As I wrote in my post about Daredevil #105 a few weeks ago, back in 1973 my younger self hadn’t been paying much attention to what Jim Starlin had been up to lately in the pages of Captain Marvel — at least, not until elements of his burgeoning interplanetary epic of Thanos, the mad Titan, cropped up in the middle of an ongoing storyline of the Man Without Fear, of all places. After that brief taste of Starlin’s concepts (and artwork), I was determined to pick up the next issue of Captain Marvel to learn more. But before I even had that chance, Marvel Comics released yet another Thanosian tie-in — this one drawn (and most likely co-plotted) cover-to-cover by Jim Starlin himself.
The venue for this latest chapter of Starlin’s saga was the twelfth issue of Marvel Feature — one of several “tryout” titles that the publisher had introduced back in 1971, and one which until recently had been presenting the adventures of Ant-Man. Your humble blogger hadn’t been following those, and I’d also either missed or passed on issue #11, which introduced Hank Pym’s replacement feature — which was essentially another take on Marvel Team-Up (which of course was itself a take on DC Comics’ Brave and the Bold), only featuring the Thing in place of Spider-Man (or Spidey’s occasional MTU substitute, the Thing’s Fantastic Four teammate, the Human Torch). Half a century after the fact, I’m kind of surprised that I didn’t buy MF #11, seeing as how that issue featured a slugfest between the Thing and the Hulk, and I was almost always down for those. Still, for whatever reason, I passed on it — but then, two months later, opted to buy #12, despite the fact that I hadn’t been buying the solo adventures of the Thing’s co-star for the issue, Iron Man, for some time now. Maybe I just really liked the cover, which was pencilled by Jim Starlin and inked by John Romita? Whatever.
As with the previous issue of Marvel Feature, Starlin provided the interior pencils, while the inks were contributed by Joe Sinnott — who, as the long-time regular inker of Fantastic Four, could be relied on to keep the Thing looking like the Thing (even if you felt, as Marvel’s then-editor-in-chief Roy Thomas would later admit in his 2013 introduction to Marvel Masterworks — Marvel Two-in-One, Vol. 1 that he himself did, that “Jim tended to draw rather too many of those little rocks that seemed to make up the Thing’s lumpy skin.”). I can’t say that ever bothered me, but to each their own, right?
The only significant change between the last issue and this one, creative team-wise, was the replacement of writer Len Wein with Mike Friedrich — who, probably not coincidentally, had scripted the issue of Iron Man (#55) in which plotter-artist Starlin had introduced his Thanos/Titan mythos, and had also collaborated with the artist on every issue of Captain Marvel he’d drawn to date.
As the two panels above (and their accompanying footnotes) helpfully lay out, Iron Man’s actions in this issue follow directly from his encounter with Thanos in issue #55 (Feb., 1973) of his own title, as well as more recent events in Captain Marvel #28 (Sep., 1973). Not having read either of those two comics yet, I’m sure my sixteen-year-old self found these references incredibly tantalizing, and perhaps a little frustrating. This looked like the biggest thing going in the Marvel Universe right now (with the possible exception of the Avengers/Defenders War), and I’d been missing out. How was I ever going to catch up?
Edited detail of a panel from New Gods #7 (Feb.-Mar., 1972). Text and pencils by Jack Kirby; inks by Mike Royer.
At this point, I’m sure I must have taken note of Thanos’ physical resemblance to Darkseid, the villain created by Jack Kirby for DC a couple of years back. But I’d have to wait until I’d bought and read Captain Marvel #29 to begin to understand just how much Starlin’s character, and much of the rest of the mad Titan’s surrounding mythos, owed to Kirby’s Fourth World comics.*
Iron Man continues to stride cautiously through the seemingly deserted base, until…
Iron Man hopes that the fact that he can fly, and the Blood Brothers can’t, will give him an edge — unfortunately, that advantage is more or less cancelled out by Earth’s lower gravity, which gives the two aliens the ability to “leap as high as we wish!” — something one of them proves by grabbing the Golden Avengers in mid-air and dragging him to the ground…
Naturally, Thanos is delighted that his twin lackeys have delivered up a two-fer…
Wait, Thanos has the Cosmic Cube? And he’s captured his dad and brother (whom I’d seen briefly in a Starlin-drawn flashback sequence in Daredevil #105)? Damn straight I was going to “check out Captain Marvel #29 — on sale this month — for further details!“. Just gimme a chance, guys!
