Although the book is called Thanosand although the main heroes are contemporary Illuminati (ah, the eternally successful Illuminati, those old so-and-sos. When will they finally learn?), Thanos: Return of the Mad Titan is the story of Roberta, a gothic drugstore clerk who suffers from the banal, boring hardships of life.
Life-affirming.
Marvel Comics
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That the book Also about Mistress Death, avatar of a primal force of the universe and a long-time object of Thanos’s swarm, could make it clear to the reader what this book is really about. The comic medium has long established the relationship between gothic girls and abstract personifications of death.
The central idea of The Return of the Mad Titan is not that far removed from the plot of Death: The high cost of life (or, if you’re a fan of mediocre 90s movies, Meet Joe Black): Faced with the cold and indifferent nature of mortality, Death is convinced to spend some time being mortal (you know, to Connect with the people).
Perfect plan.
Marvel Comics
What Mad Titan Added to this template is unbridled super-powered property destruction. Thanos, desperate to attack a girl who wants nothing to do with him, kidnaps the entire city of Fresno and lifts it (Sokovia-style) into the upper atmosphere. Most stalkers don’t resort to the wholesale slaughter of a city to impress their obsession, but Thanos has never been anything but toxic in his relationship with death.
Marvel Comics
The Illuminati offer an unsurprisingly ineffective defense for Roberta/Death, and spend most of their time doing a lot of explaining, announcing what’s at stake, identifying obstacles they can easily overcome, and otherwise getting in the way of any necessary character development for our titular Titan or his supposedly vulnerable victim.
There are a handful of cool character traits, especially for Hulk (who gets a cool, slow arrival sequence). The most compelling member of this version of the Illuminati is Emma Frost, who is the most believable obstacle to Thanos – if only Only.
Unfortunately, Thanos and Death are denied such moments. Where the death of the Endless Stories – and more recently the incredible The many deaths of Laila Starr – achieve their goal of humanizing their avatars of mortality, The Return of the Mad Titan barely touches on the lessons Death wanted to learn. Roberta’s dissatisfaction with life, evident from the book’s first images, either confirms to the reader the futile competitiveness of life or illustrates the book’s disinterest in developing these themes. We get a nice scene at the Infinity Well (a recurring location from the Infinity Gauntlet series), and Death gets a chance to tell Thanos that she’s not that into him.
Marvel Comics
For his part, Thanos gets to beat up a few Avengers and proves that he is just as evil in love as he is in everything else: He literally makes his beloved his property by turning her into a gemstone and running away with her.
Thanos: Return of the Mad Titan is a fun story full of beat-em-up action and a resolution to position the characters for later stories. Unfortunately, it accomplishes all of this without giving much weight to its characters or circumstances – including the entire population of Fresno.
“Thanos: Return of the Mad Titan” positions its characters without developing them further
Thanos: Return of the Mad Titan
Return of the Mad Titan covers up any novel narrative choices with plenty of destruction and clashes with superpowers.
Artists Luca Pizzari and Germán Peralta deliver powerful action and a truly scary death.
Exactly the kind of death-obsessed Thanos tantrum you’d expect.
Fails to justify characters’ motivations.
Doesn’t do much more than set up Thanos and Death for a later story.
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