Thanos

Super-Genius Intelligence: Arguably Thanos' most dangerous ability is his mind. Thanos' intellect is dedicated to empowering his own powers and the annihilation of all life. Thanos is a genius in virtually every known field of advanced science and has created technology that far surpasses contemporary Earthly science. He has also shown to be able to quickly adapt to new combat situations, as demonstrated in his fight with the physically superior Champion of the Universe, whom he defeated by dancing around him, launching energy attacks, and tricking him into destroying the planet they were fighting on.
Thanos has commented that, compared to himself, Bruce Banner's intelligence is only as great as human standards.
Unarmed Combat: Although he typically avoids physical combat, Thanos is a very formidable hand-to-hand combatant, having been trained in the Arts of War on Titan and having millennia of combat experience.
He is particularly skilled at using a combination of his physical and energy manipulation abilities during combat.
He is also a skilled swordsman, able to overwhelm a Silver Surfer with Mjolnir.
Mystical Knowledge: He also has a great knowledge of arcane and mystical science.

Physiology of the Eternals of Titan: By far the strongest and most powerful Eternal on Titan, Thanos is a superhuman mutant whose massive, heavy-bodied form was born with the ability to synthesize cosmic energy for certain personal uses. The Mad Titan has augmented his powers through bionic amplification, mystical enhancement, and as a result of being resurrected by Death himself. The Nova Corps (Earth-616)

The name Thanos comes from the Greek personification of Death, Thanatos.
All Titans were initially shown with purple skin like Thanos in
Iron Man #55
The idea that Thanos would look different from the rest of his people wasn't established until later. The aforementioned issue was modified in reprints so that only Thanos was purple.
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Before going mad and naming her son Thanos, Sui-San planned to name him Dione; a fact she would only reveal to him on the day of her death.
Thanos was born on a Wednesday.
Thanos and his brother Eros make a truce once a year to meet and exchange gifts.
Once a year, Thanos returns to the ruins of Titan to reminisce about his early life.

Despite being an Eternal, the Deviant Syndrome he was born with makes him more like a Deviant in appearance.

However, despite all this, Thanos is still a rather evil individual at his core. He takes sadistic glee in massacring and demoralizing entire planets and/or their lifeways from time to time. Such as when he prevented a human college student from achieving world peace through subtle changes to the events that had brought it about, or when he cruelly tormented another Earthling from childhood to adulthood with a plague of cruel events that he was blamed for, even going so far as to turn on Kehlrasian farmers after murdering their god and sabotaging their virtuous rebirth system for his sick and demented amusement.
He can also be quite pragmatic about evil, seeing more value in conquering and uniting Earth with the wider galactic community when approached by a budding tithe of universal powers who sought to recruit him to annihilate it. Considering that countless forces greater than a clandestine cabal of subversive actors have tried to decimate that wild and unruly planet; and have failed time and again, himself included.

Thanos is extremely proud, violent, deceitful, malevolent, treacherous, and ruthless, to the point that he is willing to sacrifice countless planets and civilizations, even his own race, in order to worship Death and win her affection. Thanos also possesses an insatiable hunger for power, always seeking to obtain objects of incalculable power and influence, such as the Cosmic Cubes or the Infinity Stones.
However, Thanos often speaks in a sophisticated manner with a calm and collected demeanor, described by the Silver Surfer as professorial.
Thanos has also shown his appreciation for farming and the pursuit of knowledge.
Despite his overall megalomaniacal, if not outright omnicidal, personality, Thanos has no desire to destroy everything. He is even willing to join forces with heroes when he senses a threat more dangerous than himself. He worked alongside Adam Warlock to stop Magus and the Goddess, allied with Thor and Genis-Vell to defeat Walker, allied with Adam Warlock, Gamora, Spider-Man, and the Defenders to defeat Thanos' clones, thwarted the Hunger entity with the help of Galactus, aided the Guardians of the Galaxy in stopping the Cancerverse invasion, and worked with Deadpool to free Death from Eternity's prison.
He also has a genuine respect for Mar-Vell and Adam Warlock. Thanos even helped Mar-Vell on his journey to the afterlife, and once considered Adam his only friend.