Ben’s thought bubble indicates he recognizes Thanos’ voice. How is that possible? Well, fans who had been reading Captain Marvel would of course have remembered that the Thing briefly crossed paths with the villain in CM #26, six month back; meanwhile, less fortunate readers such as your humble blogger could only wonder.
This was actually a bigger reveal than my younger self realized at the time; in their one previous appearance in Iron Man #55, there’d been no hint of the Blood Brothers’ vampiric nature.
For as long as he can whale on the Blood Brothers one at a time, Ben seems to have the upper hand; but then, they combine their forces, with the result that… well, let’s let them tell us themselves:
The battle rages on, until the combatants shake the earth so violently that they bring down a whole mountain (well, that’s what the caption calls it, anyway) down upon their heads. But do you suppose that’s the end of it? Ha!
Hmm… who’s this cloaked, silent individual with the starburst eye (eyes?) who’s hanging out with Thanos? Maybe we’ll find out in Captain Marvel #29…
So much for the Blood Brothers, who aren’t actually dead (though it’ll be almost three years before they show up again, in Iron Man #88 [Jul., 1976]). And so much, too, for Marvel Feature, for which — that “Next” blurb notwithstanding — this issue proved to be the final one. While the Thing would indeed meet the Man-Thing in two months’ time, that encounter would take place in the pages of Marvel Two-in-One #1, as the “Thing team-up book” concept graduated into its very own title.
From the perspective of half a century later, “The Bite of the Blood Brothers!” is likely to seem a pretty slight story; when all is said and done, it barely advances Jim Starlin’s ongoing Thanos saga a whit, and doesn’t amount to much more than a series of action set-pieces loosely strung together on a bare thread of a plot. But, for my younger self in August, 1973, it provided another glimpse into the scope of what young Mr. Starlin was up to — a conflict that seemed likely to draw in the whole Marvel Universe before the creator was done (which of course it eventually did — at least if you view everything Starlin has ever done with the mad Titan as one long extended epic, as I like to) — and made me even more eager to check out Captain Marvel at the earliest possible opportunity.
And besides all that — hey, what’s wrong with a good old-fashioned slugfest, every now and then?
Detail of a panel from New Gods #5 (Oct.-Nov., 1971). Text and pencils by Jack Kirby; inks by Mike Royer.
*According to an interview Starlin gave in 1998 for Comic Book Artist #2, his original visual conception for Thanos wasn’t based on Darkseid at all, and in fact hewed closer to another of Kirby’s Fourth World deities: Metron:
Kirby had done the New Gods, which I thought was terrific. He was over at DC at the time. I came up with some things that were inspired by that. You’d think that Thanos was inspired by Darkseid, but that wasn’t the case when I showed up. In my first Thanos drawings, if he looked like anybody, it was Metron. I had all these different gods and things I wanted to do, which became Thanos and the Titans. Roy took one look at the guy in the Metron-like chair and said : “Beef him up! If you’re going to steal one of the New Gods, at least rip off Darkseid, the really good one!”.
For my money, about all that’s left of Metron in Starlin’s final design for Thanos is some of the detailing of his headgear.,, your mileage may vary, of course.
The story’s ending is one of those why-didn’t-he-just villain questions—if Thanos was watching and had the Cube and could use it to teleport, why didn’t he just send Shell Head and Ben into the sun? Maybe he hadn’t finished reading the Cosmic Cube Owner’s Manual yet.
Yes. Thanos pointed out (accurately) the previous owners hadn’t used the cube’s full powers effectively; why was he waiting to make himself a god?
As the Falcon pointed out many years later during Ed Brubaker’s Captain America run, no one who ever got their hands on the Cosmic Cube ever seemed able to get it to work exactly how they wanted it to work, that rather than acting as a sort of sci-fi genie it was more like a cosmic-powered Monkey’s Paw, and whatever wishes you made could end up with all sorts of unforeseen side effects. Maybe on some level Thanos was aware that he had to be very careful how he utilized the Cube, and he didn’t want to risk using it to achieve something his lackeys might also be capable of doing, and he was instead keeping it in reserve for his big play later on when he attempted to become a god. And even then things still didn’t work out for Thanos with the Cube.
I suppose MCU Thanos sitting in his chair in early appearances makes him a little more Metron like, or am I misremembering?
