Kid Thanos

Thanos was one of the last sons of A'Lars, progenitor of the second colony of Eternals on Titan, and Sui-San, the last survivor of the original settlement of Eternals in this moon. He was born with purple, hide-like skin and a massive body due to his Deviant Syndrome. The very first time his mother laid her eyes on the baby, she was driven mad and tried to kill him. Thanos grew up to have an introvert nature, but despite this and his unusual appearance, Thanos was well accepted by his peers. He was a mild-mannered intellectual that dreamed of becoming a scientist like his neglectful father. However, signs of his true nature started to creep up early on. For instance, he liked to draw dead animals despite vomiting at the prospect of performing a dissection. Thanos' life reached a tipping point when a mysterious girl convinced him to explore with his friends a dangerous cave to overcome his fear of killing. A cave-in separated Thanos from his friends for three days, during which he refused to even think of murdering the inoffensive creatures that lurked underground for sustenance. When he found his friends, they had been killed by the animals living in the caves. After Thanos returned to society, the same girl convinced him to go back to the cave and slaughter the critters in revenge.

By the time he was a teenager, Thanos excelled academically and learned faster than he was taught. He began to vivisect creatures in secret in order to gain knowledge while searching for an answer to his abnormal genetic makeup. The girl that had helped him overcome his fear of killing became his confidante. Thanos' search for answers escalated into killing fellow Titanians, carrying out the first murders in the history of Titan. Despite declaring that his first two murders were going to be the last, Thanos eventually killed again, and found out that he enjoyed it. Thanos fell in love with his confidante, who enabled and further motivated and Thanos' actions, but she rejected his advances. After murdering seventeen people in total, Thanos killed Sui-San in hopes of finding in her body the key to who he was, both spiritually and physically. He left Titan afterwards, swore off killing, and found a menial job with a pirate crew with whom he explored the cosmos. As years went by, Thanos became detached and unemotional. In many different planets, he would find a partner and mate with them in hopes to feel something again, to no avail. He always abandoned them and the babies they bore him. Thanos eventually came into conflict with his captain in the pirate crew due to his disinclination for murdering. In an act of complete instinct, Thanos slaughtered him, and subsequently seized control of his crew. Thanos decided to embrace his murdering nature, and returned to Titan in secret. He was approached by his old confidante and tried to court her again. She demanded that Thanos proved he belonged only to her, so he embarked on a journey to kill all of his offspring, and razed every planet they stumbled upon for the sake of his love for death. Additionally, Thanos experimented on his own body, granting himself a variety of powers. Thanos' confidante became his companion, and eventually declared that for her to love Thanos, he would have to become a god, a supreme destroyer above all else. After Thanos discovered that none in his crew could see her, she revealed her true nature, that she was the physical manifestation of Death itself. 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 murder the survivors. He was confronted by the elder A'Lars, who managed to make Thanos doubt whether Death was actually by his side or if he was simply demented. Thanos spared his father solely so he could watch his son defile the cosmos and prove his sanity. Death finally kissed Thanos, but he found her embrace to be cold. Without his thirst quenched, Thanos continued his journey of destruction.

As part of his pursuit for power, Thanos amassed a huge armada of battleships. Having kept the planet Earth under surveillance since it first exploded a nuclear weapon, Thanos learned of a power-object called the Cosmic Cube brought into existence by the subversive organization, Advanced Idea Mechanics. Thanos seized control of the reality-altering device and commanded it to give him control over the universe. Transformed into a godlike wraith by the Cosmic Cube, Thanos battled the Avengers and the Kree Captain Marvel, the former of whom had already vanquished his armada. When Thanos carelessly discarded the Cube, believing falsely that he had drained it of all power, Mar-Vell struck the cube, willing it to restore the universe to what it had been. Robbed of power, Thanos reverted to mortal form in the center of the universe where his flagship Sanctuary II retrieved him under pre-programmed instructions. Revived, Thanos was dejected to discover that Death had abandoned him because of his failure.

Thanos soon formulated a plan to regain Death's affection: he would give to "her" more than any single living being had given "her," the annihilation of everything that lives. Through the minds and records of countless civilizations he searched, hoping to find the key to the power he sought. Eventually he learned of the 'Soul Gems,' six power objects of unknown origin and vast power, and set about to acquire them. In short order he had obtained all of the Soul Gems except one: the jade jewel worn on the head of Adam Warlock. Thanos feared to acquire Warlock's gem directly because it possessed the power to steal souls, and he feared to risk forfeiting his own. Observing him, Thanos learned that Warlock had diverged a temporal counterpart named the Magus, who was the head of a galaxy wide religious empire and would certainly oppose Thanos' schemes of stellar destruction were he to learn of them. Thanos thus planned to eliminate the Magus. Possessing the capacity for time travel, Thanos decided to set up certain factors in the time stream which, combined, might prove the Magus' undoing (he could have tried to thwart Warlock's life well before the critical time he would/wouldn't become the Magus, but he needed Warlock to remain the Soul Gem's possessor for simplicity's sake).