Thanos used the wormhole known as the Great K'ythri to escape from Exospace and re-enter his home reality. Shortly after, Thanos stormed the Sharra-IV, a Shi'ar space station meant to monitor the wormhole he had come from, and interrogated its commander, M'korr, about a purported Cosmic Cube energy signature emanating from Earth.
Thanos invaded Earth to retrieve the supposed Cosmic Cube from the Project PEGASUS Facility, but to his surprise, a group of superhumans led by Captain Marvel were already there waiting for him. In the ensuing battle against Earth's heroes, Thanos killed War Machine before being struck down by a furious Captain Marvel.
He was later captured and imprisoned in the Triskelion.
Using his telepathic abilities, Thanos manipulated Conner Sims, who had also been imprisoned in the Triskelion, into exploding his cell, causing a blackout in the facility that allowed Thanos to escape.
Thanos battled the Ultimates, but was eventually defeated and imprisoned elsewhere. Following his escape from custody during the chaos of the superhero civil war,
Thanos joined forces with Annihilus, the Cabal Queen, and the Badoon to wipe out the Guardians of the Galaxy and conquer Earth. His plan, however, was thwarted by the Guardians themselves, and a defeated Thanos was captured by the Nova Corps.

Following the restoration of the Multiverse, Thanos was cast out, leading him to find new love in the form of the nothingness that surrounded him. When the Ultimates went outside to try to fix time, Galactus, now a lifeguard, rescued them before the pressure of the great, dark nothingness could crush them. Upon their return, Galactus opened a portal back to Eternity, which Thanos used to return to the Multiverse, where he would demonstrate his love for nothingness.

Thanos decided to take advantage of a moment of civil unrest, in which numerous enemies of Doom joined forces to attack his castle, to take control of the Annihilation Wave of New Xandar and marched towards Doomstadt. Thanos confronted Doom face to face, and after the Mad Titan gloated over his power, Doom killed him by reaching his spine, quickly separating it from the rest of his body.

During the final incursion, the Cabal watched as SHIELD attacked the collided Earth-616 under the false assumption that destroying said planet would be enough to survive. Ultimately, the two Earths collided, and both universes perished.
The Cabal and the Maker survived aboard the life raft and remained in suspended animation for eight years. The life raft made its way to Battleworld, a patchwork planet composed of the remnants of realities, constructed and controlled by the now omnipotent Doctor Doom. After being freed from the ship, the Cabal and the Maker caught the attention of Doom's police force, the Thor Corps. While facing off against the Thunder Gods' army, they were soon joined in the fray by the survivors of Earth-616, who had recently been freed from their own life raft by Doctor Strange, Doom's right-hand man and sheriff of Battleworld.
When Doom intervened to confront the intruders, Strange used his magic to teleport them away and scatter them across Battleworld, saving them from Doom's wrath.
Thanos' destination was a dangerous domain called the Dead Lands, inhabited by super-powered zombies.
As part of a plan to defy Doom, Thanos surrendered to the Hel-Rangers, the protectors of the Shield that separated the Wastelands from the rest of Battleworld, and managed to convince the living creature that formed the Shield, a giant-sized alternate Ben Grimm, to rebel.

When the Cabal approached the fallen Namor, who lied about his intentions, they discovered an unusual occurrence. The Earth they were on was experiencing an incursion with two universes at the same time. Unable to return to Earth-616, the Cabal headed to the second incursion point and escaped the doomed planet to the third universe, Earth-1610.
Thanos and the Cabal allied with Reed Richards of Earth-1610, known as the Maker.
Eventually, they worked together to build a ship capable of surviving the end of all reality, a life raft based on designs stolen from Richards of Earth-616.

Due to an argument he had with the Illuminati over destroying an alternate world during an incursion, Namor released Thanos, Proxima, and a resurrected Corvus to join his Cabal in order to destroy another colliding Earth, as the Illuminati were willing to let both universes die.
Eight months after its formation, the Cabal had found a degree of legitimacy on Earth. The world stood by and allowed the Cabal to raze Wakanda and claim the ruins as their base of operations. The Cabal continued to protect the universe by destroying colliding Earths, but Namor had grown tired and disgusted with the Cabal's habit of engaging in wholesale slaughter of the colliding Earths' populations, rather than simply planting the bomb and leaving.
Namor confronted Thanos for leadership of the Cabal, but was no match for the Mad Titan. Namor, now willing to turn himself in for his crimes, devised a plan with the Illuminati to destroy the Cabal. A new Incursion was on the horizon, one in which the raider world had been ravaged by the Sidera Maris. Namor would lead the Cabal to said world, activate the antimatter injector without their knowledge, and leave them to die with said Earth, preventing them from escaping with the use of an AIM platform capable of creating an impenetrable barrier between the two colliding Earths. As the Cabal engaged the Sidera Maris in combat, Namor put his plan into motion. However, he was betrayed by Black Panther and Black Bolt, who pushed him off the platform and onto the soon-to-be-destroyed Earth.

Given the whereabouts of his son by Ebony Maw, Thanos departed with Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive while Supergiant prepared one of the Illuminati's bombs to destroy the planet once his progeny was dealt with. On Orollan, Thanos finally met up with his son, Thane, and was about to kill him when he learned of the Avengers' return.
When the Avengers arrived on Orollan to defeat Thanos, Ebony Maw betrayed his master and freed Thane so he could fight his father. Thanos and Proxima, who was wielding her then-late husband's Glaive, were trapped by Thane in an amber construct that left them in a state of "living death." The amber construct was later transported to Necropolis.