Minor, as you say, Alan, but an entertaining actioner.
https://crustymud.paradoxcomics.com/to-infinity-and-back/
In the early design I shared in this blogpost, you’ll see he even *looks* a whole lot like Metron.
Not having been a fan of Forever People or New Gods (and I think I missed almost all of the runs anyway) I never associated Thanos with any of them. By the time it was pointed out to me, Thanos had already developed long past the simplistic Darkseid.
Much as I enjoyed the original Thanos saga, Moody Goth Boy Tries to Impress Girl He’s Crushing On is pretty simplistic itself. Darkseid’s enthusiasm for eliminating free will is at least as compelling when it’s done well (which admittedly even Kirby didn’t do every time).
Thanos got a let less interesting as Starlin fell into the writer’s trap of having to have his creation be the smartest person in the room. Any room. But then I think Starlin’s writing since Death of Captain Marvel has been unadulterated crap. Not that I have strong opinions about it or anything.
T.S. Eliot, John L;ennon and Paublo Picasso have all been credited for “Amatures borrow, professionals steal.’ However, to an extent, Jim Starlin eputomizes this trope.
His most noteworth creation, Thanos, was inspired by Kirby’s New Gods. Thanos’s most interesting application, the Warlock series kicking off in Strange Tales, was inspired by Michael Moorecock’s Eternal Champion Cycle,
However, as someone noted here, things like his slow rollout of Lady Death gave a slightly pedestrian concept a bit of heft.
I think Thanos’s background as a “deliinquent, ugly Eternal” was a bit less interesting than Darkseid’s background as his more charismatic uncle’s (Steppinwolfe) scheaming henchman. (Which also indicates that part of what Darkseid wants to wipe out with free will is his own type of ambitious self-creation,)
I do think Starlin has done good work since The Death of CPT Marvel, but a lot of that was not his cosmic stuff. It was more street level stuff (like Batman) or more purely satirical stuff (like CPT Comet on Hardcore Station).
The idea that Thanos was initially more pegged on Metron than Darkseid is interesting. That charactor’s desire for knowledge is so strong, it can ONLY end badly, even though, in itself, it is a laudible goal (as particularly seen in Mister Miracle #9 [Himon]). That might have been even more interesting than Thanos’s death obsession.
This was Friedrich and Starlin’s last collaboration. From interviews I have read over the years, I get the impression that Starlin might have thought Friedrich held him back. (For example, when he felt he needed some pointers on dialogue, he brought in Steve Englehart to collaborate on the last three issues of CPT Marvel. I liked Friedrich’s early Batman and GL work. I thought he was a good writer, even though his own attempt at an epic in Iron Man never quite jelled (the War of the Super Villians).
I’ll be getting into this in a little more detail in next Wednesday’s Captain Marvel #29 post, but Starlin says he came up with Thanos and Eros prior to the debut of Kirby’s Fourth World titles at DC — though he admits that the development of those characters and the other “Titan” stuff at Marvel was influenced to some extent by those books.
Also, just a small correction — Friedrich and Starlin collaborated at least one more time, when the former helped out with the script for CM #32 about 6 months after this.
And although Kirby likely came up with more original ideas than anyone else in comics, even he wasn’t above “stealing” or “borrowing” ideas from other sources, including Star Trek, Prince Valient, The Prisoner and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, among others, as well as reusing some of his older ideas for new purposes.
Another comparison that strikes me between Thanos & Darkseid is that both were initially prominent villains in series that were ultimately cancelled but they eventually became among the biggest bad guys not just for one series or character but for their respective fictional universes. I still think of Thanos more in terms of his appearances in Captain Marvel and Warlock, and associate him more with ,Warlock than any other character, but in movies he was the Avengers’ prime villain and the cinematic version of Warlock hadn’t even been introduced yet and it was another version of Captain Marvel that took part in the story. Meanwhile, over at DC, Darkseid survived the fall of Kirby’s 4th World comics to become DC’s most prominent cosmic level baddie, or at least the one I’m most familiar with. Not aware of too many other top villains who rose to greater prominence than the heroes they originally spent most of their time fighting. And, yes, I know Thanos made his debut in Iron Man, but in retrospect that wasn’t much more than a cameo on his way to becoming the big bad in Captain Marvel and, later, Warlock.
Unfortunately, Darkseid and Thanos both suffer from overuse. I agree with Keith Giffen that DC editors “pass Darkseid around like a bong.”
