Debuting in the Bronze Age of comic books, the character has appeared in almost five decades of Marvel publications, as well as many media adaptations, including animated television series and video games.

As Starlin described: I went to college between doing U.S. military service and getting work in comics, and there was a psych class and I came up with Thanos, (inspired by Sigmund Freud's concept of human Death drive, or Thanatos),[3] but I'm not sure how he fit into it, just anger management probably.

[8] Later that same year, Thanos played a central role in the Infinity miniseries written by Jonathan Hickman and drawn by Jim Cheung, Jerome Opeña, and Dustin Weaver.

Thanos was born on Saturn's moon Titan as the son of Eternals A'lars and Sui-San, the grandson of Kronos, the nephew of Zuras, and the grandnephew of Oceanus and Uranos.

[18] Wishing to impress Mistress Death, Thanos gathers an army of villainous aliens and begins a nuclear bombardment of Titan that kills millions of his race.

He imprisons Kronos and taunts Kree hero Captain Marvel, who, with the aid of superhero team the Avengers and ISAAC (a super-computer based on Titan), is eventually able to defeat Thanos by destroying the Cube.

[32] Thanos later recruits a team of Earth-bound super-villains and puts them under the field leadership of Geatar in a mission to capture an ancient robot containing the obscure knowledge of a universal library and extract its data.

At the Kyln Thanos encounters Peter Quill, who has retired himself from the role of Star-Lord, and the Strontian warrior Gladiator of the Shi'ar Empire, who are both prisoners, as well as the Beyonder, who has been rendered amnesiac by its choice to assume a humanoid female form.

He discovers, however, that the destruction wrought by the battle with the Beyonder has freed the last prisoner brought in by Peter Quill before he gave up the title of Star-Lord: the Fallen One, revealed to be the true first Herald of Galactus, who had been held in a container deep in the Kyln.

[50] Thanos pretends to aid the Guardians against the invading Cancerverse, and after discovering its origin kills an alternate version of Mar-Vell, the self-proclaimed Avatar of Life.

Black Bolt later informs the Illuminati that the true purpose of the invasion is to find and kill Thane, an Eternal/Inhuman hybrid that Thanos had secretly fathered years earlier.

[62] When Thanos prepares to raid a Project Pegasus facility to steal a Cosmic Cube during the "Civil War II" storyline, he is ambushed and defeated by a team of Avengers who were tipped off by a vision from Ulysses Cain.

[67] Thanos goes on a killing spree, but Black Panther, Blue Marvel and Monica Rambeau are able to stop him by devising a device that blocks the electrical synapses in his brain.

Only to find it decimated at the hand of the new lover of Mistress Death; who reveals that she had stricken her former avatar with his fatal sickness, being his son Thane, now boasting the power of the Phoenix Force.

Surviving off the flesh of mutated vermin and being accosted by local scavengers who preyed upon him in his weakened condition, he is soon picked up by the unlikely crew of Thane's betrayed cohorts Tryco Slatterus, his adopted daughter Nebula and his brother Eros of Titan.

Now on the path to the cosmic coven set at the edge of the known universe, Thanos and crew stop short of a black hole, knowing full well that it is where the witches make their home.

The Mad Titan jumps into the pinhole of nothingness alongside his brother; having survived the crushing force of the singularity they dove into, Thanos and Eros are greeted by the Coven at the godly graveyard.

Seeing as it was neither their place to destroy nor turn away those seeking them, The Witches profess the only way for the warlord to be made whole again was to climb down into the God Quarry and await a trial that would test his soul.

But he is unable to escape the nagging feeling that he has forgotten something, until the quarry itself wearing the guise of Falcon reminds him of who he used to be; tempting him to live as a hero and a man at peace for the first time in his immortal life.

His cosmic might returned to him, Thanos is freed from the God Quarry, wherein he immediately accosts his brother Eros and threatens the coven to release him from their domain so that he might do away with Thane once and for all.

[82] The Fallen One soon arrives, revealed to be a darkened Silver Surfer armed with the hordes of Annihilus and the deceased Thor's Mjolnir, using the latter to swiftly kill the Rider.

The character possesses abilities common to the Eternals, but amplified to a higher degree through a combination of his mutant–Eternal heritage, bionic amplification, mysticism, and power bestowed by the abstract entity, Death.

Demonstrating enormous superhuman strength, speed, stamina, immortality and invulnerability among other qualities, Thanos can absorb and project vast quantities of cosmic energy, and is capable of telekinesis and telepathy.

He can manipulate matter and live indefinitely without food, air or water, cannot die of old age, is immune to all terrestrial diseases, and has high resistance to psychic assaults.

[105][106][107] JV Chamar of Forbes stated that "Thanos did nothing wrong" has become a popular internet meme, and that the film Endgame provides some evidence in favor of this view, in particular when Captain America says, "I saw a pod of whales when I was coming over the bridge ...

The author notes that given the contemporary extinction crisis driven by human actions, "you could indeed argue that Thanos did nothing wrong — and in the long run, the villain might have actually saved the world.

[121] As Kid Thanos finishes recuperating, Mephisto appears as he tells them what happened to Ghost Goblin, King Killmonger, and Black Skull while also mentioning that Doom Supreme and Dark Phoenix have fled.

With the corpses of Ghost Goblin, Hound, and King Killmonger as well as the unconscious body of Red Skull near him, Kid Thanos states that he can obtain fresh knowledge of his teammates on his dissection table.

Thanos is the ruler of Acheron and has a son called Ronan the Accuser who is in possession of a Cosmic Cube,[124] a vast empire consisting of thousands of worlds on another plane of existence.

[125] Thanos appears in the first three phases of the Marvel Cinematic Universe's films, known collectively as the "Infinity Saga", primarily portrayed by Josh Brolin via motion capture.