When the Avengers left Earth to fight the Builders, Thanos took advantage of their absence to invade the planet with the regrouped Black Order.
He sent them to find the Time Stone, which had disappeared after the Illuminati used the Infinity Gauntlet to prevent incursions, and demanded a tribute from the Inhuman king Black Bolt, which consisted of the heads of young men between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two. Thanos used the tribute as cover for his true goal: to kill his long-lost Inhuman-descended son, whose identity and true location were unknown to him.
After Black Bolt denied tribute to Corvus Glaive, Thanos personally went to Attilan only to find the Inhuman king alone, as the city had been completely evacuated. In an attempt to kill Thanos, Black Bolt attacked him with a sonic scream that activated a Terrigen Bomb and destroyed Attilan, but the Mad Titan survived. As the Terrigen Mists spread across the world, Thanos and Black Bolt emerged from the rubble and engaged in a brief fight that ended with the Inhuman king unconscious.
After receiving intelligence from Proxima Midnight, who in turn had received it from Namor, that the Time Stone was in Wakanda, Thanos led his armies there to retrieve the cosmic artifact. He eventually discovered the Illuminati's secret hideout in the Necropolis, along with their arsenal of planet-destroying weapons and a prison housing Terrax the True Enlightened One and Black Swan.

The alternate Adam Warlock then went on to fulfill his end of the bargain with the Above-All-Others and became the new Living Tribunal.

Accompanied by a newly resurrected Adam Warlock, Thanos set out in search of a powerful artifact that would lead to a moment of great transformation in his universe. This event turned out to be simply a merging of two universes: Earth-616 and Earth-19141. The result of this merging was that the Adam Warlock of Earth-19141 retroactively assumed the position of the now-annihilated Adam Warlock of Earth-616.
While studying the alternate Adam Warlock, Thanos discovered that his universe had become energy and merged with his, granting him infinite power. Unfortunately, Annihilus detected the alternate Adam Warlock's energy signature and invaded the Posiverse to capture him. Thanos tried to intervene and ended up trapped in a void where nothing existed but himself. With no other option, the Mad Titan committed suicide.
Using the alternate Adam Warlock as a power source, Annihilus destroyed most of the universe by the time Thanos was brought back to life by Death. The Mad Titan rallied the survivors of Annihilus's attack to defeat him, but all were killed. Barely surviving the battle, Thanos watched as the universe ceased to exist after Pip the Troll awakened the alternate Adam Warlock elsewhere. In the void, the alternate Adam Warlock used his powers to bring back Thanos, and the Mad Titan proposed that they seek out the One Above All, as the entity was the only one powerful enough to restore the universe. They struck a deal with the One Above All Others, and the universe was restored to a point before Annihilus's invasion, prompting the duo to stage a preemptive strike that completely decimated the Annihilation Wave. After Annihilus was eliminated, Thanos asked the alternate Adam Warlock to bring his Earth-616 counterpart back to life, to which he agreed.

Manipulated by Blackheart, Eternity trapped Death outside the universe, causing an imbalance in it since nothing could die anymore.
Deadpool, whom Thanos had once cursed to undeath in an effort to keep him away from his beloved Death, believed Thanos was the culprit and attacked him aboard Sanctuary. Consequently, Thanos nullified his curse, making Deadpool the only mortal creature in the universe, and killed him for the transgression. However, realizing that Death would only speak to Deadpool, Thanos resurrected him so they could both save her.
Eventually, the pair made it out of the universe and encountered Eternity himself. Thanos ruthlessly attacked Eternity, blaming him for all the ills of his life. Realizing that this was what Death had wanted all along, Deadpool attacked Thanos and was possessed by the Riddle Force, gaining the powers of Captain Universe. Using those powers, Deadpool fought Thanos on equal terms, but it was his speech during the fight that convinced Death of the validity of life's existence. Thus, Death took Thanos and returned to his domain, restoring mortality to the universe.

He later killed the Avengers and Guardians as well. Unaware that he had actually banished all of his recent victims to the Cancerverse, Thanos went to Earth to either destroy it or seize control of it. With the help of the Elders, the Avengers and Guardians returned to Earth and deactivated the Cube, allowing them to confront Thanos without issue. They subsequently handed Thanos over to the Elders.
Whether he escaped or was freed from his punishment, Thanos returned to Titan.