Also, Friedrich bpought Starlin work fot StarReach, But Friedrich (and Gerber on the one IM story Lee had onjected to and the Moondragon origin) ad been the main guy he worked with to that point.
By that time Mike Friedrich was on his way out of above-ground comics. He would finish up his Iron Man run, do the two issues of the Golem in Strange Tales and do a Wulf the Barbarian for Atlus in May of ’75 (that hit the stands in July in upstate NYS. the second to last Atlus thing we saw.
He had real sucess with StarReach, he published Saber (one of the first Graphic noveis (done by McGregor & Gulacy) and helped launch ComicCon. (He also later became a permanent Deacon in the Methodist Church.)
Considering that he wrote Batman #200, the 30th Anniversary issue of Batman in Detective and followed John Broome on both the Flash and GL and denny O’Neil on JLA, as well as working on the Bill Everett Submariner and briefly made the Outlaw Kid look like a character with potential at Marvel, Friedrich is far too little remenbered..
You’re preaching to the choir, John, at least as far as I’m concerned — particularly as regards Friedrich’s DC work. I figure I must be one of a handful of people on the planet who liked (and still like) his “Harlequin Ellis” story for JLA: https://50yearoldcomics.com/2021/03/10/justice-league-of-america-89-may-1971/
Frednotfaith2, while what you wrote about Jack Kirby borrowing ideas from other sources is true, in Kirby’s defense all of the examples you gave came from the late 1960s when Kirby, disgusted with his lack of ownership and even credit for his own ideas, refused to create original stories for Marvel and began creating derivative stories (apparently to the either obliviousness or acquiescence of Stan Lee). I believe that Kirby was creating his Fourth World at the exact time he was doing these derivative stories for Marvel but deliberately kept it from them. Of course, Kirby, with (what he perceived to be) the freedom he was promised by D.C., unleashed his Fourth World after he signed with the Distinguished Competition.
According to Mark Evanier, Kirby originally conceived Omac as a future Captain America, which got him away from Lee’s view of Cap as a lost WW II veteran. He held the idea back until he moved to DC and reworked it.
I was just thinking about War Of The Super Villains yesterday. I loathed the bait and switch feel to its ending (definitely won’t refer to it as any sort of climax certainly). I was imagining it as an Event like Night terrors only interesting.
Replying to Stu, all very true, and I didn’t mean to put Kirby down at all for his borrowings from the wider culture, which in turn borrowed many of his ideas, including many aspects of Star Wars. And can’t really blame Kirby for wanting to retain many of his ideas in the late ’60s for what he hoped would be a more profitable prospect for him and which he could more fully control. His vision of the Fourth World really required him being able to publish it independently under his full control but he didn’t have the means to do that at the time and it wasn’t until much later in the 1970s that other creative types — Dave Sim and the Pinis, took their chances on doing so and actually succeeded. But then, they were younger and didn’t have as large a family to support as Kirby did in 1970. How much different would comics history have been if Mainline Publications, the comics company Kirby & Simon founded in the 1950s, had succeeded rather than going under as did nearly every other comics company by the mid-50s. Marvel, such as it is, likely would never have come into existence at all or gone under itself by the mid-60s.
I agree with you on the “Harlequin Ellis” story (as did Harlan Ellison, it seems).
I’m shocked that DC did not offer him work when he left Marvel, perhaps not Julie Schwartz, but Gerry Conway, joe Orlando or maybe Someone like Tony Isabella, who was about to (briefly) be a DC Story Editor . . . .
Harlequin Ellis was one of his better efforts but generally Mike Friedrich’s efforts to be Serious fell flat with me. And he wrote way too many stories to be Serious.
I do like one of his more obscure works, Ka-Zar’s clash with Victorious. The latter being a sad sort of villain, a scientist who spent his entire life cracking the super-soldier formula for AIM, finished at 50, realized he had no life aside from work and became a super-villain to compensate. Though I’m not sure I’d have appreciated it at 16 the way I did reading it in my late fifties.
I read that when I was 11 years old in 1973 and now I’m 61. 50 doesn’t seem all that old to me now! At least I’m still in reasonably good shape and can even do 50 push up in one set although I struggle just to do one pull up as I tried earlier today while walking my dog through a park with monkey bars. But I have to keep up with at least some physical activity most days. It gets more difficult to get back into it when I get lazy for too long. One of my friends turned 90 last week, and he’s still in fairly good physical and mental condition, although having increasing problems with his memory.