One of these factors was the rescuing of the infant Gamora, a female of the pacifistic Zen-Whoberis race that was slaughtered by the Magus' missionary troops. She would serve as Thanos' personal assassin. The second major factor would be Thanos' own direct alliance with Warlock against the Magus. Neither of these factors existed in the original timeline that led to the Magus' creation; thus, Thanos hoped to diverge a reality wherein Warlock never became the Magus. Thanos succeeded, and while in close proximity to Warlock, siphoned from his Soul Gem the energies he needed without Warlock's knowledge. Thanos then constructed a single huge synthetic Soul Gem to hold the energies of the six. With it, he planned to extinguish the stars one by one. Gamora learned of his plan of destruction and tried to assassinate him, but Thanos slew her. Thanos also slew Warlock's comrade Pip the Troll. Warlock had by this time learned of Thanos' threat and traveled to Earth to enlist the aid of the Avengers and Captain Marvel. In battle aboard Thanos' starship, Sanctuary II, Captain Marvel damaged Thanos' projector through which he transmitted the synthetic Soul Gem's energies into suns to cause them to go nova. Warlock faced Thanos in personal combat and was slain. The Avengers were taken captive by Thanos, but rescued by Spider-Man and the Thing. Spider-Man, influenced by the abstract entities Lord Chaos and Master Order, released Warlock's spirit from the Soul Gem Warlock had worn, and seething with cosmic power released through his physical death, Warlock grappled with Thanos and turned the mad Titan to immobile stone. Incapacitated, Thanos retained a fragment of his consciousness and was thus tortured by the fact that he who worshiped death would forever be denied it.

Thanos was resurrected by Death and he came into contact with Dynamo City shortly afterwards. He was made citizen of it and resided there for a while. Thanos met with the Silver Surfer shortly after his return and tried to sway the Sentinel of the Spaceways to his way of thinking, but failed. After toying with the Surfer for a time, Thanos faked his own death so that he could continue his plans without disturbances. He arranged for the death of Nebula's associate Geatar in his place, leaving behind a devastated body similar enough to his own that the Silver Surfer and the Eternals of Titan temporarily believed it was Thanos. In Death's realm, Thanos gazed into the Infinity Well and discovered the true powers of the Soul Gems, which he now dubbed the Infinity Gems. Since his previous defeat, these had been given to various Elder Beings. 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 Runner, the yellow Reality Gem from the Collector, and the blue Mind Gem from the Grandmaster. Putting all the Gems onto his massive glove, Thanos created the Infinity Gauntlet, giving him mastery of all that is.

Using the massive power now in his possession, Thanos toyed with the Silver Surfer for a time before allowing him to warn Earth's heroes of Thanos' coming. In order to appease death, Thanos used the Infinity Gauntlet to remove half of the population of the universe, causing dire consequences with his actions. As the heroes assembled, the souls of Adam Warlock, Gamora, and Pip the Troll escaped from the Soul Gem, and possessed the bodies of three humans who had recently perished. The collected heroes battled Thanos, aided by the cosmic entities Mistress Love, Sire Hate, the Stranger, Epoch, Lord Chaos, Master Order, and Galactus. Despite their combined might, Thanos was able to defeat and imprison all of them. In the process, though, he overlooked his grand-niece Nebula, who was able to wrest the Infinity Gauntlet from Thanos' hand. Her first act was to undo all that had occurred, which inadvertently freed the heroes and the cosmic entities. The battle resumed, and in the end it was Adam Warlock who finally possessed the Gauntlet which ended the conflict. After Thanos obtained and lost the Infinity Gauntlet, he was led to a period of introspection. Adam Warlock recognized that Thanos' efforts to obtain omnipotence had been thwarted not only by the intervention of superheroes but by Thanos' own self-doubt and anxiety. Believing the Titan to be 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 Gem, one of the Infinity Gems which Adam Warlock and the Watch now guarded.

Eventually, Thanos detected a threat to the universe, as Eternity (the embodiment of time itself) was rendered catatonic. Tracking the source to the revived Magus, Thanos sought the help of Adam Warlock and the Infinity Watch. Thanos and the Infinity Watch traveled to the realm of Death to learn the truth about the Magus and found that he was attempting to replace this reality's heroes (and indeed, all reality itself) with evil doppelgänger versions of his own. Returning to reality, Thanos and the Infinity Watch were attacked by an assemblage of doppelgängers before the true threat of the Magus could be revealed. Taking the fight to the Magus, Warlock reassembled the Infinity Gauntlet in order to match the combined might of the five Cosmic Cubes possessed by the Magus, although ultimately Magus would gain the Infinity Gauntlet for himself. During the battle, Thanos was pitted against his doppelgänger, who had become the Magus' most favored lackey, and in defeating it, gained insight into Magus' schemes. Confronting him, Thanos pointed out that Magus didn't, in fact, have the full power of the Infinity Gauntlet, as the Reality Gem was actually an elaborate fake. Rattled, the Magus was then thwarted by the embodiment's of Eternity and Infinity, and the Infinity Gems were restored to their owners. Thanos then returned to wandering the cosmos.

Some time later, Thanos and Warlock were trapped in the folds of a shifting reality, due to the appearance of the Goddess, which 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 learn about the Goddess and determine what threat she posed to reality. The two were soon 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 Gem, he gave it to Thanos. Thanos, in turn, assembled a contingency of reality's heroes in order to distract the Goddess. Thanos however seemingly failed, and the Goddess began to destroy the universe one star at a time. In reality the destruction was an illusion generated by Warlock, who had used the Cosmic Cubes to create a universe-wide mass-hallucination. Distracted, the Goddess was defeated by Thanos and the assemblage of Earth's heroes. Thanos destroyed the "Cosmic Egg" that held the cubes, for which act Warlock tried to paint the Titan a hero. Thanos even honored his bargain with Mephisto, giving him a Cosmic Cube, albeit one without power.