Escaping to the site of the Necropsy rite, Thanos pretended to submit to Mar-Vell and let him perform the ritual, which summoned Death instead of killing her. She proceeded to kill Mar-Vell and the other immortal inhabitants of the Cancerverse. Thanos begged Death to take him with her, but was completely ignored. Enraged, Thanos blamed Star-Lord for his predicament and vowed to destroy his home universe for it. With the rest of the Guardians back home, Star-Lord joined forces with Nova to keep Thanos trapped in the Cancerverse as it collapsed.
However, Death was unable to destroy the Cancerverse as expected because Cosmic Aspects of one reality do not apply to the others.
A battle for control of the broken Cosmic Cube in Star-Lord's possession ensued, with the resurrected Drax and the Revengers joining at various times. Ultimately, it was Nova who managed to gain possession of the Cube. She used it to send Thanos, Star-Lord, and Drax back home.
When the Galactic Council declared Earth off-limits, Thanos galvanized a group of humans to do his bidding there. Called the Zodiac, the group's orders were to amass the vast arsenal of cosmic-level weapons found on their planet. Despite interference from the Avengers, the Zodiac managed to gather a so-called Cosmic Cube for their master.
Thanos used the Cube to kill the Elders of the Universe and then became one with it.

The Mad Titan's corpse was later found by a demented Adam Warlock and placed in a regenerative cocoon of his own. Believing it to house their messiah, the Magus, the Universal Church of Truth brought the cocoon to their homeworld of Sacrosanct, where Thanos was eventually awakened by Phyla-Vell. Resurrected in a mindless state, Thanos destroyed everything and everyone in his path until Star-Lord knocked him out with a shattered Cosmic Cube.
The Guardians of the Galaxy stopped him shortly after. When Adam Magus detonated the Church-turned-worlds to open the dimensional rift known as the Rift Beyond, Thanos managed to escape captivity and attacked the Guardians, but was soon subdued again. Due to his role as an avatar of Death, the Guardians decided to take Thanos with them to the Cancerverse, a universe on the far side of the Rift where Death no longer existed, in order to stop his invasion of their reality.
Once there, Thanos and the Guardians came into contact with the Machine Resistance. They revealed that Death and his avatar were killed by Lord Mar-Vell, the avatar of life from the Cancerverse, in a ritual called the Necropsy, which allowed the Many-Angled Ones to enter and corrupt their reality. While they attempted to find a way to reverse the ritual, Drax succumbed to his predestined imperative and killed Thanos again, this time by disintegrating him.
The Mad Titan was resurrected shortly after, leading to the realization that Death had used Adam Warlock's regenerative cocoon to make his form indestructible, as he needed him alive to deliver true death to the Cancerverse. Drax attempted to destroy Thanos again, but was ultimately destroyed by him instead. As Drax was also an avatar of life, Mar-Vell sensed his death and sent the Revengers to capture Thanos, intending to sacrifice him at the Necropsy.

Having grown tired of the same life cycles reproducing their variations over and over again, Thanos decides to assist Annihilus in his war against the universe, curious to see how a radical change in it unfolds.
After Annihilus became interested in the Power Cosmic, Thanos had the Aegis and Tenebrous defeat Galactus so he could weaponize him for the Annihilation Wave.
Due to Moondragon's revelation that Annihilus had actually intended to destroy both their universe and the Negative Zone, Thanos decided to free Galactus through a fail-safe he had implanted in the machine he was trapped in. However, before he could finish the process, Drax the Destroyer impaled him through the back with his bare hand, ripping his heart out of his chest.
Thanos' spirit and Death later watched as Galactus destroyed the Annihilation Wave and Nova killed Annihilus.

However, he discovered that the destruction wrought by the battle with the Maker had freed the last prisoner brought in by Peter Quill before he relinquished the title of Star-Lord: the Fallen One, the true first Herald of Galactus who had been held in a vessel deep within the Kyln. Thanos defeated the former Herald and placed him under complete mind control.

After defeating the Thanosi, Thanos decided to atone for the destruction of Rigel-3 caused by the Greater Power Thanos defeated by Thor and agreed with Adam Warlock to help a colony of Rigelians evacuate their planet before Galactus could consume it. During this mission, Thanos learned that Galactus was collecting the Infinity Stones in an effort to end his incessant hunger. Thanos later learned that Galactus was being manipulated into releasing the Hunger, a multiversal entity capable of feeding on entire universes. Despite Thanos's opposition, Galactus unwittingly released the entity, and when its intentions were revealed, the two teamed up to destroy it.
En route to the intergalactic prison known as the Kyln, Thanos encountered Death for the first time since his banishment from his realm. Death claimed that she was worth courting, but said that Thanos had to offer her more than death. On the Kyln, Thanos encountered the prisoners Peter Quill, who had retired from the role of Star-Lord, and Gladiator, a Strontian warrior from the Shi'ar Empire, as well as an evolved Cosmic Cube named the Maker (Earth-616), who was rendered amnesiac and emotionally unstable by taking on a humanoid female form. Thanos battled the Maker, causing its mind to shut down and leaving its power trapped in a comatose physical form. He then ordered the Kyln officers to keep the entity on life support indefinitely to prevent it from being reborn. The destruction freed Thanos and his fellow prisoners, and he found himself accompanied by the chaos mite Skreet in his plans to abandon the remains of the prison.

