]

Because somebody wanted to write a Darkseid story and figured Marvel's closest analogue to Darkseid was close enough.

Darkseid is usually either trying to take over the universe or crushing hope in smaller yet still monstrous ways. There was that time he built a torture camp disguised as an amusement park. I don't really like the overused phrase "The cruelty is the point." But for Darkseid, sometimes, it fits. Though as thanekos says, even Darkseid's smaller-scale work occupied a bigger scale than just tormenting one guy on his birthday.

Thanos can be cruel, but he doesn't do that for its own sake. He's trying to win Death's affection or bring balance to the universe or get more power for himself, or serve some other grand goal, except for brief intervals where he takes up farming. The version of Thanos seen in this tale had never been seen before and never would be again. Even the story seems aware that it's stretching the concept of Thanos pretty far, or it wouldn't have brought in Cosmic Ghost Rider to try and justify it. So I doubt there will be any follow-up with David.

If you're still looking for a reason, though, I'd say that this Thanos is here to represent the interests of Death, and the "death impulse" he's named after.

The absurdity of life we all have to face is that everything ends. Most things you know will be unremembered in twenty thousand years, as if they and you were never there at all. Pets, friends, family, work, home--they'll all go. The challenge is to find meaning within the time that we're given. But the death-force is still coming for everything we value, including that meaning we hold in our own lives. And it does not care what we do, any more than Thanos cares what David does. It's only there to take.

(That makes it sound like I liked this story a lot better than I did. It honestly doesn't do much for me! But you posed a question, so I took my best shot at an answer.)

[superfangirl1]

I appreciate your deep input thoughts opinion on this. :)

[sadoeuphemist]

A correction: Desaad built the torture camp-cum-amusement park. Darkseid was largely unimpressed by it. He did go out and walk among its patrons and scared the shit out of a child, though.

[tcampbell1000]

Good point. From what I've seen, Darkseid seems to have this S&M management style with DeSaad in which he's like, "Ugh, DeSaad, your tortures are so PEDESTRIAN," but then gives tacit approval to whatever DeSaad does. I think he's trying to maintain a certain dignity in his office as Lord of Apokalips, but the sick shit he lets DeSaad get up to is still a reflection of his own smaller-scale interests. If he were really unimpressed by Happyland, he'd just say "Weightier matters concern me" and go back to his mathematics.

[knight_moves]

I think it's that Darkseid is basically empty inside. His perfect world is this sterile, perfectly ordered void. DeSaad is useful to that end because pain is just Darkseid's kind of motivation, but DeSaad is also about pain for the sake of pain, which doesn't wholly jibe with Darkseid's efficiency, but isn't completely off the board like (say) Sleaz.

Someone like DeSaad is drawn to Darkseid's facism, but at the end of the day, Darkseid and Darkseid's system does not want even as much individuality and passion as DeSaad has.

[blues32]

And got a good laugh out of it. That's such a rarity.

[mastermahan]

I think you're right - someone had the idea of a supervillain just showing up to fuck with a guy once a year, and Thanos got slotted into the role.

Good analysis!

[blues32]

...how did Thanos know the lyrics?

[scorntx]

Thanos has been the adoptive father of (at least) three girls.
There might be a connection there.

[cainofdreaming]

Thanos Is... addicted to pop muzak.

"It's like an ode to the meaninglessness of life."

[mastermahan]

I really, truly don't like Cosmic Ghost Rider - or more specifically, I don't like him being Frank Castle. The idea that Frank Castle suffering tragedy would make him into a goofy Deadpool type doesn't fit. We know how Frank Castle responds to tragedy destroying his world. It's his entire origin. More trauma isn't going to radically change his personality when he's already plenty traumatized.

[cainofdreaming]

I can accept him as an alternate future Castle. Like I can accept all the clown Punishers, mime Captain Americas, tutu wearing Thanoses or what have you in alternate worlds.

[mastermahan]

The distinction is that CGR is supposed to have started out like our Frank Castle, the guy with the dead family who shoots criminals. There's a difference between an alternate that was never the prime version and one that once was. Spider-Ham was never our Peter Parker. Mayday's dad from the MC2 universe was.

[blues32]

Living for thousands of years...or just existing, as the case may be...would probably be enough to change his perspective a little. That and having the power cosmic which would give him that cosmic awareness that tends to be sanity breaking altered him quite a bit. Then there was being turned into King Thanos's source of entertainment, being made to use the penance stare on him all the time...