Set a few years after the events of Thanos Rising #1, issue #2 picks up with Thanos still in high school but in a much darker, more arrogant frame of mind. His teachers cant teach him anything he doesnt know and his supposed quest for knowledge leads to vivisecting an increasingly more advanced range of creatures, starting with lizards, moving on to apes, and finally... his peers! My problems with the first issue were that Jason Aarons approach to Thanos and explaining his origins were quite unoriginal. Hes unloved by his parents and is isolated from others his age because of his heightened IQ, which leads to him becoming an evil-minded loner. That idea is basically continued in this second issue where he tries to find affection from a goth chick who rejects him, enraging him and causing him to become more extreme in his scientific experiments. Hes like a homicidal, purple Mark Zuckerberg! The crazy girl and Thanos relationship is the focus of this issue as she makes him aware of his true murderous nature and encourages him to embrace his destructive behaviour leading him to kill more and more. While the girl resembles the figure of Death whom Thanos would go on to woo unsuccessfully in The Infinity Gauntlet, this foreshadowing and the pat explanations for his increasingly evil personality seem rather pointless. Not to mention confusing - how he will find out why hes different or what his destiny is by butchering animals and people? It doesnt make any sense! In 2 issues, this series hasnt shone any new light on Thanos character, Aaron has simply gone for the serial killer psychology angle - he kills small animals as a child leading him to kill people as an adult. He even says stuff that killers like Dahmer mightve said: Killing someone... is the only time I dont feel alone. Hes unloved, so his drive is to seek affection - at one point, he says All I ever wanted was someone to love. And someone to love me back. So that explains why hes a killer, right? This is all stuff that didnt need to be told, especially in such a mundane and unimaginative fashion as it is in this comic. Reading this series doesnt make reading his later adventures any more interesting as you dont really need to know that he was unloved as a child to enjoy them. Bear in mind this is Thanos, a cosmically powerful god-like force that at one point could've destroyed the universe who has been reduced to a handful of pitiful human-like characteristics. And, on top of it all, this comic is really boring! Thanos kills animals in his lab, then people, the end. These two issues couldve easily been compressed into one comic or even less than one, without losing anything in the telling - there are just so few ideas here, its boring to read them stretched out.
Jason Aaron is better than this comic. Hes written far better stuff for Marvel - check out Wolverine and the X-Men - so its disappointing to see Thanos Rising turn out to be such a joyless, unimaginative series. You either like Simone Bianchis art or you dont and I really dont. The pages are filled with flat, muddy images and static, hard to look at characters against featureless backgrounds. Im a fan of Thanos but this series isnt doing anything for me. Hopefully now that his childhood is (probably) over with these two issues, Aaron will be able to move onto more fertile ground with Thanos leaving Titan for more colourful and action-packed adventures as an adult. But reading this series, youd never guess that Thanos is such an entertaining character in other, better stories.
Thanos Rising #2 by Jason Aaron and Simone Bianchi is out now at your local comics shop and online at Comixology and Marvel Unlimited