During a reunion with his former allies/enemies Adam Warlock and Gamora, Thanos revealed that he had created several duplicates of himself, dubbed Thanosi. These duplicates were unstable in different ways, which explains Thanos's uncharacteristic behavior and power levels in recent months. Thanos indicated that the "Thanos" who confronted Ka-Zar, Thor, and the Celestial Madonna had actually been one of his Thanosi duplicates.

Others would continually enter and exit Thanos's life. Gamora returned to Thanos's side, abandoning her relationship with Adam Warlock and the Infinity Watch. The computer intelligence known as Quasimodo seized control of Sanctuary II and used it to capture and torment the Silver Surfer and Spider-Man before being banished by Thanos, who declared that the two heroes were now in his debt.
Thanos soon confronted Marlo Jones, the wife of Rick Jones, partner of the then-current Captain Marvel, Genis-Vell. Thanos revealed that Marlo had become the physical refuge of the incarnation of Death and, as such, was targeted by the death god known as the Walker.
By convincing Thor to help them, Thanos, along with Thor and Captain Marvel, was able to prevent the Walker from killing Marlo. Eventually, Death himself defeated the Walker.

The Silver Surfer later sought out Thanos to discern Death's motives for plaguing him with images of death, evidently intending to make him his new consort. Enraged, Thanos beat the Surfer to death and surrendered his body to Death's own Realm. Believing that Death did not appreciate him, Thanos revived the Surfer and attempted to depart, further insulting Death, who cursed the Titan with immortality, forever removing him from his embrace.

Shortly after these events, Thanos grew bored and decided to seek out the vast storehouse of knowledge called the Oracle. To aid him, Thanos recruited several unwilling allies, including the second Super-Skrull, Nitro, the Rhino, and Titanium Man. After they accomplished their objectives, Thanos abandoned them.
After massacring Ovin's entire mercenary army just for something to do, Thanos used the Oracle to seek out a worthy adversary. He believed he found one in Tyrant, first spawn of the world-devouring Galactus. With the help of the ancient Herald known as Terrax, he kidnapped Tyrant's archenemy and recent opponent, Ganymede. The hero Jack of Hearts, Ganymede's lover, recruited Genis-Vell to help free her. Meanwhile, Ganymede had joined Thanos and Terrax in seeking revenge against Tyrant. The trio battled Morg, Galactus's deadliest Herald and an unwitting lackey of Tyrant's, who eventually escaped. The combined efforts of Jack of Hearts, Legate, Ganymede, and Terrax failed to defeat Tyrant. Thanos, having briefly fled the scene to learn the truth about Tyrant's origins, returned to confront Tyrant himself (aided by one of Tyrant's own "power orbs" containing the siphoned energies of Morg), laying waste to a sizable portion of Tyrant's planet. Thanos emerged from the battle, declaring that since he had resisted the powerful Tyrant for a time and gained what he sought from him, it was pointless to continue fighting (and admitted that it would likely have brought about his own destruction).

Later, when the thunder god Thor seemingly went mad, Thanos was contacted by the Silver Surfer to stop the mad thunder god's rampage. Thanos succeeded where the Surfer, the Infinity Watch, Doctor Strange, and the other Asgardian gods could not. This led the reunited group to Asgard, where they came into conflict with Odin. Thanos battled Odin until the god learned the truth, revived Thor, and allowed Thanos and the heroes to leave Asgard with his and Thor's gratitude.

Some time later, Thanos and Warlock became trapped in the folds of a shifting reality, due to the appearance of the Goddess, who was Warlock's manifestation of his "good side" that had appropriated the power of the five Cosmic Cubes previously used by the Magus. Warlock eventually freed himself and Thanos. Thanos embarked on a mission to meet the Goddess and determine what threat she posed to reality. Soon the two were contacted by the demon Mephisto, and Thanos agreed to let Mephisto aid them in exchange for a Cosmic Cube of his own. Warlock had a plan of his own, and before bodily entering the Soul Stone, he handed it over to Thanos. Thanos, in turn, assembled a contingent of reality's heroes to distract the Goddess. However, Thanos seemed to fail, and the Goddess began destroying the universe star by star. In reality, the destruction was an illusion generated by Warlock, who had used the Cosmic Cubes to create a mass hallucination across the universe. Distracted, the Goddess was defeated by Thanos and the ensemble of Earth's heroes. Thanos destroyed the "Cosmic Egg" containing the cubes, so Warlock attempted to paint the Titan as a hero. Thanos even fulfilled his deal with Mephisto, giving him a Cosmic Cube, albeit a powerless one.

