At the beginning of the issue, Thanos has done the worst thing hes ever done so far in his life - killed his own mother in an bizarre attempt to find out what makes him different from everyone else. This leads to his self-imposed exile from Titan (no-one knows hes a crazy serial killer - yet) where he bums around the cosmos sleeping around, fathering numerous offspring, and eventually joining a pirate crew. For some reason though hes sworn off of killing - until the moment in the issue when the plot needs him to and he becomes the person he was born to be. What bothers me about this issue, and the mini-series as a whole, is how mundane it is. Bear in mind this is written by Jason Aaron, whose Vertigo series Scalped is a flawless masterpiece of comics with numerous twists and turns, and memorable moments, while his Wolverine and the X-Men series is full of invention and imagination. In comparison, Thanos Rising is a drab effort. Thanos sleeps around. Thanos joins a space pirate crew. Thanos hooks up with Mistress Death. Thanos begins killing. The end. Thats it?! The space pirates arent particularly imaginative - in fact, take away the spaceship and they look like extras stepped out of the pages of Conan to moonlight in a Thanos comic. The alien women arent imaginative - besides garish heads and bright skin colours, they look like human women, and even give birth the same way in what look like human maternity hospitals that come equipped with stirrups and orderlies wearing scrubs! Wheres the invention, the imagination? Aaron and Simone Bianchi are just taking stuff that exists in our world and pretending that aliens in far off galaxies are the exact same way as us. Its so lazy. Theres also no insight into Thanos character. He wanders about for a while, miserable, doing what hes doing (sleeping around, pirating), until after a while he goes back to Titan where he meets Mistress Death again and once more confesses his love to her, only this time she responds. So Thanos loves Mistress Death is what we learn from this comic - something anyone familiar with Thanos already knew even before this mini-series began! I realise part of the reason this mini-series is being written is to introduce new readers who arent familiar with Thanos to the character (the main reason being money, money, money!) but really new readers just have to read any story featuring Thanos to understand him. Read The Infinity Gauntlet. Read The Thanos Imperative. There isnt much to the character hes the Mad Titan, a power-hungry monster who loves being evil. And thats fine! New readers to Thanos read those books instead of this mini-series. Marvel didnt need to take away his joie de vivre with a mundane origin story about how Thanos was born evil and had a troubled childhood. Like Wolverine, whose mysterious backstory was spoiled when Origin was written, Thanos is a character whose mysterious past would have been better left untold as the mystery makes him a more interesting character. But if Thanos had to have an origin story it needed to be far, far more inventive and fun than what this series has shown. As it is, Thanos Rising is a forgettable, trite, and boring mini-series that ruins the character in the long run. Thanos Rising #3 is a disappointing, unimaginative comic that spins its wheels until the final page. The mini-series is supposed to show us how Thanos became Thanos, but by the end of issue #3 hes basically become the Thanos we know already - whatre the remaining 2 issues supposed to show us? And is it going to be worth finding out?
Thanos Rising #3 by Jason Aaron and Simone Bianchi is out now