I see the memory problems in my friends of that age too. Keep hoping I can beat the odds.
Due to shoulder problems, pull ups haven’t been an option for years.
Seeing all the far-flung pieces (Daredevil???) of this Starlin Thanos saga drawn together is REALLY fun, especially since I had read some of the random pieces here, in Avengers, etc., back in the day. Also, the issue before was one of my most beloved childhood issues. Not only was it Hulk, Thing, Starlin, and Sinnott, but it cross-referenced the greatest grail of my childhood, FF #112, because one of my earliest superhero comics, FF #111, ended on that Hulk-Thing cliffhanger! Thanks for all the great posts!
This was a solid issue across the board. And I remember reading this one back in ’73, because like you, Alan, I enjoyed watching heroes team up to bash the living crap out of each other and everyone around them. Strangely, it’s Starlin’s design for the Blood Brothers that sticks in my memory. I don’t know why that is, but the second I saw the cover, I remembered them quite clearly.
As everyone up to now has pointed out, Starlin painted himself into a corner with the Cube. If it’s really so all powerful, why doesn’t Thanos just use it and be done with it all? Be a god and all that. The only answer that really makes sense is that he doesn’t know how and that just makes him look foolish.
Speaking of curious answers to obvious questions, if Shellhead assumed he was hurtling through the desert to fight Thanos himself, and knowing how powerful the Titan is, wouldn’t it have made sense that finding the Thing just wandering through the desert was a sort of gift-wrapped solution for dealing with him? For that reason alone, wouldn’t he stop and enlist the Thing’s aid in exchange for a lift? Surely Tony’s not so arrogant as to think he can take out Thanos without help, especially when one of Earth’s heaviest hitters basically landed in his lap?
Along with Englehart, Starlin was one of this time period’s tightest plotters, but apparently, even he zigged when he should have zagged every now and then. Thanks, Alan!
Thanos’ later established and deeply rooted self-sabotage would explain his inept handling of the Cosmic Cube.
Yep, Iron Man wasn’t thinking too clearly in that regard. Still, i got the sense that he wasn’t really expecting to come across Thanos but thought he might get some information from checking on that earlier battle site. Still, it would’ve shown more sense and fellowship for Tony to have decided it was worthwhile to pause to check out what Ben Grimm was doing hotfooting his way in the desert and enlisting his aid in the Thanos’ War. And he should have known from info Captain Marvel would have relayed to him during his briefing on his own experiences thus far, that Ben had already been involved and almost became a casualty of the war. A potential road in the story not taken, but would’ve had some interesting possibilities.
I was just really struck by the callousness of it. I know a walk across the desert isn’t going to hurt Ben, but come on! Tony can’t at least call him an Uber? I know Stark is supposed to be an ass, but really?
I missed this little lark when it came out but did add it to my collection much later. An entertaining but minor sideshow of the main event in Thanos War I. The first comic I read featuring the Blood Brothers was the much later issue of Iron Man wherein they were resurrected. I get the feeling Starlin had intended that when Super Skrull, the Blood Brothers and the Controller were all killed off during this first epic, he intended for them to actually have died, but as was the norm in comics, they were all later resurrected. Also seems he had intended for Warlock & Thanos to be killed off at the end of the 2nd Thanos epic but upon finding out that others planned to bring them back he decided that if anyone was going to do it, he’d be the one. Back to the chapter in hand, one, ahem, thing that came to my mind when reading this story was how much the Blood Brothers looked very much like the Thing, even down to the thick, blocky brow and domed heads, even if they don’t have the same rock-like outer skin. Similarly to when Defenders # 11, the epilogue to the Avengers-Defenders clash wherein the monsters in ye olden days of King Richard the Lionheart looked very much like the Hulk’s elder & bigger gray-skinned brothers. I’m guessing that in neither case were the similarities intentional, but they could hardly be missed.
Also, a bit funny that in Ben Grimm’s first three outings in his team-up series, he had three different writers, along with the stellar art of Starlin & Gil Kane in the series proper, but each of the issues, while containing a complete done-in-one story, also directly lead to the next issue, with the first two leaving Ben stuck in the desert. Sheesh, you’d think at least Tony could have called someone else to give Ben a lift back to civilization even if he couldn’t give him a ride himself. But then we wouldn’t have gotten Ben taking a detour to Florida to joust with the Man-Thing over having a name too similar to his own.