Eventually, Thanos detected a threat to the universe, as Eternity (the embodiment of time itself) was left catatonic. Tracing the origin to the revived Magus, Thanos sought the aid of Adam Warlock and the Infinity Watch. Thanos and the Infinity Watch traveled to the Realm of the Dead to learn the truth about the Magus and discovered that he was attempting to replace the heroes of that reality (and, indeed, all of reality itself) with evil doppelgänger versions of his own. Upon returning to reality, Thanos and the Infinity Watch were attacked by a group of doppelgängers before the true threat of the Magus was revealed. Taking the fight to the Magus, Warlock reassembled the Infinity Gauntlet to match the combined power of all five Cosmic Cubes possessed by the Magus, though ultimately the Magus would win the Infinity Gauntlet for himself. During the battle, Thanos confronted his doppelgänger, who had become Magus's most favored lackey, and upon defeating him, gained information about Magus's plans. Upon confronting him, Thanos pointed out that Magus did not, in fact, have the full power of the Infinity Gauntlet, as the Reality Stone was actually an elaborate forgery. Shocked, Magus was thwarted by Eternity and Infinity, and the Infinity Stones were returned to their respective owners. Thanos then returned to wandering the cosmos.

Using the enormous power he now possessed, Thanos toyed with the Silver Surfer for a time before allowing him to warn Earth's heroes of Thanos's arrival.
To appease Death, Thanos used the Infinity Gauntlet to wipe out half the universe's population, leading to dire consequences. As the heroes gathered, the souls of Adam Warlock, Gamora, and Pip the Troll escaped from the Soul Stone and possessed the bodies of three recently deceased humans.
The assembled heroes battled Thanos, aided by the cosmic entities Mistress Love, Lord Hatred, the Stranger, Epoch, Lord Chaos, Master Order, and Galactus. Despite their combined power, Thanos was able to defeat and imprison them all. In the process, however, he overlooked his great-niece Nebula, who was able to wrest the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos's grasp. Her first act was to undo everything that had happened, inadvertently freeing the heroes and the cosmic entities. The battle resumed, and in the end, it was Adam Warlock who finally possessed the Gauntlet, ending the conflict.
After Thanos obtained and lost the Infinity Gauntlet, he entered a period of introspection. Adam Warlock recognized that Thanos's efforts to gain omnipotence had been thwarted not only by the intervention of superheroes, but by Thanos's own self-doubt and anxiety. Believing the Titan was capable of change—and wishing to keep Thanos where he could keep an eye on him—Warlock made Thanos a member of the Infinity Watch, giving him the Reality Stone, one of the Infinity Stones that Adam Warlock and the Watch now guarded.

Thanos was resurrected by Death and came into contact with Dynamo City soon after. He was made a citizen of it and resided there for a time. Thanos met with the Silver Surfer shortly after his return and attempted to convince the Sentinel of Spaces to his way of thinking, but failed. After toying with the Surfer for a time, Thanos faked his own death so he could continue his plans unaltered. He arranged for Nebula's associate Geatar to die in his place, leaving a ravaged body similar enough to his own that the Silver Surfer and the Eternals of Titan temporarily believed it to be Thanos.
In the Realm of Death, Thanos gazed into the Infinity Well and discovered the true powers of the Soul Gems, which he now called the Infinity Stones. Since his previous defeat, these had been given to the Elders of the Universe. Using science and his unmatched cunning, Thanos was able to retrieve the green Soul Gem from the In-Betweener, the red Power Gem from the Champion, the orange Time Gem from the Gardener, the purple Space Gem from the Racer, the yellow Reality Gem from the Collector, and the blue Mind Gem from the Grandmaster. Placing all of the Gems into his massive gauntlet, Thanos created the Infinity Gauntlet, giving him dominion over all that is.

None of these factors existed in the original timeline that led to the creation of the Magus; thus, Thanos hoped to avert a reality in which Warlock would never become the Magus.
Thanos succeeded, and while near Warlock, he siphoned the energies he needed from his Soul Stone without Warlock's knowledge. Eighteen years after finding it, Thanos gave Gamora a gift. The entire Badoon royal line had gathered on Moord to welcome the rise of a new monarch, allowing Gamora to slaughter them all, thus fulfilling her revenge.
Thanos then constructed a single, massive synthetic Soul Stone to contain the energies of the six. With it, he planned to extinguish the stars one by one. Gamora learned of his plan of destruction and attempted to assassinate him, but Thanos killed her. Thanos also killed Warlock's comrade Pip the Troll. By this time, Warlock had learned of Thanos' threat and traveled to Earth to enlist the aid of the Avengers and Captain Marvel. In the battle aboard Thanos' starship, Sanctuary II, Captain Marvel damaged Thanos' projector through which he transmitted the synthetic Soul Stone's energies to the suns to trigger their nova. Warlock engaged Thanos in personal combat and was killed. The Avengers were captured by Thanos but were rescued by Spider-Man and the Thing. Spider-Man, influenced by the abstract entities Lord Chaos and the Master Order, freed Warlock's spirit from the Soul Stone he carried, and seething with the cosmic power unleashed by his physical death, Warlock confronted Thanos and turned the Mad Titan to motionless stone. Incapacitated, Thanos retained a fragment of his consciousness and was thus tortured by the fact that to him who worshipped death, it would be forever denied.

