The Silver Surfer #35

[cyberghostface]

"I consider [Thanos] to be an anti-hero…because he’s been the good guy as often as he’s been the bad guy in the stories. So I don’t consider him a villain. But because he’s not in that hero category I always found him more fascinating to write. I didn’t have to get restricted on where he would go and how he would react to things. I could make him not as appealing as I would have to make him if he were a hero. He could go off on his own little dark ways and it would still make perfect sense." -- Jim Starlin

Comments

[scorntx]

You complain about the humans, Thanos. You complain about the salarians, but how do you feel about all those krogan and asari? Or the drell? The hanar? Heck, the batarians?


Sometimes I do wonder if Starlin just cannot help himself.
Like, he'll try to write a story about something, and without even noticing, it suddenly becomes all about Thanos.
(Hey, not judging. It happens. Sometimes you try not to write about someone because you're maybe using them too much instead of other characters, but they're the only ones you have ideas about...
Just don't think that's Starlin's problem.)


And poor Norrin. So enraptured by how shiny and brilliant and wonderful Thanos is, he can't even make a rational counterargument.

[mazway_75]

Starlin does tend to be a bit...over-protective of Thanos when he writes him.

Never forget that mini-series where it's revealed that Thanos in just about every non-Starlin story that has him as a murderous tyrant is some sort of "flawed clone" the real Thanos dismisses. That's even worse than "It was a Doombot."

[remial]

to quote someone from twitter (which I saw on imgur) "Why do they need to make another Avengers movie? Thanos already saved the universe by killing half the population"

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Huh... is this what the movie drew upon for Thanos' motivation?

I dig it. Granted, they still left the Death angle out, but still.

[crinos]

Well to be fair, the death thing is kind of silly.

"Thanos loves the concept of Death because he considers living a horrible state of being. Now lets throw all pretense of metaphor out the window by having there be a literal physical personification of Death who is a sexy lady (who is sometimes a Skeleton) whom Thanos wants to fuck."

I mean, Darkseid developed the same problem: In the original stories the Anti Life Equation was just a thing that gives you mind control, because Anti Life is fascism, its tyranny, if you are living without free will, you aren't really living, and you may as well be a robot. But later stories made the Anti Life Equation a living thing that was destroying planets and stuff and gave it other weird powers, and the Metaphor gets lost in the shuffle.

Kind of the problem with Multiple writers. Some writers are not gonna get what the original writer was going for with a story (Of course the opposite is True: Red Hulk didn't come into his own until he was removed from Loeb's wing and lost his uber plot armor, and he went from the unbeatable bad guy OC to The guy who gets dunked on all the time for the shit he pulled when he was an unbeatable bad guy OC)

[arilou_skiff]

To be honest, I like the weird mixing of metaphor and literalness, it's quirky and weird and kind of interesting. Thanos loves Death because on some level he is suicidial (and intends to take people down with him as well) but Death is also a person that he loves. Is it incoherent? Hell yes, but it's interesting and quirky and weird in a way that I like.

It's like an Ikuhara anime, where bears are lesbians but also literally bears.

[crinos]

Well I like it too, but I think its the kind of weird concept that's hard to sell to a movie going audience that may not be familiar with Thanos' backstory.

And for the record, I actually kind of like Movie Thanos. I watched Infinity War last Saturday, and I was prepared to hate the guy, but I didn't. He wasn't smug or gloating like Comic Thanos can be, he was just tired and kind of sad. I mean he couldn't even muster a smile after he had gotten what he wanted.

Of course, I think they're saving the gloating smugness for Endgame if the voiceovers from the trailer are any indication.

[arilou_skiff]

Oh, I don't mind comics Thanos per se, but he's just not *Thanos* if you know what I mean...

Thanos particular brand of pompous snarkiness is kind of distinct.

[starwolf_oakley]

In the MCU, Titan was ruined by overpopulation. Killing one half of Titan was Thanos' idea, but he was voted down. So, Thanos is now killing half of every planet he comes across in a weird "I'll show them all" thing.

Here it seems to be "Death told me to."

[joetuss]

Why didn't MCU Thanos use the gauntlet to create infinite resources?

[starwolf_oakley]

See: "I'll show them all!"

Also, he is the Mad Titan. Emphasis on MAD.

[joetuss]

Lol

[matrix_dragon]

Because he's an idiot. I remain convinced Titan was in the state it was during the movie because of him. He didn't present his plan to the government and get called mad, he just started with the mass murder and refused to admit it was his fault when civilization fell apart.

Also, the murdering of so many Asgardians at the start after their population had already been reduced by over 50%. He's an insane idiot.

[crinos]

Thanos is that one guy who thinks he's solved all the worlds problems because he took one economics class in college. They even make fun of this in parodies and some of the lighter material (I think they threw in a dig at Thanos plan in the now defunct Avengers Academy mobile game).

[joetuss]

I like your reasoning.

[astrakhan42]

It would've been impractical for the movies but I really do love the eyeless Ron Lim/George Perez design.

[bruinsfan]

Hmmm, at that point in comics history should Thanos have been able to ignore the Silver Surfer as a threat? In more recent years as an unkillable incarnation of Death I could see it, but back then I thought he was just about on an even playing field with the Surfer (or Thor).

[broblawsky]

I think the chair, specifically, is what prevents Surfer from harming Thanos. The force field it generates is pretty explicitly unbreakable by all but the mightiest cosmic beings.