One of the most ingenious moves Starlin pulled off here was introducing the hooded figure (in CM #26 I believe) with zero text of explanation, and then just leaving the figure there, no explanation, for MONTHS. The barest hint we get in CM #26 is when Thanos declares: “By the might of the legions I command—and recognizing death as my only comrade, I seized power on my homeworld Titan…” A couple more of the barest hints in Thanos’s dialogue follow in subsequent issues, but no one will catch any of them without the benefit of retrospect after having read the whole saga.
FINALLY, we get a false face reveal in CM #31, and then, only in the very last chapter of this epic, #33, do other characters even acknowledge this mysterious figure even _exists_. Then we get the full reveal on the next-to-last page of the issue. So masterfully done. I can’t even express in words how much I loved this; Starlin is one of the greatest talents in the history of the whole damn industry.
I am curious about one thing, Alan: Did you have any options at all, at the time, for picking up those back issues you missed when first published?
Very few at this precise time, crustymud. I’d done a bit of trading for old issues in years past with comics-reading friends (whom I’d lost touch with by 1973), and had bought a few back issues from the dealers who took out classified ads in Marvel comics from around 1969 on. But it wasn’t until around 1974 or so, when I met a guy at school named Ken Stribling (hi, Ken!), that I started actively trading and buying back issues — at first just with Ken, and then with dealers at our local flea market. I didn’t make it to my first convention, and full-fledged dealers’ room, until… 1978, I think? Honestly, I’m pretty fuzzy about most of these dates. (If you *are* out there reading this, Ken, feel free to correct my frazzled recollections.) In any event, I’m pretty sure it took me at least a few years to pick up the early issues of Starlin’s Captain Marvel run, not to mention Iron Man #55.
Thanks for writing about these now classic issues of Marvel/DC series. I own this issue as part of the Marvel Epic Collection archives for Marvel Two-in-One, and hope to get it all someday; they’re very great adventures. I used to own a lot of back issues from the Avengers and New Teen Titans, and today, I’ve replaced many of them with reprint archives that now provide me with complete storylines. I remember one of the first comics I read in childhood was Fantastic Four #139 from 1973, and today, I also own that in Epic Collection volumes. One of the best things about discussing all this famous comic history is that those who can buy the reprint volumes will be able to enjoy it all in an even better format, with vastly improved color palettes. Please keep writing about all these back issues for as long as possible; it’s fun history.
Knowing that Starlin thought he was going to be the permanent writer & artist on Iron Man, I wonder if the story in Marvel Feature #12 had originally been intended by him to be, in some form or another, an issue of Shellhead’s monthly series.
The very first issue of Avengers that I ever read was #252, in which writer Roger Stern brought back the Blood Brothers and directly referenced the events of Marvel Fanfare #12, so it’s definitely interesting to read your retrospective on this story.
If Starlin had the story previously planned out at all, it likely was only a loose idea rather than already fully plotted out or drawn, and thus more easily re-configured for a team-up with the Thing. This also brings up the question of how much of the particular plots in Captain Marvel had been intended for Iron Man? Would Marianne have been used as the Controller’s bait? Would Skragg and Super Skrull have tried messing with Iron Man’s mind and tried to get him to kill Ben Grimm? Unless Starlin ever referred to any of his initial plans in an interview somewhere, we can only speculate. As with so much else!
I have all these questions about Thanos and how all these stories developed behind the scenes, but every time I meet Jim Starlin at a comic con I keep forgetting to ask him! Last time I saw him at a show a couple of years ago, I got sidetracked asking him about Dreadstar!
In Iron Man #55, all the people of Titan were colored purple, including Mentor. I wouldn’t know for sure, but I’d guess that was Starlin’s initial intention but he later opted to leave Thanos purple, with a Skrull-like chin, but have the other Titans look like people of white European ancestry, just like Captain Marvel and Superman. Thanos looks a bit like a cross-breed between Darkseid and a Skrull. At least I’m not aware of any other characters with that particularly-odd styled chin, which were previously unique to the Skrulls as first drawn by Kirby in FF #2. Still, as developed by C.M. #27, Thanos had a unique freaky and somewhat frightening appearance that you’d know from the get-go he wasn’t someone you’d want to invite over for tea and a re-run of Gilligan’s Island.
Not Gilligan’s Island, but maybe The Munsters?
Now I can’t help but imagine Thanos letting out with a laugh like Herman Munster’s, but somehow more unsettling.