Thanos wasted no time formulating a plan to regain Death's affections: he would give "her" more than any living being had ever given "her"—the annihilation of all life. He searched the minds and records of countless civilizations, hoping to find the key to the power he sought. Eventually, he learned of the existence of the 'Soul Gems'—six objects of unknown origin and enormous power—and set out to acquire them. Before long, he acquired all of the Soul Gems except one: the jade jewel atop Adam Warlock's head.

Thanos feared acquiring Warlock's Soul Stone directly because it possessed the power to steal souls, and he feared risking losing his own. Observing him, Thanos learned that Warlock had diverted a temporal counterpart called the Magus, who was the head of a galaxy-spanning religious empire and would undoubtedly oppose Thanos's star-destroying plans if he learned of them. Because of this, Thanos plotted to eliminate the Magus. Possessing the ability to time travel, Thanos decided to establish certain factors in the timestream that, combined, could spell the Magus's downfall (he could have attempted to thwart Warlock's life long before the critical moment when he would/would not become the Magus, but he needed Warlock to remain the possessor of the Soul Stone for simplicity's sake).

One of these factors was the rescue of the infant Gamora, a female member of the pacifist Zen-Whoberis race who was massacred by Magus's missionary troops. She would serve as Thanos' personal assassin, raised alongside his other adopted daughter, Nebula.

The second important factor would be Thanos' own direct alliance with Warlock against the Magus.

As part of his quest for power, Thanos amassed a massive armada of combat vessels. Having kept the planet Earth under surveillance since it first exploded a nuclear weapon, Thanos learned of the existence of a power object called the Cosmic Cube from the subversive organization, Advanced Idea Mechanics. Thanos gained control of the reality-altering device and ordered it to give him control over the universe.

Transformed into a god-like wraith by the Cosmic Cube, Thanos battled the Avengers and Captain Marvel, the former of whom had already defeated his armada. When Thanos carelessly discarded the Cube, falsely believing it had drained him of all power, Mar-Vell struck the cube, wishing it would return the universe to what it had been. Stripped of his power, Thanos returned to his mortal form at the center of the universe, where his flagship Sanctuary II retrieved him on pre-programmed instructions. Revived, Thanos was despondent to discover that Death had abandoned him for his failure.

So she embarked on a journey to kill all of her offspring and razed every planet she came across in pursuit of her love of Death. Furthermore, Thanos experimented on her own body, granting herself various powers. Thanos's confidante became his companion, and eventually declared that for her to love Thanos, he would have to become a god, an ultimate destroyer above all. After Thanos discovered that no one in his crew could see her, she revealed her true nature, which was the physical manifestation of Death herself. Driven mad by this revelation, Thanos gave in to Death's promises of romance and used his fleet to ravage Titan.

Once his armada bombarded Titan, Thanos personally descended to slaughter the survivors. He confronted the elder A'Lars, who managed to make Thanos doubt whether Death was truly on his side or simply insane. Thanos spared his father only so he could watch his son desecrate the cosmos and prove his sanity. Death eventually kissed Thanos, but her embrace felt cold. His thirst unquenchable, Thanos continued his journey of destruction.

By the time he reached adolescence, Thanos excelled academically and learned faster than he had been taught. He began secretly vivisecting creatures to gain knowledge while searching for an answer to his abnormal genetic makeup. The girl who had helped him overcome his fear of killing became his confidant. Thanos's search for answers escalated to the point where he killed other Titans, carrying out the first murders in Titan history. Despite declaring that his first two kills would be his last, Thanos eventually killed again, and found he enjoyed it. Thanos fell in love with his confidant, who enabled and further motivated Thanos's actions, but she rejected his advances.
After murdering seventeen people in total, Thanos killed his mother in the hopes of finding in her body the key to who he was, both spiritually and physically.
At some point, Mephisto approached Thanos and convinced him to come to Earth and fight the Prehistoric Avengers.
After leaving Titan, he swore not to kill and found a menial job with a pirate crew with whom he explored the cosmos. Over the years, Thanos became detached and impassive. On many different planets, he would find a mate and mate with them in the hopes of feeling something again, to no avail. He always abandoned them and the babies they gave birth to. Eventually, Thanos came into conflict with his captain on the pirate crew due to his disinterest in murder. In an act of complete instinct, Thanos slaughtered him, subsequently taking control of his crew. Thanos decided to embrace his murderous nature and returned to Titan in secret. He was approached by his former confidante and attempted to woo her again. She demanded that Thanos prove that he belonged only to her,

Thanos grew up with an introverted personality, but despite this and his unusual appearance, Thanos was well accepted by his peers. He was a mild-mannered intellectual who dreamed of becoming a scientist like his careless father. However, signs of his true nature began to appear early on. For example, he enjoyed drawing dead animals even though he would vomit at the prospect of performing a dissection. Thanos's life reached a turning point when a mysterious girl convinced him to explore a dangerous cave with his friends to overcome his fear of killing. A cave-in separated Thanos from his friends for three days, during which he refused to even think about murdering the harmless creatures that lurked underground for food. When he found his friends, they had been killed by the animals that inhabited the caves. After Thanos returned to society, the same girl convinced him to return to the cave and kill the critters in revenge.

Thanos was one of the last children of A'Lars, progenitor of the second Eternal colony on Titan, and Sui-San, the last survivor of the original Eternal settlement on the moon. He was born with purple, leathery skin and a massive body due to his Deviant Syndrome. The first time his mother laid eyes on the baby, she went mad and tried to kill him.
After that, the Cosmic Ghost Rider from an alternate future came to kill the baby, but when the Penance Stare didn't work on Thanos, the Rider decided to take the baby under his wing and change the future.
The Horseman tried to convince Galactus to help him raise the baby, but the cosmic being refused and instead sought to kill him himself. With the Watcher as a witness, the Horseman vowed to raise the baby himself, creating an alternate timeline where Thanos grew up to become an interplanetary dictator.
The Guardians of the Galaxy of that timeline attempted to prevent their future by stopping Frank, but he, and eventually baby Thanos, killed them all. They were later greeted by Thanos's future self, wearing the same clothes Frank wore as the Punisher.
He took them both to his future, showing Frank the authoritarian world he had built by example, including a past version of himself living with his wife Maria.
Realizing the consequences of his intervention in his life, Frank killed the future Thanos and returned his baby self to the past, erasing the alternate timeline. Death appeared before Frank to confirm that his actions had nonetheless instilled in the baby Thanos the bloodlust that would turn him into his agent.

Identity
Does Not Have Double Identity
Occupation
Conqueror, worshipper of Death; former pirate, nihilist, god,
[47]
seeker of knowledge,
[47]
King of Titan,
[32]
farmer,
[48]
Eternal Prime
[41]
Education
A titanic combination of formal education and self-study.
Base of operations
Earth; formerly Titan; Sanctuary II; Necropolis, Wakanda, Earth; Black Quadrant; Chitauri Prime

Origin
Eternal,
[42]
Mutant,
[43]
[44]
was born with Deviant Syndrome,
[39]
whose abilities were amplified with meditation, arcana, and bionic implants
[45]
Living Status
Alive
Universe
Earth-616
Place of birth
Titan
Place of Death
Aboard Annihilus's Flagship (second death)
Doomstadt, Battleworld, Earth-15513 (third death)
Chitauri Prime (fourth death)
Titanos, Northwest Territories, Canada (fifth death)

Gender
Male
Height
2.01 m
Weight
446.79 kg
Eyes
Iris:
Reds
Hair
Doesn't have
Fur
Dwelling
Unusual things
furrowed chin

Affiliation
Eternals of Earth, Masters of Evil (past); Former ally of Druig, ally of Phastos, Infinity Watch
, Defenders, Cabal

, ally of the Zodiac, leader of the nihilistic sect,
[39]
the Black Order and numerous armies
Relatives
Grandparents:
Kronos (paternal grandfather);
Daina (paternal grandmother)

Parents: A'Lars (father);
Sui-San (mother)

Brothers: Eros (brother, deceased)

Children: Thane (son);
Rot ("child" for Death, deceased);
Several children (deceased);
Gamora (adopted daughter);
Zorr (alleged son or son-in-law, deceased);

Descendants: Nebula (alleged granddaughter)

Marital status
Single

Real Name
Thanos
Other Aliases
Nicknames:
Chins
[36]

Other Aliases:
Father of All,
[37]
Dione (name chosen for him before his birth),
[38]
Mad Titan,
[39]
Teacher,
[39]
Sir Master,
[39]
The Outcast,
[40]
Subjugator,
[39]
Thanos Rex,
[39]
Eternal Prime
[41]